A painting sitting in storage at a provincial museum in northern France was recently reattributed to Lavinia Fontana, one of the foremost female painters of the Italian Renaissance.
The painting in question, Portrait of a Gentleman, his Daughter and a Servant, depicts a father clad in a fashionable black suit with a pleated collar. He’s shown sitting in an armchair next to his similarly dressed daughter, who is giving him a handful of flowers; just behind them is a maid placing a basket of fruit.
The work has been held by the Musée de la Chartreuse in Douai since 1857, but was only reexamined recently. Florentine and Roman art specialist Philippe Costamagna saw the painting in storage and insisted, as he said to Agence France-Presse, “it’s an Italian painting, Bolognese in spirit from A to Z. Everything is reminiscent of it: the little girl with the little flowers, the strokes on the collar and on the sleeve.”
The piece was previously attributed to the Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Pourbus (1523–84), but upon further study, the work was reattributed to Lavinia Fontana.
“The painting is in excellent condition; it hasn’t been badly restored in the past, so it hasn’t been distorted. The restoration will enhance it,” Costamagna added.
Fontana was a trailblazer. She is thought to have been one of the first women to professionally paint in the West. Born in Bologna in 1552, she trained under her father Prospero and died in Rome in 1614. She paved the way for women artists who came after her, like the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653).
