Women Painters of the Renaissance and Baroque

In The Chess Game, three of Anguissola’s sisters gather at the board with a fourth figure watching behind them. Their expressions and glances take you through the scene as quickly as the next move. The National Museum in Poznań keeps the 1555 painting, a good place to see how she makes a family portrait unfold.

The broken wheel in Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria gives the saint’s story a physical presence, while the face and direct glance bring you back to the painter. Look at the way she holds the palm as well as the wheel. The National Gallery in London has this work in its collection.

The dress, jewelry, and music in Lucia Bonasoni Garzoni tell you about the sitter before you know her name. Notice the delicacy of the white dog with a pink bow on the brooch pinned to the dark dress. The portrait is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, where it can be read as a collaboration between painter and sitter over how to be seen.

In The Madonna and Child with a Swallow, the small bird gives the figures something to do with their hands and attention. Sirani recorded the work in her own diary. Start with the painting at the National Gallery of Victoria and then read her description to see what she considered worth recording.

At Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Nelli’s Last Supper runs about seven meters across. The long table gives her room to vary the poses and gestures along the full width. Seeing it at that scale helps you understand what the Dominican painter made for a convent refectory.

In the Washington National Gallery’s Self-Portrait, Leyster turns from a canvas to meet the viewer, with brushes and palette still in hand. There’s a musician on the easel, and her turn gives the portrait some of the liveliness of that figure. Look there first to see how she presents two kinds of painting at once.

Flowers in a Vase, in London’s National Gallery, asks you to look low as well as high. The blooms occupy different depths against the dark ground, and a small detail on a stem can be as precisely seen as the largest flower. Notice how the apparent looseness of the bouquet depends on carefully placed overlaps.

At the Mauritshuis, look past the cheeses and pretzels toward the metal lid of the jug. Peeters worked a tiny reflection of herself into it. The detail gives the painter a place in a picture that seems at first to be about the different textures you might find on a table.

In the National Gallery of Art’s still life with apples, pears, cucumbers, figs, plums, and a melon, the woven basket gives some of the fruit a raised position. The vegetables laid out below it come much closer to you. Look at the change from rough rind to smooth skin to see how Galizia makes a spare arrangement worth staying with.

The fruit in Still Life with Cherries, Strawberries and Gooseberries is near enough to count, but holding your attention at that distance is part of Moillon’s skill. The Norton Simon Museum painting lets you compare the way light sits on the darker cherries and on a gooseberry’s almost translucent surface.

In her self-portrait at London’s National Portrait Gallery, Beale holds a canvas with sketches of her two sons. Her palette hangs on the wall behind her. The gallery also keeps a notebook in which her husband Charles tracked commissions and payments. The painting and the notebook offer two views of the family’s portrait business.

The flowers in the Rijksmuseum’s vanitas still life draw the eye in before you register objects associated with time and mortality. Look for the sunflower among smaller forms and the darker objects arranged around its display. The size and color of one plant change how you move through the rest of the picture.

In Self-Portrait at an Easel, Van Hemessen holds a brush up to the work instead of presenting her hands at rest. The inscription gives her name, age, and date, while the painted tools show what she does. The original is at the Kunstmuseum Basel.