Lavinia Fontana

Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614) was born in Bologna and trained by her father, Prospero Fontana, a prominent painter of the Bolognese school; she later studied with Denis Calvaert. In 1577 she married Gian Paolo Zappi, one of her father's pupils, and their marriage contract let her continue her career while he acted as her agent and assistant. She is regarded as the first woman in Western Europe to make a career as an artist on commissions. In the 1580s the noblewomen of Bologna competed for her portraits, and she also painted altarpieces, including an Assumption of the Virgin commissioned in 1593 by Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti for Bologna Cathedral. In 1604 she moved to Rome at the invitation of Pope Clement VIII, became Portraitist in Ordinary at the Vatican, counted Pope Paul V among her sitters, and was the first woman elected to the Accademia di San Luca. She died in Rome. Here: Visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon.