The Ladies of the Renaissance

Although women artists have been involved in the making of art throughout history, their work, when compared to that of their male counterparts, has been often obfuscated, overlooked and undervalued.

Many of their works have been wrongly attributed to men artists.

Renaissance Europe was not a promising place for female artists to emerge. Women were expected to marry and have children, and those who did work were not welcomed into male-dominated professions.

In fact women were unable to even receive formal art training (a cornerstone of which was the study of the figure).

Plautilla Nelli | The first Woman painter of Florence

Sister Plautilla Nelli (1524-1588) was a self-taught nun-artist and the first-known female Renaissance painter of Florence.

She was a nun of the Dominican convent of St. Catherine of Siena located in Piazza San Marco, Florence, and was heavily influenced by the teachings of Savonarola and by the artwork of Fra Bartolomeo.

Plautilla Nelli | The Last Supper, 1570 (detail) | Museo di Santa Maria Novella, Florence

Fatima Ronquillo, 1976 | Magic realism painter

Fatima Ronquillo is a self-taught painter who combines old master techniques with a playful modern sensibility to create a world where art history meets with imagined characters from literature, theatre and opera.

Biography

Born in Pampanga, Philippines, Fatima Ronquillo emigrated as a child to the United States in 1987 where her family settled in San Antonio, Texas.

She began exhibiting her work from the age of fifteen and is now widely collected in the United States and internationally.

Levina Teerlinc (1510-1576) | Renaissance miniaturist

Levina Teerlinc was a Flemish Renaissance miniaturist who served as a painter to the English court of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

She was the most important miniaturist at the English court between Hans Holbein the Younger and Nicholas Hilliard.

Her father, Simon Bening was a renowned book illuminator and miniature painter of the Ghent-Bruges school and probably trained her as a manuscript painter. She may have worked in her father's workshop before her marriage.

Catharina van Hemessen (1528-1587) | Renaissance painter

Caterina or Catharina van Hemessen was a Flemish Renaissance painter.

She is the earliest female Flemish painter for whom there is verifiable extant work.

She is mainly known for a series of small scale female portraits completed between the late 1540s and early 1550s and a few religious compositions.

Van Hemessen is often given the distinction of creating the first self-portrait of an artist (of either gender) depicted seated at an easel.