informing the object
This International Women’s Day, March 8th, also marks the anniversary of the entry of this self-portrait by Violante Siriès Cerroti into the Uffizi collection in 1736 at the request of Grand Duke Gian Gastone de’ Medici. Too high on the gallery wall; she would have preferred a spot with more visibility, recalled the Gallery custodian.
Who was this bold woman, I wondered, when I began researching Violante in 2015. What circumstances led to this moment in the Uffizi when it seems she requested her painting be re-hung?
Having just moved to Florence, I was unfamiliar with that time period in the city’s history as I began uncovering pieces of the puzzle. Looking for Violante pulled me into 18th-century Florence, when many palaces were undergoing grand re-decoration schemes, increasing travel was influencing tastes and ideas, those who could afford to were growing their personal art collections, and women began gaining entry into institutions they were previously excluded from.
Violante’s membership in Florence’s prestigious Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in 1733 signaled her professionalism and as I began collocating her body of works based on various written accounts, a picture of Violante’s broad reach came into view. There were portraits of English Grand Tourists, Tuscan nobles, the founder of an order of cloistered nuns in Pistoia, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, small devotional works, and a very large altarpiece in a local Florentine church.
This tantalizing list of works drew me to want to see them in person, and visiting the sites has been part of my aesthetic journey, filling the well from which I draw in my studio practice, both stylistically and in my desire to know what lies behind an object.
I marvel at how each of Violante’s painting documents a connection, an exchange as well as her own aesthetic compulsions. In her self-portrait, you can enjoy her depiction of lace and pearls, but do you see the ambition in her gaze?
You can read more about Violante in La Signora Pittrice: The Lady Who Paints. Violante Siriès Cerroti (1710 -1783), where my research on her life and paintings for Advancing Women Artists Foundation was published in 2016.
