Elisabetta Sirani 'Virtuosa'

"This is the first monograph in English published on the successful Bolognese seventeenth-century artist Elisabetta Sirani (1638-65). Modesti presents Sirani as a 'subject of her own genre', highlighting the painter's innovative qualities, not only in artistic terms, but also from a socio-political and historical perspective. The author's discussion of her material context of women's artistic production and of the Bolognese seventeenth-century cultural world evidences how Sirani epitomized a new model of femininity' and a new rising social genre: the single professional woman. Having been rightly admitted to an artistic, social, and cultural world historically dominated by men, Sirani was an unmarried woman who chose a productive and rewarding career over the traditional role of wife and mother." -- Back cover.