Lavinia Fontana

Lore & Background

She later studied under Denis Calvaert. Her earliest known work, Child of the Monkey, was painted in 1575. She began her commercial practice by painting small devotional works on copper. She gave birth to 11 children, though only three outlived her. Zappi served as her agent and painting assistant. In the 1580s she gained renown as a portraitist of Bolognese noblewomen. She attended classes at the University of Bologna and was listed among the city's Donne addottrinate in 1580. She produced altarpieces and mythological paintings, sometimes with female nude figures—a venture no female artist had permitted herself to attempt. She was the first female elected into the Accademia di San Luca of Rome and received numerous honors, including a bronze portrait medallion cast in 1611.

Reader's Guide

Lavinia Fontana is significant as the first female career artist in Western Europe, supporting her family through commissions. Her oeuvre includes portraits, religious works, and mythological paintings with nude figures, a controversial topic among art historians regarding whether she used live models. She was perhaps the first female artist to paint female nudes, though this is disputed. Her mythology paintings with nude figures are increasingly studied and are said to have paved the way for Artemisia Gentileschi. Her self-portraiture balances presenting the artist as a distinguished lady and as a professional, a common theme for sixteenth-century women artists.

Did You Know?

• She was the first female elected into the Accademia di San Luca of Rome.
• Her husband served as her agent and raised their 11 children while she painted.
• She may have been the first female artist to paint female nudes, though this is controversial among art historians.

The Founding Masterwork: A Gift That Shaped a Collection

John Carty made a gift that would set the entire trajectory of an institution's collecting history. Their donation of Lavinia Fontana's painting, The Dead Christ with Symbols of the Passion, marked the arrival of the very first old master work to the Rollins College collection in Winter Park, Florida. This single act of generosity planted the seed from which a broader fine arts program would eventually grow. Kress Foundation contributed two Italian Renaissance paintings, formally inaugurating the college's fine art collecting mission. Fontana's canvas thus stands as the original cornerstone, the work that opened the door for what would become a collection spanning over five hundred paintings from the fourteenth through the twenty-first centuries. Her image of Christ's death, rendered with the symbolic language of the Passion, has anchored the institution's old master holdings for nearly nine decades.

A Home for Her Canvas: The Museum in Winter Park

Lavinia Fontana's The Dead Christ with Symbols of the Passion finds its permanent home in what is now the Rollins Museum of Art, the sole teaching museum serving the greater Orlando area. Situated on the Winter Park campus of Rollins College, the institution has evolved considerably since its origins. With more than five thousand objects in its care ranging from antiquity to the contemporary, Fontana's painting occupies a distinguished position within a collection that also holds over fifteen hundred prints, drawings, and photographs. The museum's rotating temporary exhibitions and permanent displays ensure that her work continues to engage new audiences of students and visitors each season.

Her Place Among the Selected Artists

Within the Rollins Museum of Art's roster of selected artists, Lavinia Fontana's name appears alongside a remarkable constellation of figures spanning five centuries of visual art. She shares the collection's honors with Renaissance masters such as Cosimo Roselli, as well as twentieth-century giants including Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Francis Bacon. The list extends to contemporary voices like Kara Walker, Tracey Emin, and Vik Munik, and to American luminaries such as Winslow Homer, Jacob Lawrence, and Maya Lin. This extraordinary breadth, from the fourteenth century through the present, underscores the ambition of a collection that has drawn works from donors across generations. She is, in a sense, the artist to whom all others in the collection were subsequently added, making her position not merely one of artistic merit but of institutional origin.

A Living Pedagogical Resource

The significance of Lavinia Fontana's work extends beyond its aesthetic qualities into the realm of education. As a painting housed in the only teaching museum in the greater Orlando area, The Dead Christ with Symbols of the Passion serves not merely as an object of contemplation but as a tool of instruction for students at Rollins College. In this context, Fontana's canvas becomes a living pedagogical resource, a window into the devotional and symbolic traditions of early modern painting that students can study, analyze, and discuss. Her work, donated by General and Mrs. Carty, continues to fulfill an educational purpose that transcends the simple act of display.