Elisabetta Sirani (1638–65) was born into an artistic family in Bologna. Her father Giovanni Andrea Sirani was part of an elite group of humanist scholars in Bologna and ran a successful workshop where he taught his three daughters to draw and paint. Elisabetta was practising as a professional artist by the age of seventeen, and seven years later took over her father’s workshop when he fell ill with gout. She did not marry, and instead dedicated herself to her artistic practice. Although Bologna was a progressive city in which educated women could work in select institutions and organisations, it was very unusual to choose a career over family, and as a young female artist, Sirani attracted attention and curiosity. Because her paintings were of such a high standard, there were rumours that her father assisted Elisabetta in her painting, and visitors came to watch her work to confirm that she did indeed produce these accomplished works by herself.
Sirani quickly established a reputation as a prolific artist of great talent and originality. The majority of her works were of devotional subjects, admired for their sensitive portrayal of women and children. She made several prints, and produced drawings in ink and chalk, most of which were studies for paintings. Her first biographer, Carlo Cesare Malvasia, observed that Sirani could draw ‘like a great master’ and praised her ‘spirited invention’. The NGV’s recently acquired work of a double-sided sheet with two red chalk drawings dated to 1653–63, shows Sirani’s accomplished technique.
Head of a boy, 1653–63, on the recto (front) of the sheet, is a finished drawing in which Sirani used soft lines to depict the contours of the boy’s face and the strands of hair, and then applied tone and shadow to create a sense of depth. This was done by ‘stumping’, which involved the blending of chalk with a piece of leather or rolled up paper. The upward gaze of the child suggests that this figure was going to be part of a bigger composition, in which the young boy is looking at a holy figure (possibly St John the Baptist looking up at the Virgin Mary), but no related painting has been identified.
Apart from devotional motifs, Sirani also painted portraits, and historical, mythological and allegorical subjects. The sketch on the verso (back) is a study for such a composition. It shows a female figure holding a long spear, and a male warrior dressed in a costume that resembles the uniform of a captain in Alexander the Great’s army. His helmet can be seen on the ground in the right corner.
The Sirani family had a library and an extensive art collection, through which Elisabetta acquired knowledge of classical history, literature and art. She was highly educated, played music, wrote poetry, and was well versed in iconography, frequently referring to Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, the standard reference book for allegories and personifications of attributes, virtues and vices. This drawing appears to be an allegory of war, but as far as we know, Sirani never developed this motif into a painting. Elisabetta died of unknown causes when she was twenty-seven, and it is likely that the two drawings were studies for future works that she was not able to realise.
Sirani’s legacy is not only her great body of work, but her determination to support female artists. Women were almost always trained by their artist fathers (as had also been the case with artists such as Lavinia Fontana and Artemisia Gentileschi), and had no formal avenue to pursue an artistic career through educational institutions. Sirani worked to enable women who did not come from a family of artists to learn the craft, and taught at the Accademia di San Luca, thereby making an important contribution to the professionalisation of female artistic practice in Bologna.
Sirani’s drawings, of which around 150 sheets are known, were highly valued and collected by her patrons during her lifetime. The NGV’s chalk drawing bears a collector’s stamp and number, which tell us that the sheet was owned by the nineteenth-century Milanese collector Giuseppe Vallardi. It passed through at least two private collections in England during the twentieth century, before it was purchased at auction in Paris in 2022.
Dr Petra Kayser is NGV Curator, Prints and Drawings.
Elisabetta Sirani’s Head of a boy, 1653–63, joins the NGV Collection through the generous support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gift Program, 2023.