What She’s Worth

Perusing the great artists of the past, we stumble across women who lived under a strict patriarchy, but still won fame and renown. Admired by their contemporaries, many were nonetheless forgotten by later generations, as if their success was anomalous. So it was for the prolific and celebrated Bolognese painter Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614), whose paintings include some striking oddities: a portrait of Antonietta Gonsalvus, a hairy young maiden afflicted with hypertrichosis; a portrait of Bianca degli Utili Maselli with her six unsettlingly similar children; a Minerva without her customary chiton and aegis, as naked as Aphrodite. The rediscovery of forgotten female artists restores a modicum of justice, not only for an unjustly slighted half of humanity, but also for the world of art, and is reflected in happily ballooning auction prices. Lavinia’s canvases (if we may call her by her given name, in a nod to her compatriot Michelangelo) have repeatedly broken the million-euro barrier and are attracting prestigious museum buyers.