Plautilla Nelli, the first female Renaissance painter

Sunday, March 12, 2017 Editorial Staff Arts

FLORENCE, ITALY – The Uffizi Gallery is hosting an exhibition dedicated to Plautilla Nelli, a nun and painter who lived in Florence between 1523 and 1588.

The exhibition (from March 9 to June 4, 2017) explores five paintings depicting the image of a Dominican saint, half-length and in in profile, found in Florence, Siena, Perugia and Assisi.

Sister Plautilla Nelli (1524–1588) was a self-taught nun-artist, the first-known female Renaissance painter of Florence, Italy. She was a nun of the Dominican convent of St. Catherine of Siena located in Piazza San Marco, Florence, and was heavily influenced by the teachings of Savonarola and by the artwork of Fra Bartolomeo.

All the sisters at the now-inexistent Dominican convent in Piazza San Marco, were skilled painters. Art was certainly not the prerogative of men alone in Renaissance Florence.

Sister Plautilla Nelli had studied the works of Fra’ Bartolomeo, Bronzino and Andrea del Sarto. She mastered an extraordinary technique that the exhibition delves into: the spolvero technique, used by the nun to reproduce images for worship and prayer.

Plautilla Nelli boasted various clients, many of them women, for whom she painted altarpieces, devotional images and miniatures. Nelli’s work is distinguished from that of her influencers by the heightened sentiment she adds to each of her characters’ expressions.

Nelli is one of the few female artists mentioned in Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects. Nelli’s work is characterized by religious themes, with vivid portrayals of emotion on her characters’ faces.

Nelli lacked any formal training and her male figures are said to have “feminine characteristics”, as her religious vocation prohibited study of the nude male.

The exhibition Plautilla Nelli. Arte e devozione in convento sulle orme di Savonarola (Plautilla Nelli. Art and devotion in the convent, following in Savonarola’s footsteps) is at the Uffizi Gallery, from Tuesday to Sunday 8.15 – 18.50. Monday closed.