What the first woman sculptor tells us about the Italian Renaissance
When people think of the Italian Renaissance, names such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael likely spring to mind. This is not by chance, but part of a canonical history of the Italian Renaissance that, according to Emanuele Lugli, associate professor of art and art history at Stanford, “fetishizes the male genius.” At a recent Faculty Research Fellows talk at the Clayman Institute, Lugli discussed his current research rewriting the history of Italian Renaissance art. How does one do this? By taking seriously the contributions of women artists, such as Properzia de’ Rossi—the first recorded woman sculptor.
Active in Bologna, Properzia de’ Rossi sculpted at a time when gendered stereotypes assumed women were too physically weak to sculpt. But sculpt she did, as evidenced by early-modern texts, records, and her two surviving artworks.
Properzia's first surviving work is carved entirely from small, round peach pits. As Lugli explained, women didn't have access to quarries and were banned from artist guilds, so the use of peach pits provided Properzia with an easily accessible artistic medium. On this series of peach pits—which Lugli identified as once belonging to a rosary—Properzia carved intricate images of the 12 apostles and 12 female saints.
Properzia's second surviving work is much larger. In 1525, she was commissioned to carve a marble bust relief for one of the side entrances of the largest church in Bologna, San Petronio. The church of San Petronio, as Lugli explained, was extremely important: a young Michelangelo took sketches of it for his later work in the Sistine Chapel. While it is unclear whether Properzia's sculpture was incorporated into the church façade (today her sculpture resides in the Museum of San Petronio), her commission—for which she was paid as much as her male counterparts—strongly suggests that her work would have received a “high level of visibility.”
What Properzia sculpted was a popular biblical scene in which Joseph flees a sexual invitation from the wife of Potiphar, an Egyptian general. Lugli reads this image against the grain of centuries of interpretation. According to the old consensus, what Properzia depicted was her own supposed history of unrequited love. Lugli argues that we need to take the image out of a personal, romantic, and gendered context, and place it instead in its wider cultural context. From this perspective, Lugli presents a new thesis: this marble image demonstrates Properzia's awareness of popular images that were circulating in Bologna's book culture; it shows “she's attuned to the latest trends in sculpting, which come from Rome”; and it shows her intention to present herself as “a modern, accomplished sculptor.”
Since the study of Italian Renaissance art is often the model for the study of other periods of art history, Lugli's rethinking of the Renaissance canon through the lens of its women artists has the potential to rewrite other art histories. By asking, “What kind of artists do we teach our students?” Lugli has both introduced a much wider audience to the art of Properzia de’ Rossi, and has offered a new history of the Italian Renaissance that emphasizes women's artistic and cultural impact.
