'Strong Women in Renaissance Italy' Review: Spotlight on Signoras
An intriguing if limited show in Boston focuses on the era's female artists and its depictions of historical women, which shifted during this artistic golden age.

Boston

What is Cleopatra, born in 69 B.C., doing in an exhibition titled "Strong Women in Renaissance Italy"? And why do the Queen of Sheba (10th century B.C.), Judith (sixth century B.C.), Salome and Mary Magdalene (both A.D. first century) also figure prominently?

Anguissola's Self-Portrait

In recent years, attempting to make up for past neglect, some museums have presented female Renaissance artists like Artemisia Gentileschi, Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana in group, duo or solo exhibitions. But the presence of Cleopatra's chaste, pensive portrait in bronze (c. 1519-22) and of other historical females in "Strong Women" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, signals a far different approach to the subject.

Instead of focusing on the few increasingly famous names, the curator, Marietta Cambareri, aims to show that others in 14th- to early 17th-century Italy also surmounted restrictions that confined most women to home, church and family visits. Some became writers, musicians, healers, or lace and textile makers, while others exerted influence as patrons and devotional leaders. Moreover, she asserts, attitudes toward women, past and present, were shifting—prompting male artists like Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, known as Antico, to portray Cleopatra positively, not as a lustful schemer, and Bernardino Luini to paint "Salome With the Head of St. John the Baptist" (1515-25) with her looking away, troubled, not pleased, by the murder she had requested at the behest of her vengeful mother.

Isanella D'Este's crest at the center

A quote in the catalog from the Venetian writer Moderata Fonte (1555-1592) about the unrecognized talents of women—"Gold which stays hidden in the mines is no less gold, though buried, and when it is drawn out and worked, it is as rich and beautiful as other gold"—serves as a guiding light for this welcome approach. But it's a risky one because Ms. Cambareri chose to restrict her mother lode to the museum's superb but still limited permanent collection, supplemented by only a few loans. (Cost considerations played a part in that decision, Ms. Cambareri said.)

The 100 paintings, engravings, books, lace fragments, textiles, embroideries and other objects on view—nearly a quarter of which are documented as by women or thought to be so—are organized thematically, in sections about female accomplishments as well as their daily life.

Luini's Salome

Not surprisingly, the sections on the domestic and spiritual sides of life are the strongest. The creativity of women shines through in a pattern book of 38 woodcuts (printed 1625) by Isabella Catanea Parasole, part of her book series of intricate original lace designs, published when the trade was the province of men. More typically—but beautifully—an anonymous woman used multicolored silk and silver threads to embroider a large linen table cover (17th century) with floral patterns. And one piece truly astonishes: A brilliant golden casket (16th century), embellished all over with marquetry flora and fauna, turns out to be made of cut straw, which women would burnish to a radiant shine.

Several representations of Mary Magdalene cast her in a positive light, rather than repeating the discredited notion that she was once a prostitute. Bernardo Daddi's gold-ground "The Crucifixion" (before 1328) gives her a dominant role—dressed in intense red, with a bright halo, clinging to the cross at a time when most of Jesus' male followers had abandoned him. Others—especially an exquisite woven silk-and-satin fragment (14th-15th century) of the "Noli Me Tangere" scene, which shows her as the first person to whom the risen Christ appears and thus the first to spread the gospel—credit her as the first apostle.

Cut-straw casket

Widows in particular served as spiritual role models in Renaissance Italy, an idea represented here by Ludovico Carracci's "Portrait of a Widow" (c. 1585). Strong and dramatic, it depicts a woman in black worshiping before a crucifix, showing the way that others might follow.

"Strong Women" is full of other such insights. But, strangely, not a single female creator emerges as a "strong woman." Small paintings by Gentileschi, Anguissola, Fontana and Barbara Longhi hang in an alcove near the entrance. But only Anguissola's expressive self-portrait (c. 1556) could be considered a masterpiece—and it's tiny, just over 3 inches tall.

Mantuana engraving of Biblical scene

Visitors will learn of the notable Vittoria Colonna solely through a 1542 copy of her illustrated book, "RIME"; originally published in 1538, it was the first single-authored printed volume of poetry by a woman in Italy. And of Diana Mantuana (c. 1535 to after 1587; also known as Diana Scultori) only through five marvelous engravings she made of works by Francesco Salviati, Giulio Romano and Cornelis Cort. And Isabella d'Este—a learned noblewoman who likely commissioned Antico's "Cleopatra" and, more important, exerted political power in Mantua, commissioned paintings by artists including Titian, Mantegna and Raphael, and collected works by many more—is "seen" here essentially only in her crest on a Majolica plate (c. 1524) and a few other pieces and engravings that she may have owned.

Numerous portraits of Isabella exist, including a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci and a famous painting by Titian. Likewise, images of Colonna, Mantuana and Parasole exist and were certainly more lendable or reproducible. "Strong Women" offers visitors new ideas, but it would have benefited from fewer examples of historical revisionism and more about these women, their circumstances and personalities, and how they managed to thrive. A few more of their works, too.