Rosalba Carriera, Self-portrait of the artist, c. 1708, red chalk on paper, © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders

BERLIN - Featuring some 90 works, the special exhibition organised by Berlin’s Kupferstichkabinett elucidates the lives and impact of women such as Rosalba Carriera, Artemisia Gentileschi, Elisabetta Sirani, Diana Scultori, Isabella d’Este, Christina, Queen of Sweden, and others. Their works, fates and enormous influence on the art world of their times have in part been forgotten today.

During the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the art of these women outshone that of their fathers, brothers and husbands. They created and collected oeuvres that were sought after throughout Europe. They knew how to market themselves and how to network. The protagonists in the exhibition comprise not only women artists who created works in demand, but also wives who supported their husbands and posed for them as models and female patrons who gave commissions for artworks and supported women artists, as well as preservationists and collectors who kept and passed on the works.

Not only does the exhibition show the art of these women, it also provides details about the circumstances of their lives to the extent that this information is known. A number of issues are addressed. These include determining what influence being a woman had on these women’s roles in the art world, whether or not they married and became mothers, and which strategies they pursued to assert themselves in a man’s world, thus making it possible for us to still find traces of their respective impacts.

Women’s diverse, active roles in Italian art are presented with drawings and prints until 1800 from the Kupferstichkabinett’s vast collection, as well as some outstanding loans. In various interventions in the exhibition and catalogue, the youth advisory panel of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Achtet AlisMB, contributes the younger generation’s perspective on this topic.

Muse or Maestra?: Women in the Italian Art World, 1400–1800 is curated by Dagmar Korbacher, director of the Kupferstichkabinett.

A catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

08.03.2023 to 04.06.2023

Federico Zuccari, Half-length portrait of a woman (probably the wife of the artist, Francesca Genga) with a small child, c. 1580-1585, black crayon and red chalk, © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz

Elisabetta Sirani, Holy Family with St Elizabeth and Infant St John, St Joseph in the background, c. 1655-1665, etching, © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz

Maria de’ Medici, Self portrait?, 1587, Woodcut, © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz

Diana Mantovana or Scultori after her husband Francesco Capriani, Acanthus ornament, c. 1580, copperplate engraving, © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz

Teresa del Pó, St. Sebastian, around 1684, etching, © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz