Babette Bohn - MAP FORUM

MAP FORUM - 21 January 2025

Bologna pittrice e Roma pittrice nel Seicento: A comparison

Thanks to a variety of factors, the emergence of women painters in Rome and in Bologna during the Seicento followed different patterns. Bologna, influenced by its venerable university, a diverse group of patrons and collectors, and exceptional local biographers, produced a greater number of women painters, and allowed a greater variety of access to artistic training for its female citizens, including professional training with male non-relatives. The situation in Rome, in contrast, was shaped by the much larger population of male painters in the city, the impact of the papal court, and the influence of the Accademia di San Luca.

Babette Bohn’s most recent book, Women Artists, Their Patrons, and Their Publics in Early Modern Bologna (Penn State UP, 2021), won the Prose Award for Art History & Criticism from the Association of American Publishers in 2022 and was supported by a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and by grants from CAA and RSA. Bohn’s other books include Ludovico Carracci and the Art of Drawing (2004) and Le “Stanze” di Guido Reni: Disegni del maestro e della scuola, the catalogue of an exhibition at the Uffizi Gallery (2008). Her latest publications largely focus on women artists in Italy, including essays on Lavinia Fontana and Bolognese material culture; Sisters in Art: Female Sodality in Early Modern Bologna; and Designing Women: Drawings by Women Artists in Early Modern Italy.