Lavinia Fontana (1552 – 1614)

• Was a Bolognese Mannerist painter.
• She was trained by her father Prospero Fontana.
• Fontana was active in Bologna and Rome.
• She is regarded as the first female career artist in Western Europe as she relied on commissions for her income.
• Her family relied on her career as a painter, and her husband served as her agent and raised their eleven children.
• She was perhaps the first woman artist to paint female nudes, but this is a topic of controversy among art historians.
• Lavinia is immortalized as the subject of Portrait of a Woman (1595) by Paolo Veronese.
• She was the only woman artist featured in Giulio Mancini's Considerazioni sulla pittura (Considerations on Painting).
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