The Devout Hand by Patricia Rocco

Author:Patricia Rocco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2017-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

Fig. 4.8. Barbara Sirani, Portrait of Elisabetta Sirani, 1665. Oil on copper. 15.5 × 12.5 cm. Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale. This portrait of Elisabetta Sirani by her sister Barbara displays the skills of the maestra as passed on to her students. Image reproduced by concession of Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo, Polo Museale dell’Emilia Romagna.

Modes of Painting in Seventeenth-Century Felsina: Icons of Devotion, New and Old

Although Sirani and her circle were active in the seventeenth century, the modes of painting by the women discussed still reflect those of Lavinia Fontana: the iconic, the sacred narratives, and historiated and religious portraiture. To this list we can add miracle paintings, as seen in the work of Sirani. An analysis of the extant paintings by this circle shows that they fall within these four Counter-Reformatory modes of the sixteenth century.

Among the examples of the iconic mode are the many versions of the Immaculate Conception, a theme seen in sixteenth-century paintings that remained popular with women artists and patrons through the seventeenth century. It is instructive to compare early versions with those by Sirani and her students. As mentioned earlier, certain examples had come to blend the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception. For example, we have seen that Fontana created a unique Immacolata for a Capuchin monastery, despite the uncertain fate of the dogma at that time, but apparently to the satisfaction of her monastic patrons. Also, her Assumption at Imola (Fig. 2.5) does contain a mix of both episodes in the life of the Virgin. However, Fontana’s Assumption for Paleotti was not so risky (Fig. 2.4).

A century later, Cantofoli’s Immaculate Virgin with the Christ Child (1650s, Fig. 4.9) also includes the crown (referring to the Virgin’s Assumption and Coronation) and the moon, whereas Sirani (1664) and Muratori (1680s–90s) eliminate the crown in their versions, but retain the stars and the moon. Both Sirani’s and Muratori’s Conceptions show a sweet-faced, youthful Madonna standing on a sliver of the moon holding both hands on her heart, recalling the pose of the Madonna of Humility. Sirani’s Immaculate Conception for Father Ghisilieri, rector of Santa Maria di Galliera, also refers to the Virgin as stella maris (star of the sea), since there is a tiny slice of seascape in the background.65 Muratori’s painting can be found in the same church of Santa Maria, one of the locales for the reform schools, underscoring the importance of the subject and the devoto tone of the image. The moons in these paintings, however, remain in the tradition of the sliver of a white orb from the woman of the Apocalypse, representing Mary’s purity and triumph over evil.

Disregarding the intermediate phase of scientifically more accurate moons (see chapter 2), these women artists created Immaculate Conceptions in line with the Tridentine view of the moon and in contrast with such works as Ludovico Cigoli’s version (1610–12). Eileen Reeves, in her discussion of Cigoli’s Immacolata,66 pointed out his scientific depictions of the moon as a solid orb capable of

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