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Anecdotal Insights: Changing Perceptions Of Italian Women Artists In Eighteenth-Century Life Stories, Julia K. Dabbs

Art History Publications

“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Professor Henry Higgins’s androcentric lament from the musical My Fair Lady would have resounded with male biographers of the eighteenth century who wrote about the perplexing phenomenon of the woman artist. Since the Renaissance, writers of artistic biographical compendia had characterized the few female artists included in their volumes in distinctly different ways from their male counterparts, mainly due to lingering prejudices concerning the intellectual abilities and societal roles of women. Emulating Castiglione’s vision of the ideal Renaissance lady, biographers such as Giorgio Vasari, Carlo Ridolfi, and Carlo Cesare Malvasia emphasized …