Announcing the 2017 Jane Fortune Conference, organized by The Medici Archive Project:
"A Legacy of Ladies: Women Artists and Patrons at the Late Medici Court

When: Friday, 21 April 2017 10am-5:30pm
Where: The Medici Archive, Palazzo Alberti, via de' Benci, 10 Firenze
Who: open to all and free of charge

The 2017 Jane Fortune Conference examines the deep imprint that women left on the artistic ferment of Baroque Florence, beginning under the regency of Archduchess Maria Maddalena of Austria and continuing through the last years of Electress Palatine. To do so, it will explore the cultural agency of both female patrons at the Medici court and the women artists who flourished there, from the mid seventeenth century to the early eighteenth century.

Only in recent years has attention been given to the complex web of female social patterns at the late Medici court. Vittoria della Rovere has been acknowledged as a key patron, yet her successors and their own patronage patterns have yet to be fully explored. The physical spaces used by noble women and their female households throughout Europe are essential to this study. Here, both heraldry and the displays of art collections helped to demarcate these spaces.
Thanks to their talents, some low-born women were given a degree of access to female courts. Exacting standards of moral conduct were expected of them, mitigating against their social station. Juxtaposing women painters with the irreproachable embroiders and lacemakers and the potentially licentious singers and actresses opens a discussion about the social and behavioral aspects of female creativity in early modern Florence.

10:00 Introductory Remarks
10:15 Adelina Modesti
Keynote Address: "Women Artists at the Medici Court of Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere (1622-1694): Painters, Pastellists, Lacemakers, and Embroiderers"
11:15 Ilaria Hoppe
"Uno spazio di potere femminile: Villa del Poggio Imperiale, residenza di Maria Maddalena d’Austria"
11:40 Silvia Benassai
"‘Io ho grande ardire, e non temo niente’: Violante Beatrice di Baviera, mecenate nella Toscana degli ultimi Medici"
12:05 Laura Windisch
"Between Power and Privacy: Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici’s Patronage at Villa La Quiete"
12:30 Laura Cirri
"Le Granduchesse di Toscana: la loro rappresentazione attraverso l’araldica"
14:45 Lisa Goldenberg Stoppato
"Agnese Dolci: New Attributions"
15:10 Sheila Barker
"Suor Teresa Vitelli’s Natural History Paintings: Women Artists and the Scientific Culture of the Early Enlightenment"
15:35 Julie James
"A Nun Artist at the Medici Court: The Religious Pastel Works of Suor Teresa Vitelli"
16:15 Amy Fredrickson
"Giovanna Fratellini: Motives, Patronage, and Success within the Medici Court System"
16:40 Poiret Masse
"Violante Siries Cerroti at the Medici Court, ca. 1724-1737"
17:05 Francesca Fantappiè:
"Donne in carriera: attrici, cantanti, musiciste alla corte medicea"

Moderators: Alessio Assonitis, Elisa Acanfora, Susanna Cecilia Berger, and Catherine Turrill Lupi
Organizers: Sheila Barker, Amy Fredrickson, and Julie James