Fontana, Lavinia

(born 1552, Bologna—died Aug. 11, 1614, Rome) Italian painter of the Mannerist school, one of the first women to execute large, publicly commissioned figure paintings.

She studied with her father, Prospero Fontana (c. 1512–97), a minor painter of the school of Bologna, and Fontana herself became one of the most important portraitists in Bologna during the late 16th century. Her works were admired for the beauty of their colour and the detail of the clothes and jewelry that her subjects wore. Fontana also produced many religious paintings, and some of her most famous works are large altarpieces executed for the churches of her native city and, later, for those of Rome, where she went in 1603. She married the painter Gian Paolo Zappi, who was willing to subordinate his career to her own.

After her marriage, Fontana sometimes signed her work with her married name. She enjoyed the patronage of the family of Pope Gregory XIII and painted the likenesses of many eminent people.

In 1604 Fontana painted her largest work, the “Martyrdom of St. Stephen,” an altarpiece for S. Paolo Fuori le Mura (St. Paul's Outside the Walls) in Rome, a basilica that was destroyed in the fire of 1823. Her “Visit of the Queen of Sheba” (National Gallery, Dublin) is her most ambitious surviving narrative work. She was elected a member of the Roman Academy, a rare honour for a woman.