A Most Famous Painter

THE PAINTING

A Blessed Virgin, half figure, composed in much the same way as the one I did for a Florentine Gentleman, but with another totally different concept, because where in that one the Christ Child lovingly caresses his mother, here he shows her a swallow, for the Archpriest of Pi[u]mazzo.

This is how the artist herself described her painting The Madonna and Child with a swallow in her work diary, ‘Note of the paintings made by me Elisabetta Sirani’,¹* I am delighted and honoured by the invitation to write about the NGV’s latest acquisition of an Elisabetta Sirani painting in the wake of a global surge of interest in women artists in general, and of early modern female practitioners in particular. I would like to thank Ted Gott and the curatorial and editorial staff who kindly assisted in the preparation of this essay.
‘Nota delle pitture fatte da me Elisabetta Sirani’ (1655–65), published by Carlo Cesare Malvasia ,’Vita di Gio. Andrea Sirani e di Elisabetta sua figliuola’, in his Felsina Pittrice. Vite de’ pittori bolognesi (Bologna 1678), ed. Giampietro Zanotti et al., 2 vols, Bologna, Guidi all’Ancora, 1841, II, pp. 393-400. Elisabetta’s diary entry on the painting is on p. 399. See also Massimo Pulini, Il diario di Elisabetta Sirani. Una monografia in forma di album, Rimini, NFC Edizioni, 2025, p.246, no.131, where the painting (pre-restoration) is reproduced. in which she itemised ten years of her artistic production (1655–65). Via this essential primary source, one can reconstruct the core of the artist’s substantial oeuvre, as well as her extensive patronage networks, for Sirani lists not only her paintings and prints, providing a careful description of their subject matter, iconography, composition and scale, but also identifies the patron who commissioned each work, or its destined owner.

Sirani registers the painting towards the middle of 1664, the year of her largest output (30 works), and at the height of her fame, having become one of the most significant and sought after artists in Bologna. She specifies its size: a half-length figure of the Virgin; its thematic content: a Madonna and Child, with Christ presenting a swallow to his mother; the patron: an archpriest, whose identity remains unknown; and the destined location; Piumazzo, a hamlet in the Modenese province near Castelfranco Emilia. The artist also references a previous work from that year, the Madonna of the rose for an unidentified Florentine nobleman. Sirani clearly states that, though the two paintings are similar in composition, their concept differs, evidence of her powers of invention (invenzione), as acknowledged by her peers. Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616–93), Sirani’s biographer and close family friend, confirmed that her many and varied Madonnas were conceived with ‘diverse and rare ideas’, and that they were ‘the most beautiful’ to be seen since those of Guido Reni. ²Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, II, pp. 400–1

Such Marian images of the Madonna and Child represent Mary’s role as the mother of God the Saviour. The painting shows Christ holding a swallow in his left hand up to his mother’s chin, as he points to it with his right index finger, leading our eye to this focal point and perhaps to bless it. A harbinger of the coming spring, the swallow symbolises the global spiritual transformation brought about by Christ’s birth and death. Like the goldfinch, which usually appears in such depictions, it portends Christ’s Sacrifice and Resurrection for the salvation of all humankind. The artist has chosen to depict Mary not as the Queen of Heaven but as an earthly mother warmly embracing her baby (Mater Amabalis) to highlight the Lord’s human nature. Instead of a jeweled crown Mary dons a common linen headdress as worn by Bolognese peasant women, so that she is presented as a humble and ordinary young mother with which local women could easily identify. Though Sirani never married or had children she was able to capture and communicate the strong maternal bond between Mother and Son, placing the figures in the extreme foreground as they fill the entire composition, positioned against a plain dark backdrop as they emerge into the light. The intimate relationship between the two is highlighted by the bird being offered to Mary by Christ, as well as the expressive affetti (emotional affects) oftender gestures and embraces and loving glances. In all her Madonna and Child images this emotional intimacy is mediated through an object: a bird, a rose, a pear, or the rosary.

The Cult of the Virgin Mary, which stressed her intercessory role and her purity, was revived during the Counter-Reformation in response to Protestant religious reforms and iconoclasm, with Catholic doctrine informing the paintings produced by Italian artists. Such small to medium sized devotional paintings were known as quadretti da letto (bedroom pictures) to be used by the faithful in their private prayers at home. Bologna was the second most important city of the Papal States, and its Bishop, Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti (1522–97), played a key role in the Council of Trent’s Church reforms in the second half of the sixteenth century. This politico religious context was crucial for the art of the Italian Late Renaissance and Baroque, as Paleotti urged artists to use their skills to visually recreate and narrate the stories of the Bible and to produce images of exemplary holy figures whose suffered faith and good works the Christian believer was to imitate. Gazing at these sacred images would have assisted in one’s private devotions and nearly every household in Bologna had a representation of the Madonna, whether a painting, print or holy picture. The production of such devotional quadretti depicting Mary, the baby Jesus, or Saints like Mary Magdalene or John the Baptist, constituted Sirani and her family’s livelihood.

The Madonna and Child with a swallow is a mature work, painted speedily in a very energetic manner. It demonstrates Sirani’s personal tyle: her technical bravura and expressive brushwork, sprezzatura, and apparent ease of execution, elements evident even before its recent conservation. The artist combined Reni’s refined classicism and the grace of Raphael with the Baroque theatricality and tene-rism of Caravaggio and Guercino’s deeply saturated colouring. The broad painterly brushwork is bold and marked, with the artist using impasto to build up the surface texture, the colours intense with a strong orchestration of dark shadows and highlights (chiaroscuro), creating movement and drama in the pyramidal composition.
Though she sketched many compositional studies, using preliminary drawings to elaborate her concept, Sirani worked directly onto the canvas alla prima without underdrawings, often applying the paint wet- on- wet in the neo-venetian manner to create a rich luminous effect. This immediate painterly method is also evidenced by the pentimento (the reappearance of forms that have been painted over) to the right of the Virgin’s face, indicating a closer positioning of her head to the Christ child and swallow, with the artist altering the composition as she painted.

Elisabetta was also known to produce finished drawings after her own paintings, sometimes to prepare prints that were executed by her studio assistants such as Lorenzo Loli. ³See, for an example, Adelina Modesti, “Alcune riflessioni sulle opera grafiche della pittrice Elisabetta Sirani nelle raccolte dell’Archiginnasio, L’Archiginnasio, XCVI, 2001, 151-215: 180-83, Tav. 33 (Loli’s reproductive print) and Tav. 34 (Elisabetta’s original painting), and for the related drawing by Elisabetta in the British Museum, see Babette Bohn, “Elisabetta Sirani and Drawing Practices in Early Modern Bologna”, Master Drawings, Vol. 42/Number 3, 2004, pp. 207-36: 222, 224 Figure 33. A study in red ochre on buff paper in the Hamburger Kunsthalle,⁴The drawing was published recently by Pulini, Il diario, p. 246, no. 131A. that does not appear to be a preliminary sketch–these are usually freer and more dynamic–but a carefully rendered study of the whole composition, relates directly to the NGV painting.

Most of the artist’s extant paintings (and some drawings) are signed and dated, with variations and contractions of her name ‘ELISABETTA SIRANI FECIT’, a means of asserting her authorship of her own works and drawing attention to her identity as a professional woman artist. She ingeniously embroidered her name in the fabric of the painting itself, on cushion braids, cuffs or necklines.

Here her contracted signature ‘E.A SI’ and the beginning of the date ‘16[64]’, appear on the tie of the Virgin’s cloak. Sirani chose to sign her paintings and document her commissions via her diary, to counteract detractors who doubted that a woman could have painted such masterful works, believing that her artist-father assisted in their production. To further dispel such rumours, Sirani developed a strategy of painting in front of patrons and visitors to the city, as she records throughout her notebook. For example, shortly before her early death in August 1665, the artist names a number of ‘grand Personages that this Spring passed through Bologna […] to see my paintings, and watch me work’. ⁵Sirani, ‘Nota delle pitture’ (final entry), in Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, II, p. 400.

Sirani’s The Madonna and Child with a swallow of 1664 is the first painting by the artist to enter the NGV Collection, thanks to the Eva Mandel Bequest, 2026, which already holds three of her works on paper, and is an excellent example of her technical virtuosity, aesthetic sensibility and emotional resonance. Sirani was the most documented, successful and collected Bolognese woman artist, and this Marian work marks a welcome addition to the Gallery’s holdings of paintings by early modern women artists, such as Lavinia Fontana’s exquisite Mystic marriage of St Catherine, 1574–77, and Mary Beale’s portraits of her son Bartholomew (c. 1660) and of a lady (c. 1680). It also makes an important contribution to the NGV’s collection of Italian Baroque art, for Sirani was one of the most prolific and erudite artists of the Bolognese School, instrumental in its development and whose impact extended beyond that of women artists, influencing also male painters of the second half of the seventeenth century, such as Carlo Cignani and Girolamo Donnini. Sirani’s Madonna and Child in the NGV Collection remains to my knowledge the only painting by the artist in an Australian collection, public or private, and is a significant acquisition, enabling a national audience to appreciate this artist’s extraordinary abilities and mastery.

THE ARTIST

Elisabetta Sirani, born in Bologna on 8 January 1638, may not be as well known to us as she was in her day, when she was celebrated as the city’s preeminent cultural heroine, and referred to as a ‘most famous painter […] the prodigy of art, the glory of the female sex, the gem of Italy, the sun of Europe’ by Giovanni Luigi Picinardi, her eulogist. ⁶Giovanni Luigi Picinardi, Il Pennello Lagrimato. Orazione Funebre del signor Gio. Luigi Picinardi, con alcune poesie in morte della signora Elisabetta Sirani pittrice famosissima, Bologna: per Giacomo Monti, 1665, p. 4 (republished in Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, II, pp. 386–91) She was a notable pioneering artist, especially in the production of history painting and allegory, genres in which female artists did not traditionally engage, for such complex narratives and iconographies were believed to be beyond the intellectual capabilities of women. The subject matter of her novel paintings focused on courageous and strong women from the bible or ancient history, mythology and Literature. She also painted public altarpieces from the very beginning of her decade long career, devotional paintings for private patrons and portraits of the city’s elite and noblewomen.

Bologna was an important artistic centre and home to the oldest and most venerable university in Europe, its rich intellectual and cultural environment, coupled with supportive humanist writers who extolled local women’s virtues and female education, providing the perfect conditions for learned women and female creativity to flourish. Indeed, as well as female writers, poets, musicians, educators, philosophers and scientists, the city hosted the single largest school of women artists in early modern Italy (68 are documented). In this context, Elisabetta was internationally acclaimed in her own lifetime as a successful professional painter, printmaker and draughtsperson, during a period when women were emerging in such professions. She was also
renowned as an educator, establishing an art school for young women who wished to train as professional artists, her pioneering example leaving a legacy for future generations.

Elisabetta’s own training and cultural formation, including history, music, literature, art theory and philosophy, took place in her father’s workshop with its well-equipped humanist library and art collections, which we know the artist was able to study in preparation for her learned canvases. Giovanni Andrea Sirani (1610–70)–an established artist, successful art merchant and appraiser, and esteemed teacher–trained his eldest daughter in the elegant classical style of his own maestro Guido Reni (1575–1642), Italy’s most celebrated Baroque artist.
He also taught her the latest developments in etching, which she mastered by the time she was eighteen, making Sirani one of the few women to work in this medium in the early modern period. Malvasia informs us that some of her early etchings were based on designs by her father, as confirmed by the inscription ‘Siranus In[venit]’ (‘Invented by Sirano’) on the NGV’s forthcoming acquisition Rest on the flight into Egypt, with Sirani’s signature as the print’s etcher partly obscured. Although her gender precluded her from attending Giovanni Andrea’s nude life drawing classes for his (male) apprentices, the artist nonetheless became a consummate draughtsperson, developing a unique ink-wash method that Malvasia noted was characterised by an economy of line with the highlights and shadows blocked in ‘together all at once’ with a few broad sweeps of the brush, which the critic described as masterful: ‘da gran maestro’. ⁷Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, II, p. 402. She also worked in charcoal or red chalk and graphite, executed in soft and delicate strokes or with an expressive mark-making full of emotional energy.

Having the right connections played an important role in Sirani’s success, with her many patrons hailing from all social classes: artisans and merchants, wealthy bankers and university academics to Bologna’s political elites, ecclesiastics, and nobility as well as Italian and European royalty, like the Medici, the King of Poland, and the Holy Roman Empress. Some of these eminent patrons acted as her mentors and personal agents, such as Count Malvasia and Marchese Ferdinando Cospi, promoting her work to local and international markets. Giovanni Andrea cultivated the family’s illustrious patronage networks through spiritual kinship and cultural diplomacy, ensuring his daughter’s critical fortune in a male-dominated profession.

After her father became incapacitated by arthritic gout circa 1662, the 24-year-old Elisabetta became head of the Sirani studio, supporting her large family with her work and she was elected to the painters’ Academy of San Luca, Rome, evidence of her professional standing. The ‘maestra’ was now mentoring male apprentices and female students at her school, including her two sisters, Barbara and Anna Maria, who likewise became professional painters. At the height of her brilliant career, contemporaries and fellow artists spoke of Sirani as ‘the best brush now in Bologna’,⁸Letter from Ferdinando Cospi to Leopoldo de’ Medici, 19 August 1662, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Carteggio degli Artisti, XV, fol. 348r.. with Malvasia writing that she worked in a ‘virile and grand’ manner, painting ‘not as a woman, but even more like a man’, in a bold and lively style⁹Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, II, pp. 385–86, 402. I do not have space here to comment on the gendered nature of Renaissance and Baroque art theory and art historical language. For a discussion relevant to the artist see Adelina Modesti, ‘Il Pennello Virile’: Elisabetta Sirani and Artemisia Gentileschi as Masculinized Painters?’, in Artemisia Gentileschi in a Changing Light, edited by Sheila Barker, London/Turnhout, Harvey Miller/Brepols, pp. 131–46

Sirani died unexpectedly on 28 August 1665, after severe stomach pains amid rumours of poisoning, though autopsies revealed her death to be natural. The most likely cause was peritonitis brought about by a perforated gastric ulcer. This did not stop her bereft father from accusing the family domestic Lucia Tolomelli of killing his beloved daughter, bringing her to trial (he later retracted). Sirani’s tragic death was reported far and wide in letters by her patrons and in news gazettes and later became the subject of Romantic dramas and poetry. The citizens of Bologna, so moved by her passing, honoured their ‘painter heroine’ with an elaborately staged civic funeral in the church of San Domenico, where she was laid to rest in the Chapel of the Rosary, next to the tomb of the ‘divine’ Guido Reni, testimony to the esteem in which she was held.

Not suffering the fate of many early female artists who lay in obscurity for centuries, Sirani appears constantly in the literature over the years, remaining in the popular imagination until the nineteenth century when the Bolognese School fell out of favour with critics who dismissed her as a pallid imitator of Guido Reni. She resurfaced in 1911 and again in 1959, in two local exhibitions of Italian portraiture and Emilian painting, though it took another half a century for her to have her own major retrospective, in Bologna in 2004–5, in conjunction with the publication of the first monograph on this virtuosic artist, followed by five monographic exhibitions between 2018 and 2023.¹⁰Jadranka Bentini and Vera Fortunati (eds.), Elisabetta Sirani, ‘pittrice eroina’ 1638–1665, exh. cat., Bologna, Editrice Compositori, 2004; Adelina Modesti, Elisabetta Sirani. Una virtuosa del Seicento bolognese, Bologna, Editrice Compositori, 2004. For publications on the artist and list of her exhibitions see Bibliography in Adelina Modesti, Elisabetta Sirani, London/Los Angeles, Lund Humphries/Getty Publications, 2023, which also includes a list of her known paintings (pp. 135–38) She has also appeared in countless group shows highlighting women artists since the 1970s. ¹¹See for example, Ann Sutherland-Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists 1550–1950, exh. cat., Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976; and more recently Eve Straussman-Pflanzer and Oliver Tostmann (eds), By Her Hand. Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500–1800, exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts/New Haven and London, Yale.Despite her early death at age 27 and the brevity of her career (1654–65), during which she produced over 200 paintings, circa 12 prints and hundreds of drawings, Elisabetta Sirani remains one of Bologna’s most prolific, erudite, innovative and collected artists.

Dr Adelina Modesti is Honorary Senior Fellow in Art History and Art Curatorship in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. An internationally acclaimed expert on Elisabetta Sirani, her latest book on the artist was published in 2023 by Lund Humphries, London in conjunction with Getty Publications, Los Angeles.

The NGV generously thanks the Eva Mandel Bequest and Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family for their generous support of works discussed in this article.

This essay was first published in NGV Magazine | Issue 58 May – June 2026.

Notes