The ghosts of the Renaissance: The women who painted the invisible
Imagine a room in the Vatican in 1577. The walls hum with Michelangelo’s frescoes, cardinals murmur in Latin, and a woman, dressed in black silk, adjusts her palette before an easel. Her name is Lavinia Fontana, and no one is surprised to see her working here—at least, no one dares say so aloud. Yet
By Artedusa
••9 min read
The ghosts of the Renaissance: the women who painted the invisible
Imagine a room in the Vatican in 1577. The walls hum with Michelangelo’s frescoes, cardinals murmur in Latin, and a woman, dressed in black silk, adjusts her palette before an easel. Her name is Lavinia Fontana, and no one is surprised to see her working here—at least, no one dares say so aloud. Yet in the corridors of history, her name has faded like watercolor in the rain. How could an artist capable of painting Minerva Dressing with such boldness—blending mythology and veiled eroticism—vanish from the books? The Renaissance, that golden century when man believed himself the center of the world, forgot those who held the brush.
They were painters’ daughters, geniuses’ sisters, wives of mediocrities, or simply mad enough to believe a woman could sign a canvas. Their works, now hung in the most prestigious museums, bear the scars of this erasure: attributed to men, relegated to storage, or simply ignored. But if you look closely, their paintings tell another story. That of Sofonisba Anguissola, who captured the sparkle of a child’s laughter before anyone thought to paint childhood. That of Properzia de’ Rossi, who carved biblical scenes into peach pits, as if to prove genius needed no marble. That of Plautilla Nelli, the nun who dared to depict The Last Supper at a time when women weren’t even allowed to touch a brush.
Their crime? Having dared to create in a world that reserved art for men, and glory for those who knew how to make themselves heard.
The brush and the veil: when the Church became a workshop
In the silence of Florentine convents, where incense mingled with the scent of wax and parchment, some women found a paradoxical freedom. Plautilla Nelli, a Dominican sister of the 16th century, ran a clandestine workshop within the walls of the Santa Caterina convent. Officially, she painted devotional images to adorn altars. In reality, she trained dozens of nuns in the art of painting, creating a chain of female transmission that defied the Church’s rules.
Her masterpiece, The Last Supper, measures nearly seven meters long—an unheard-of audacity for a woman of the time. The apostles, their faces tormented, seem to step out of the canvas, their hands clenched around bread and wine. But what strikes is the treatment of the fabrics: the folds of the tunics, in deep blue and blood red, fall with an almost sensual precision. Nelli had never studied male anatomy—nude models were forbidden to her. Yet she managed to give her figures a physical presence that rivals that of the Renaissance masters. How? By observing the folds of the sisters’ robes, the movements of bodies beneath veils, and transposing that knowledge onto her canvases.
Her workshop produced hundreds of works, many of which were attributed to male painters after her death. Today, art historians hunt for her hidden signatures—a discreet "P" in a corner of a painting, like a secret trademark. For Nelli knew one thing: in a world where women had no right to sign their work, they had to invent other ways to leave their mark.
Sofonisba Anguissola, or the art of painting the invisible
When Sofonisba Anguissola presented The Chess Game to Michelangelo in 1555, the old master fell silent before the canvas. Then he smiled. It wasn’t the composition that impressed him—though the three sisters depicted, absorbed in their game, form a perfect triangle of light and shadow. No, it was the gaze of the youngest, Lucia, who had just lost a piece and burst into laughter, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright. Michelangelo, who had spent his life sculpting heroic bodies, had just discovered something far rarer: the fleeting instant of an emotion.
Anguissola had a gift for capturing these stolen moments. In Self-Portrait at the Spinet, she depicts herself playing music, her fingers resting on the keys, her face turned toward the viewer as if she had just been caught unawares. The golden light bathing the scene seems to come from nowhere, as if the entire room were illuminated by the young woman’s presence alone. This painting, now in the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, is more than a self-portrait: it is a declaration of independence. At a time when women were confined to the role of muses, Anguissola painted herself as an artist, a musician, an intellectual.
Her talent led her to the Spanish court, where she became the official portraitist of Queen Elisabeth of Valois. For fourteen years, she lived in the Alcázar of Madrid, painting infants, courtiers, and even King Philip II. Yet in the court archives, her name rarely appears. Commissions were given to "the queen’s artist," without further detail. When she left Spain to marry, no one thought to offer her a pension, unlike her male predecessors. She died nearly a century old, in a house in Palermo, surrounded by canvases she continued to paint until the end.
Today, when you look at The Chess Game, observe the sisters’ hands. The eldest’s, holding a pawn, trembles slightly. The middle sister’s, having just lost, clutches her dress. And Lucia’s, the youngest, is open, palm upturned, as if to welcome the laughter rising within her. These details, so human, so alive, are Anguissola’s signature. A signature no one could erase.
Lavinia Fontana, the first woman to paint the nude
In 1613, Lavinia Fontana completed Minerva Dressing, a monumental canvas that caused a scandal. Not because of the subject—Minerva, goddess of wisdom, was a common theme—but because of how Fontana had depicted her. The goddess, standing in a languid pose, turns her back to the viewer, offering a plunging view of her neck and shoulders. Her body, bathed in golden light, seems almost to pulse. And above all, Minerva wears no veil, no artifice: she is simply nude, as if Fontana had wanted to prove a woman could paint the female body without pretense or excessive modesty.
Fontana was a pioneer in more ways than one. The first woman to run her own workshop in Bologna, she was also the first to paint mythological scenes—a domain reserved for men. Her contemporaries admired her talent, but many whispered that she must have a "demon" within her to dare such audacities. Yet Fontana didn’t just defy conventions: she reinvented them.
Take Portrait of Antonietta Gonsalvus, a young girl afflicted with hypertrichosis, a condition causing excessive hair growth. At a time when "monsters" were displayed in fairs, Fontana chose to depict her with heartbreaking dignity. Antonietta, dressed in a blue silk gown, looks the viewer straight in the eye, a small dog nestled against her. The painting is an ode to normality within the abnormal, a way of saying: "Look at her. She is beautiful."
Fontana died in 1614, leaving behind more than a hundred and fifty canvases. Some were attributed to her husband, Gian Paolo Zappi, who had abandoned his own career to become her assistant. Others vanished, victims of time’s whims. But those that remain carry within them a haunting question: how many other women, before and after her, had to fight for their names not to be erased?
Properzia de’ Rossi, or the art of sculpting the impossible
In Bologna, at the beginning of the 16th century, a young woman spent her days in her father’s workshop, a modest sculptor. Her name was Properzia de’ Rossi, and she had an obsession: carving biblical scenes into peach pits. No one understood this passion. The pits, fragile and tiny, seemed unworthy of the grand subjects she chose. Yet Properzia persisted. And one day, she presented the city with a Deposition of Christ so delicate, so detailed, that spectators were left speechless. How had she managed to engrave the expressions on the faces, the folds of the garments, in such a confined space?
Her talent earned her a prestigious commission: the decoration of the west portal of the Basilica of San Petronio. There, she sculpted Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, a scene in which Potiphar’s wife, desperate, clutches Joseph’s cloak to hold him back. The movement of the bodies, the tension of the muscles, the drapery that seems to take flight—everything is startlingly modern. Yet when Vasari mentioned her work in The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, it was to criticize her. "She had such a fiery and passionate temperament that she could never content herself with mediocrity," he wrote. Translation: a woman had no right to be ambitious.
Properzia died in poverty, forgotten by all. Today, her peach-pit sculptures are displayed in the Civic Medieval Museum of Bologna. They fit in the palm of a hand, yet contain entire worlds.
The forgotten of the forgotten: those whose names we don’t even know
For every Sofonisba Anguissola, every Lavinia Fontana, how many other artists have vanished without a trace? The archives teem with mentions of women painters, sculptors, illuminators, whose works have been lost, stolen, or attributed to men. Take Marietta Robusti, daughter of Tintoretto, who painted so well her father affectionately called her "la Tintoretta." She died at thirty, and most of her canvases were signed by her father. Or Fede Galizia, a 16th-century Milanese painter specializing in still lifes, whose fruit looks so real you want to bite into it. Her paintings, now scattered in private collections, rarely bear her name.
And what of those anonymous nuns who copied illuminated manuscripts in the shadows of convents? Their ornate initials, their devilishly precise botanical motifs, betray a skill that rivals that of monk copyists. Yet their names appear in no register.
The history of art is a great machine for erasing women. But sometimes, a detail resists. A hidden signature. A style too personal to be mistaken. An emotion that does not lie. So when you visit a museum, look closely at the canvases attributed to "anonymous masters." And ask yourself: what if it was her?
What their paintings still whisper to us
Today, their works hang on the walls of the world’s greatest museums. Sofonisba Anguissola’s The Chess Game presides over the Poznań Museum. Lavinia Fontana’s Minerva Dressing illuminates the Galleria Borghese. Plautilla Nelli’s The Last Supper has regained its place in the refectory of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Yet something feels off. These canvases, so vibrant, so full of life, seem to carry a secret melancholy. As if their creators knew, from the first brushstroke, that their names would one day be forgotten.
But perhaps it is precisely this melancholy that makes them so modern. In a world where art is often reduced to a commodity, where artists are pressured to produce more, faster, the women of the Renaissance remind us of a simple truth: to create is first and foremost to resist. To resist oblivion, indifference, the rules that say "no."
So the next time you come across a painting from that era, take the time to search. Look for the hidden signature. Look for the gaze that fixes you, as if to say: "I am still here." And remember: behind every masterpiece, there is a story. Sometimes, it is a man’s. Sometimes, it is a woman’s who painted the invisible.
The ghosts of the Renaissance: The women who painted the invisible | Art History
