Giovanna Garzoni

Italian painter

• Born: 1600
• Birthplace: Ascoli Piceno, Papal States (now in Italy)
• Died: February 1, 1670
• Place of death: Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)

Garzoni, one of the most important artists of the early modern period, was a miniaturist who specialized in still-life and floral paintings. She synthesized art and science with a skill almost unequaled by artists in her genre. Her works were sought by famous art collectors and patrons, and her talent helped her find patronage and employment at Italy’s principal courts.

Early Life

Little is known about the life of Giovanna Garzoni (jo-VAHN-uh gahr-ZOHN-ee), and there is no precise information about the date and place of her birth. Newer archival documents have revealed that her father was a Venetian who resided in the marches, or border regions, at the turn of the century, making Ascoli the most probable birthplace of Giovanna. Nothing is known about her childhood and early training, however, it is likely that she grew up in Venice, and that while there, she was introduced to the art world by either her maternal grandfather (a goldsmith) or her uncle (a painter and printmaker).

Garzoni’s only known paintings from her teen years include the small Holy Family . The painting bears a date of 1616 and an inscription that mentions that she was sixteen years old, thus confirming her birth year in 1600. She also painted a large canvas representing Saint Andrew (c. 1616). Both works demonstrate similarities with the works of Jacopo Palma the Younger (Palma Il Giovane) in style and composition, suggesting that she spent time in the workshop of this important Venetian painter. Despite this start as a traditional painter, a document dated February, 1630, places her in the calligraphy school of Giacomo Rogni, indicating that she also was a miniaturist. An extant letter that she wrote to Cassiano del Pozzo, dated June 15, 1630, and sent from Naples, shows that Garzoni left Venice a few months later. Although several scholars have speculated that she had visited Rome in 1616, it is more likely that Garzoni met Cassiano, a famous intellectual and art collector in Rome (who will later prove to be an important acquaintance), on her way to Naples.

Life’s Work

Garzoni’s mature career began in Naples, where she remained for more than a year having found a patron in the duke of Alcalà, the Spanish viceroy. Although she quickly achieved great fame in Naples, there are no extant works securely attributed to her from this period. In 1632, the duke of Alcalà returned to Spain, leaving Garzoni without a stipend. In November, 1632, she moved to Turin in Piedmont, after finding protection and employment from Christina of France, the duchess of Savoy. The Savoy court was particularly interested in contemporary Dutch and Flemish art, numbering in its collections many still-life paintings as well as masterpieces by Peter Paul Rubens and Sir Anthony van Dyck . Garzoni found this environment congenial and so remained in the service of the Savoy until Duke Vittorio Amadeo I died in 1637.

In Turin, she produced portraits and miniatures of various subjects, as well as the first documented still-life paintings attributed to her. Three extant portraits exemplify her painting style: Although the portraits generally recall mannerist examples, dominating these portraits are the qualities of lifelikeness and preciosity, both dependent on her miniaturist training and epitomized by the remarkable details in the treatment of the garments and armatures. Her choices of medium and technique underscore her technical abilities: Tempera on parchment—the medium in which she executed the majority of her later works—does not allow for correcting mistakes. Moreover, the paint in these portraits is applied primarily by means of stippling, minute marks painstakingly created with the point of the brush. The only still-life composition securely attributed from the Turin period, a bowl of casually arranged fruit on a table that includes several insects, suggests that her prototypes were similar paintings by Lombard artists, such as Ambrogio Figino and Fede Galizia. Examples of their style existed in the Savoy court’s collections.

Documentation for the years 1638-1641 is scant, but it is very likely that Garzoni went to the royal courts of France and perhaps even of England, thanks to the direct contacts of the Savoy with the French and English royal families. She returned to Italy in the summer of 1642, taking up residence in Florence, where she worked primarily for the grand duke Leopold. Although she was very much appreciated at the Medici court, she often left Florence to visit Rome. (The Medici court had patronized Jacopo Ligozzi, allowing him to flourish in the final decades of the sixteenth century and to establish a local tradition for miniaturists and painters of botanical subjects, painters such as Garzoni.)

These trips brought her again in direct contact with Cassiano and with other members of the Academy of Lynx, the Lincei. They employed Garzoni for their scientific pursuits focused on natural history, but also studies of fossils and mushrooms and astronomy. Garzoni was one of the artists the Lincei hired to draw portraits of specimens, images that they used to document, study and classify their findings. To fit the “scientific” aim of these drawings, Garzoni adapted her style. The best collection of such drawings are the fifty plates she painted for an illustrated herbal, which was attributed to the artist only in 1984. It is now conserved in Washington in the collections of Dumbarton Oaks.

These botanical illustrations are astonishing for their verisimilitude and attention to detail. Although they undoubtedly reflect the direct observation of the specimens, aided by magnifying lenses more than through direct observation without a visual aid, they are programmed pictures that provide a wealth of botanical information. In fact, each plant portrait, set against a blank background, not only includes the roots but also leaves and flowers in various states of development and, crucial from the scientific perspective, examples of the plant’s means of reproduction, usually seeds.

The illustrations of these plants embody an aesthetic dimension, exemplified in the play of light and shadows on petals and leaves; however, the descriptive, scientific aspects undoubtedly take precedence. This is readily revealed by comparing the herbal’s plates with her other works, whether paintings of flower vases and of fruit bowls. For either type, she carefully arranged the composition to create a pleasing accumulation of forms and juxtaposition of colors while also manipulating the perspectival space, which “bends” around the flower vase or the fruit bowl. Moreover, in these still lifes and floral paintings, beyond the realization of microscopic details of flowers or fruits, Garzoni’s patrons would have appreciated her representation of reflected and transmitted light, usually seen in the glass vase but occasionally present even in the leaves.

In 1651, Garzoni moved to Rome permanently. Like most of her life, the last years are not well documented. She died in Rome sometime in February of 1670. The detailed account of her will—she donated most of her wealth and properties to the Accademia di San Luca, the painters’ academy—indicates that she was wealthy and successful and that she was a patron of aristocratic elites throughout Italy, who paid her well.

Significance

The fame enjoyed by Garzoni during her life demonstrates not only that female artists could be successful in the male-dominated art world but also that Baroque art is not simply about the portrayal of heightened emotions and dramatic chiaroscuro. The same patrons that admired Gian Lorenzo Bernini , Peter Paul Rubens, and Nicolas Poussin eagerly bought Garzoni’s still lifes and floral paintings. Her miniatures were valued for more than their astonishing verisimilitude: Her compositions are particularly pleasing, projecting onto the beholder a distinctive calmness.

Her botanical portraits and still-life paintings respond to preexisting traditions, but they were not Baroque inventions. Instead, the scientific dimensions of the realism of some of her pictures depended exclusively on seventeenth century ideas. Garzoni’s art extends traditions championed by famous northern and Italian artists during the two preceding centuries, including Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Ligozzi, Caravaggio, and Frans Snyder. Although she certainly found inspiration in the paintings and drawings of these great masters, her work should be seen as a development of the Lombard tradition of naturalism, indebted to Leonardo. The Lombard tradition of painting produced the two dominant schools of Italian seventeenth century painting, that of the Carraccis and that of Caravaggio.

Bibliography

Bayer, Andrea, ed. Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. This well-illustrated catalog is helpful for its explanation of the concept and varieties of naturalism in late-Renaissance Italian painting. Includes an extensive bibliography.

Casale, Gerardo. Giovanna Garzoni: “Insigne miniatrice,” 1600-1670. Rome: Jandi Sapi, 1991. The standard monograph on Garzoni and her works. Includes a chronology and a biography. Complete and well-illustrated.

Freedberg, David. The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. This award-winning book provides the intellectual context for understanding the scientific aspects of the Garzoni’s realism and the choice of subject of the artist’s still-life compositions, floral paintings, and portraits of animals and plants. Extensive bibliography and numerous color illustrations.

Fumagalli, Elena, and Silvia Meloni Trkulja. Giovanna Garzoni: Still Lifes/Geilleben/Natures Mortes. Paris: Bibliotheque de l’Image, 2000. This catalog of Garzoni’s works is particularly useful for its reproductions.

Spike, John T. Italian Still Life Paintings from Three Centuries. Florence: Stiav, 1983. An exhibition catalog that provides comparative material and a context for Garzoni’s still-life paintings. The author’s introduction and catalog entries are offer insightful analyses of this genre of painting.

Tongiorgi Tomasi, Lucia. The Flowering of Florence: Botanical Art for the Medici. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2002. An exhibition catalog with informative essays and excellent illustrations. Includes a separate section on the Garzoni.