Elisabetta Sirani

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I'm Quinn Rose, and I am someone who did not go to art school, but I love to learn all about an artist I didn't know about before. 

Betty: Hi, and I'm Betty. I'm also someone who did not go to art school, but I have been working as a gallery guide at an art museum for the last eight years. And I also love learning about a person who technically didn't go to art school either, but was definitely trained professionally a lot in art and was definitely very professional.

Quinn: Today we are talking all about the artist Elisabetta Sirani. We could try to pronounce her name in the proper Italian way, but we decided that would probably be offensive. [laughs] So Sirani was born in 1638 in what was an early modern Bologna in Italy. She was, and she was a Baroque painter, and she is quite unusual for many reasons. One of which is that she is a female painter from the early 1600s that we know about. And we're talking about right now. So that's pretty exciting.

Betty: Yeah. It's kind of crazy because I actually, I feel, I feel very ashamed that I actually personally never knew about her until maybe like three weeks ago, but she is quite well known and probably is one of the most famous Baroque painters. And I'm not sure if it's the most famous female Baroque painter or not, but at least, yeah, she's very well-known and was very prolific, but and as somebody who like did somewhat study art history a little bit like electives in school technically, but also working at an art museum for the last eight years where we have a lot of Italian art, but yeah, I just, this person never was on my radar, but I mean, she is now. And as soon as I saw her paintings, I was like, oh, these are good. 

Quinn: Well, I never knew who she was either, but as we say in the beginning of the show, I didn't go to art school, so.

Betty: So you have more of an excuse than me. 

Quinn: But like you were saying, like, she is a really cool artist and she is even a pretty well known artist. And this is because a couple of things. She was really set up for success here. The main thing is that her father was a painter. And if you look at any female artists from this period, most of the time when they were able to have access to art, it's because their fathers were artists. And so they kind of were able to get trained at home. Her father was the painter Giovanni Andrea Sirani and he was part of the school of Bologna. And by all accounts, like he wasn't totally down with her learning how to paint at first and becoming a painter, but she ended up studying it anyway. And then she picked it up really quickly and he was like, okay. I guess this is happening now.

Betty: Yeah, it is interesting how when I was reading this, I first thought he wasn't enthusiastic about her cause she was a girl. I mean, that might've been part of the reason. I’m not sure, but then I read that apparently, or this is assumed by the biographers, that he was reluctant to take her on as a student because he was afraid that she would actually be better than him and make him basically look bad. And so he, I think has assumed that was the reason and that did happen. She, she did end up basically overtaking him very quickly at a very young age, but it kind of worked out for him and his family because she ended up making their family so much money that I don't really think ultimately he cared that she was way better than him.

Quinn: Yeah. I mean, he might've been annoyed at first, but by the time that she was 17 he had gout and, and he was unable to paint after a certain point. And so she actually shouldered the full responsibility of supporting her family. And so she was supporting her parents and her siblings, which is really cool in a way. In that, that she was able to do that, not so cool that she didn't get to see the fruits of her own labor because all of that money just went to her father, like, obviously that sucks.

Betty: Yeah. I did also find it interesting. I was reading that his father actually throughout his lifetime, as an artist, didn't actually produce a lot of paintings. So Elisabetta’s father took over his teacher's practice of teaching students in an art studio. So his teacher’s name was Guido Reni. And anyway, so apparently it said that he he didn't end up producing a lot of paintings of his own because he was busy teaching students. But what is ironic is that when Elisabetta took over for him she not only produced hundreds of paintings, but also taught like, I think like maybe even hundreds of students. So she—so he was like, oh, I'm so busy. I have my teaching, I can't paint, while she's like, I'm painting, I'm teaching. I'm doing everything and making money for everybody.

Quinn: She was prolific. And what we haven't mentioned yet is she died very young. She died at age 27 and we'll get to how she died in a moment. But even in her short life and short career, she did over 200 paintings. She did hundreds of drawings. And she was so fast at painting that people thought it had to be fake somehow, that there were other artists helping her, father was helping her or something like that. And then she was just like, come and watch me then. And so she like hosted a session where people just watched her paint and she just like whipped up these paintings because she was so fast at it. 

Betty: Yeah, it is quite funny that she was just like, okay, I'll show you, like take a look. And yeah, according to her biographer who was actually someone who knew her personally it apparently, apparently she, like, it did seem like she was like definitely quite a go getter and, you know, worked very fast, was very professional. Was just getting patrons and I guess negotiating deals and stuff like that. And there was another relatively well-known Bologna painter before her, her name was Lavinia Fontana. And so she was also quite, you know, quite a good painter as well, but apparently her personality—Fontana, she was quite timid. And I guess, you know, like shy and didn't, didn't talk to people very much. So I think in combination where Sirani was not only a good painter, like a really, really good painter, but also just had, I guess, like an outgoing, very go-getter type of personality. Like that was a recipe for professional success, I guess.

Quinn: She certainly seemed like someone who was not afraid to take a lot of things on and to take responsibility for a lot of different people, between caring for her family financially, and then also being a teacher. And she taught classes of female students, which makes her lessons the first school for female artists in Europe, outside of a convent setting.

Betty: Not only was she very skilled in what she did, one of the things also that was taught to her by her father and that she again, developed a really good set of expertise for it, is painting history paintings or painting—like she was taught obviously Biblical history, Greek and Roman myths and stories. As well as a lot of like pagan mythology, legends and stuff like that. And so actually so in art history, this is something I did learn in the past number of years—hopefully I don't get this wrong. There is a hierarchy, at least in European classical art history. There's a hierarchy of like, what is the most highly regarded painting to the least regarded. So at the top is like history and religious paintings. So, you know, a historic scene or like a religious history scene, like Jesus or something, that's at the very top. And then it’s, I believe the second one is portraiture. So like portraits of important people like Kings and Queens, and then it's landscapes. And then at the very bottom it's still life. And so while Sirani was definitely not the first female painter ever, probably not even in Bologna. But a lot of female painters prior to her would have been probably relegated or pigeonholed into painting still lifes and maybe portraiture, but likely not portraits of really important people, but maybe just like somebody's baby or something. So she, she wasn’t—she wasn't pigeonholed, which was great for her because she was able to take on these much more lucrative and much more highly regarded paintings, like painting an altarpiece at a church or painting some really important historic scene that's put up at the town square or something. Which makes it that like, she, wasn't just known by people because if you did portraits for a family, they would have portraits of their family in their house, but her stuff was also in public places like churches and squares and things like that. So that's also what differs her from other painters at the time.

Quinn: And what makes that especially cool is that because she was such a trailblazer in like female artists working as history painters, she also taught her female students to do history painting. And so a lot of the women that studied under her went on to be history painters.

Betty: And I believe, so when in her school, she not only taught men and women, she also would take—it seemed like she took pretty much anybody, because sometimes these schools made only take women if like, if their fathers were painters or if they came from an art background or, you know, their family was artsy in the first place. But I think she was just like, as long as you're willing to pay—because she still needs to get paid, so I guess you still have to have some money—you can, you can come learn here.

Quinn:  Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that by today's standards, her school would still seem horrible in whatever way, but for the 1600s, it was incredibly progressive.

Betty: That is true. And apparently in Bologna at the time, and I guess maybe not just her workshop, but I think the atmosphere of Bologna during that period was quite progressive. There was a lot more acceptance of female artists or artists that didn't come from a very elite background. So hence why people were willing to pay her for her work and people when they saw her work, very few people, if any, cared about her gender or background. So and of course, yeah, she was like, it did seem like she was quite a celebrity. Like everybody knew her and was like, oh my God. She's so cool.

Quinn: Yeah, well before we get into looking at a little bit of her actual work, we should talk about her death. Sad. But speaking of that, because, so she died in 1665, it was quite sudden and they actually suspected her maid of poisoning her because of how sudden it was. But they actually examined the body and discovered the damage in her insides. And so like modern medicine would classify this as actually she died of peritonitis from a ruptured ulcer. So basically from a combination of lots of different things you can get ulcers. And a lot of people attribute the incredible stress that she was under as being the sole breadwinner for her family, as well as running this whole school, and like all of the pressure that was on her as a contributing factor towards her declining health that eventually led to her tragic early death.

Betty: I'm really hoping that her condition is more treatable these days. Cause I'm like, I really hope I don't like die because of stress at work or something. I don't, I probably don't have as much stress as she did, but still I'm just like, that sounds terrible. 

Quinn: Yeah, this is why they tell people to meditate and do yoga, I think.

Betty: Yeah, that's probably true. And go to therapy if you have a coverage. So I think the one thing that I did read that just kind of made me–I think I almost laughed out loud, was her biographer was someone named Carlo—sorry, Carlo Malvasia was a historian who wrote a lot about painters in the 1600S in Bologna. So he wrote about her and again, he like sang her praises throughout his whole book and was like, she's like a prodigy, like a reincarnation of Guido Reni, like just totally amazing, like I knew her and I encouraged her and everything. But then when he wrote about her death, he was like, I don't know if he didn't know at the time what she died of, and or if he did know and just didn't think that was correct, but he literally thought she died because she was 27 and not yet married. I was like, what? Like, he was just like, yeah, “she was an at an age that's young indeed for death, but hopelessly late for marriage.” So thinking that she was just so lonely because she was single at 27.

Quinn: Yeah, these people really thought she died because she wasn't married because… people are dumb.

Betty: I'm three years past when I should have died, basically.

Quinn: You're a ticking time bomb, Betty. Those ulcers are going to get you.

Betty: If you don’t hear from me Quinn one day, you know what happened.

Quinn: Look I’ve get four years to get hitched, or I’m not going to make it. 

Betty: Yeah, but by that, by the standards back then, I think if you're not marrying a man, it doesn’t count—

Quinn: Goddamit, oh my god.

Betty: So, you know, we're kind of, we're both screwed. 

Quinn: One note related to that though, it's actually theorized that her father deliberately prevented her from getting married. Like he actively dissuaded suitors from like trying to marry her because she was the breadwinner for their family. And so if she had gotten married, then she would, you know, like go off with her husband and be making money for him instead. And her father did not want that. And so he actually probably interceded too make sure that she didn't get married.

Betty: Hmm well that, that makes sense. But you know, which is kind of terrible of him if really, if that is what he did, but at the same time, you know, people got to eat.

Quinn: Well, she seemed very busy anyway. There's no real indication of whether she wanted a relationship or not. She was just kinda like, really doing her own thing. She certainly was not living an unfulfilled life, although she definitely was living in an unhealthy one, which is of course, very sad. But as you mentioned, she was incredibly beloved by her city by the time that she passed away, and her funeral was a gigantic event. Like she was a full celebrity in Bologna. 

Betty: Yeah. It's almost like, I don't know if they had state funerals back then, but it's as if she had one.

Quinn: They made a full life-size sculpture of her because they just were so into her. So I guess she joins the club of all of the incredible artists of history who have died at 27. I dunno how many of them had life-sized statues of them made for their funeral, but you know, 1600s Italians, they go hard.

Betty: For sure. As we mentioned before, she painted like over 200 paintings and then also lots of prints and drawings. And one thing I did find also really, like, I really commend her for was that she actually kept very good records of her paintings and who bought them and like she signed all her paintings and was just very good at documentation. I think initially because she didn't want people to confuse her work with her fathers or other people in her family, because, you know, obviously her sisters, people before her, they all painted. So it is easy to get confused because they do paint in very similar styles. Although we'll mention later that she did have quite a distinct style on her own, it is not too difficult to miss. But I think that's good because I think one thing we about before was that so many female artists had their work attributed to male artists for like hundreds of years and probably still are. And some were discovered recently, some still haven't been discovered. So the fact that she was like me, Elisabetta, my name, like did not my father, not anyone else. It's like perfect. It's very little room for confusion.

Quinn: Okay, now let's talk about a couple of her actual specific paintings. And I think we're going to start with one of the most famous topics for paintings, especially of this era. And one of her most famous paintings in specific, which is Judith and Holofernes.

Betty: More specifically Judith slaying Holofernes.

Quinn: True. Hers is called—hers is called Judith and Holofernes. A lot of times they're called Judith Slaying Holofernes because that's what it is. She is cutting his head off.

Betty: This story has been painted… I don't know, like unlimited, like infinite amount of times. It seems like if you just Google it you'll find so many versions of it. And I think, I don't know if this is the most famous, but probably the most well-known to me is one done by Caravaggio who was also a Baroque painter. And he is, so the one Caravaggio did is, it's very dark and contrasty, similar to how Elisabetta’s—actually, hers is a lot less contract than Caravaggio's, but in any case he—Caravaggio's version Judith is on the right of the painting and she's cutting like in the middle of Holofernes’s head off and there's blood spurting out. And there's like a maid, I think, next to her, just like looking very calmly. But in this one, Caravaggio’s one, like Judith is very timid looking. She almost looks like she's not sure if she should be doing it and is like ew, blood.

Quinn: She looks like she's trying not to get dirty.

Betty: Yeah. Like she's wearing a white shirt that's like really pretty too. So, and there are so many other ones, but the only other one I wanted to bring up was when I was looking at this, there is one by Lucas Cranach the Elder from 1530, which is so funny. It's after Judith has cut off the head and the head is like on the table and she has her sword and she's dressed like she's going to—I want to say a Gothic parade or something.

Quinn: She is literally the, in this version, she looks like a guy on Tinder who has his picture with a fish that he's caught. Like, that's kind of what it reminds me of. She's just like holding his head, like, yeah, this is mine now.

Betty: So it is like, some of these depictions are so funny. Like Judith is like, again, a lot of the ones done by men, like Judith as either like really like doesn't want to get any blood on her, like eww, or she looks like she's dressed to go to a ball or she's drunk looking, or like it's just really odd. Or, and then there are the ones where she's like completely naked.

Quinn: I love it when men do that, I love when men just paint women naked for no real reason.

Betty: Just like, I'm just naked. So, but back to Elisabetta, so she did actually do two versions of this painting that we know of, I guess and both the heads are completely off already. And she's kind of has it in her hand and is about to put it in a bag in one of them and are actually, maybe both of them, she’s about to put it in a bag. One of them is like an outdoor depiction. Another one is an indoor one. So, and the, the maid who's helping her put it in a bag as all is always there, but the maid doesn't look weird, I guess, in, in her compositions, at least in my opinion. So yeah, and Judith, his expression is very like calm and chill. Like very like, oh, okay. I cut off the head, put it in a bag. You know, definitely very different from, from how other artists depict it.

Quinn: Yeah. She's very active in this scene and she's also like fully centered, she's much taller because she's standing tall, whereas everyone else in the scene is kind of crouched down. Like, she just has a lot of agency in this image. And while, and even though all depictions of this scene are like, she cut a guy's head off. A lot of times it gets framed in sort of more dignified, more feminine ways in this really strange kind of cognitive dissonance that these guys have got going on. Whereas here it feels like more of an embrace of what actually happened. And she seems like she's standing tall about it and she is totally aware of what she's doing and has no problem with it. Another painting I wanted to talk about a little bit is called Portia Wounding Her Thigh. This is a depiction of a historical tale of this Roman woman who apparently like, her story is that she wanted to get in on the assassination of Julius Caesar. She was like, let me stab him. I'll be good, I’ll be good at it. And so the painting is actually depicting a scene in which she wanted to prove herself to her husband, Brutus, that she could be trusted as part of this, that she could be trusted to keep the secret of the plot even if she got captured and was tortured. And so in order to prove this, she stabbed herself in order to like inflict this injury upon herself and to prove that like, hey, I can take this. So that's very intense and hardcore. But this is a painting of that moment. And so similar to Sirani’s style, it is quite dark. There's quite vivid colors, it’s almost a sensual scene in the way it's set up, which is a very interesting interpretation of it. Because she is sitting here, she's got this like luscious red dress on, it's very flowy, but she's got it pulled up over her knee. She's holding this knife that she is just stabbed her thigh with. It looks like she might even stab again. She's still just gazing at her leg and the very beginning of this wound, she has no reaction on her face. She's totally just straight faced about it. And then over on the left side of the painting in the background, in the next room, even through a doorway, you can see a bunch of men, presumably that is Brutus and the other senators discussing their assassination plans. Fun. Meanwhile, Portia in this room like mutilating herself, but not making any sound and not showing any reaction.

Betty: Yeah, it is a really weird story, but I guess it is a Roman story and I guess self-mutilation to prove you’re trustworthy was a thing back then. I don't know. But yeah, it is definitely quite an, like it is an interesting depiction of this particular story. And again, like, I think similar to Judith, like Portia is just, her expression seems very like meh, I just stabbed my leg. So I don't know if this was like a theme with her or, I mean, also you know, it is a part of the story where she's saying, yeah, I can take it and I'm not going to be like, ow. But honestly, like looking at this just makes me think, like, are you depressed? Are you hurting yourself? Like, don't do that. 

Quinn: Yeah. I mean, by a lot of modern standards, this has a pretty horrifying scene. She is harming herself. She is doing it to try to gain the trust of her husband, who should already trust her. She's also doing it in order to try to get involved in a significant act of violence. I mean, against Caesar, but like, you know, but still there's like a lot going on here that is not exactly what we would call role model behavior. But at the same time, like the circumstances of both her setting and the setting of Sirani painting her are so different. And this exercising of agency, regardless of the context of what that agency is for is still notable.

Betty: Another one that I wanted to talk about—and just so people know, I guess the three paintings we've all brought up at this point all involve girls are doing something to men, I think or something like that. So she didn't just paint that just, just to be clear, but I guess the ones that were of the most interest for us happens to be these types of topics. So this is actually the painting that introduced me to her. It's called Timoclea Pushing Thracian Captain into a well. So it's a literally, that's what it is. So it’s a woman named Timoclea and she is standing next to a well grabbing this guy by his legs. And then this guy is about to fall into the well from her pushing him in and the guy's dressed in like armor and a cape. So he looks like he's some sort of military captain, and it's a quite contrasted painting, like a lot of contrast between light and dark. And it looks like it there's like a storm behind. And it comes from Plutarch's life of Alexander The Great. And it's one of the stories during, I think the campaign of Alexander The Great, when his forces took Thebes during the Balkan campaign around 300 BC. And so the Tracian forces were pillaging the city and one of the captains raped Timoclea, who lived in the city at the time. And so after he raped her, he asked her, he then tried to rob her basically and was like, where's the money in your house? And she was like, oh, it's in the backyard, so follow me. And it's behind that well over there. So he goes to look behind the well, I guess, and then she just goes, boom. And he falls in and dies. So I think similar to the Judas story, like for a lot of women, probably for a lot of women who, you know, have been historically oppressed and, or are like raped or just lived a life where yeah, they felt like they weren't able to, they weren't able to pursue whatever it is they wanted to. Like wwhatever reason it is very attractive to a lot of women, these types of stories. So again, this one it is kind of an empowering story. You know, this guy rapes her and tries to rob her and she's like, okay, I'm going to kill you. And again, this picture like when I first saw this, I laughed. Cause it's just so funny. I didn't know, I didn't know the story. I'm not super familiar with my Greek and Roman mythologies. So I just saw a woman spreading a guy's leg apart. And like, it looks like she's about to rape him, which is not funny. Women raping men is not funny. That's not what I'm saying, but it's just like it, his position, his posture, like, I was like this, like, this is so funny, like what is going on? So then I looked it up and obviously found out, you know, she's about to throw him into the well, and and then I stopped laughing when I saw the expression on the face of Timoclea, cause she looked like she's really pissed and she's just like, I'm gonna kill you. I'm like, okay, this is not a funny story. But just, I think the way she depicted it is just, it is a little bit humorous, at least the position of this guy.

Quinn: There's a lot of movement in this painting. Like you can see how he is, right mid-tumble, like head first into this well. She has got one hand on either leg and she is clearly like flipped him over so his legs are flailing in the air as he is about to go down. And so there is a lot of movement and action in this scene, which is really well depicted. And it's interesting too, because the background is so plain. There's kind of like a brown wall that's probably from another building. And then there's a bit of black and gray in the background showing like some clouds or some other buildings, but for the most part, like it's very focused just tightly on these two people. And like, as we've talked about in the last paintings, like she has a pretty stable expression. Like maybe not what you would expect from when you're murdering someone, but there is this absolute edge to it. You can see in her face, like not even anger, but just determination.

Betty: Yeah, exactly. And she did—so she didn’t, this particular composition, she didn't invent it. Cause obviously she didn't invent the story, but she did study the engraving by Matthäus Merian in 1630, that was a part of a book illustration of the same story. So again, it's you know, a black and white engraving print of this woman. This one is actually even funnier looking because this guy’s head, is you can't see the guy's head. It's completely in the well, all you see is his spread eagle legs and her grabbing it and or about to let go, I presume. And his hand is oh, and then she's looking directly at his crotch and this one, she, I don't know, maybe it's cause I'm looking at a low res image. It's a little bit harder to see her expression, but this one looks more, she's like aha, bye! It seems more like what her, what her emotions are like. So again, like there's a bit of a difference even though the composition is very similar. This one it's like, okay, like this is funny, I’m going to throw him in a well, whereas in Sirani’s depiction, it is still kind of funny in terms of his position, but it's more like I'm very pissed. You're going to die. 

Quinn: There is a lot of violence to these images. And it all works really well because of like using dark and bright colors with good contrast and like kind of the Baroque style of the time, lots of reds in these kinds of paintings. And I mean, these depictions over and over again of violence that women are enacting on men. Obviously, of course she had hundreds of paintings and lots of them are not about this, but this, I think this is a big thing with historical paintings is because there are so few ways that women had been depicted at that time and were like allowed to be seen in art. And so, you know, you have the naked women, which is most of them and the naked women can do different things. And then you kind of have like queens and stuff, but in terms of actually like, women being the center of a story that's being depicted. Like a lot of times those are like, like biblical or other stories that have been mythologized of these assassinations or revenge or things like that. And those are kind of the options that were on the table in terms of depicting women as people who had any kind of internal thought process. And so this is what we end up with. Also, I’m sure a lot of internalized rage.

Betty: Yeah. I mean, and to be fair, I think I don't know if this is just what artists decide to describe, but it does seem like also Bible stories and like Greek and Roman mythology is full of violence anyway. So you don't, whether you're depicting men or women, you don't have that much to choose from. Like, I went to a Rubin's exhibition a while ago and I felt like 90 of his paintings are about rape or incest or murder so, which it probably is, because he was debating a lot of religious and Bible history. So you know, don't just think that women like Elisabetta have a lot of rage. A lot of men do too, or maybe they don't and this is just the material they have.

Quinn: The Old Testament of the Bible is very violent.

Betty: Yeah. Like a lot of it is off with the heads. So but yeah, I think again, so she did do also a lot of other work and I think one of the most famous works she did, or one of the most famous now, is—so her Virgin And Child portrait is now in the National Museum of Women in the arts in Washington, DC, which I've always wanted to go see. But currently I cannot go to that country, and I probably don't want to be near DC. So anyway, and it actually, it was also featured on the USPS Christmas holiday stamp in October of 1994. And it was also the first work done by a woman artist. So support your post office, buy an old postage stamp, I guess.

Quinn: Nice. Well, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Pictorial. You can find our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial, and you can find us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod. You can also find me on Twitter or Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can also find me on Twitter or Instagram @articulationsV. I'm also on YouTube at ARTiculations and speaking of YouTube, we also upload these podcasts episodes to YouTube under Pictorial Podcast, where you can listen to our episode and look at the lovely images by Sirani on the screen while you listen. 

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!