An all-round artist, Giovanna Garzoni (Ascoli Piceno, 1600-Rome, 1670) thrived at Italian and European courts and developed a truly international style. Blending different techniques and genres, she produced portraits, still-lifes, and botanical studies that all show a timeless vitality thanks to her way of laying the colour in a ‘pointillist’ technique on ivory white parchment.

Women Painters in Early Modern Italy was an online art appreciation course I designed and published in 2023. After a few months of inactivity and with new projects on the horizon, I've decided to adapt part of the course material and share it here.

Women artists seem to be all the rage these days. And rightly so. The wealth of exhibitions and publications, the changing role of art galleries and museums, the expanding interests of private collectors, and the resulting attention of the action houses not only prove that there is a thirst for more knowledge but also that art history is a rather dynamic discipline.