Barbara Longhi (1552-1638)

• Was an Italian painter. 
• Barbara Longhi was born on 21 September 1552 in the northern Italian city of Ravenna, where she spent her entire life.
• Her father, Luca Longhi, was a well-known Mannerist painter.
• Longhi was very respected as a portraitist, but only one of her portraits, the Camaldolese Monk, is known today.
• Longhi's father had depicted her as Saint Barbara in his 1570 painting Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints.
• Most of Longhi's paintings are unsigned, but on one she included the initials "B.L.F.", and on another, "B.L.P."
• Her artistic influences included Raphael, Antonio da Correggio, Parmigianino, Marcantonio Raimondi, and Agostino Veneziano.
• She died in Ravenna on 23 December 1638, at the age of 86.
• Longhi is one of the few female artists mentioned in the second edition (1568) of Italian painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari's epic work Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.
• Vasari writes that Longhi "draws very well, and she has begun to colour some things with good grace and manner".

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