Lavinia Fontana

Lavinia Fontana was born in Bologna on 24 August 1552 and trained under her father, Prospero Fontana, a painter himself. She built a career on commissions — portraiture mostly, though she also painted mythological and religious subjects — and became the first woman in Western Europe to support herself and her family that way. Her husband handled the business side and raised their eleven children while she worked. She painted in Bologna and later Rome, active until her death on 11 August 1614. Some art historians argue she was the first woman to paint female nudes, though the claim remains cont…