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Anna Maria Vaiani

Claude Mellan and Michel Odieuvre

Anna Maria Vaiani

1624-1634

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Anna Maria Vaiani

1624-1634

Physical Qualities Engraving, Sheet: 240 × 161 mm. (9 7/16 × 6 5/16 in.) Plate: 125 × 92 mm. (4 15/16 × 3 5/8 in.)
Credit Line Blanche Adler Memorial Fund
Object Number 2019.45
French printmaker Claude Mellan executed these three bust-length portraits of celebrated Italian women artists while working in Rome between 1624 and 1636. Mellan’s engravings are strongly individualized, showing each sitter in an oval frame inscribed with her name, profession, and birthplace. The portraits, made for the esteemed collector Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1667), were a testament to each woman’s prominence within Rome’s artistic and intellectual circles. After leaving Rome for Paris with her husband, the painter Simon Vouet, in 1627, Virginia da Vezzo (1600–1638) established the first drawing class for women at the French court. Anna Maria Vaiani (1604–c. 1655), an engraver and still-life painter, was active in the most important Roman scientific academy of her time, the Accademia dei Lincei, in the 1630s. Maddalena Corvina (1607–1664), born to Flemish immigrant parents, worked as a successful miniaturist and painter in Rome, producing several botanical studies.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase, 2019, James A. Bergquist
Jacobs 4 rotation, February 4 - November 30, 2020 (roughly 6 months on view; works covered during COVID-19 closures)

Inscribed: Recto: in image, in oval frame surrounding portrait, in plate "ANNA MARIA VAIANI PITTRICE ET INTAGLIATRICE FIORENTINA"; in image, lower left, in plate "CMellan Gall.' del."; in image, lower right, in plate "et Sc. Romae"; below image, lower margin, in plate, four lines of text beginning "A PARIS / chez Odieuvre Md. d'Estampes Quay de l'Ecole vis-a-vis [...]"

Artist

Claude Mellan

1597–1687

French, 1598-1688
Meet Claude Mellan

Publisher

Michel Odieuvre

1686–1755

French, 1687-1756
Meet Michel Odieuvre

Explore the Collection Further

Claude Mellan and Michel Odieuvre
Maddalena Corvina
1635
Unknown Artist and Anna Maria van Schurman
Portrait of Anna Maria van Schurman
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Virginia da Vezzo
1625
Claude Mellan
From the series "Galleria Giustiniana del Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani"
1630
Cassi Namoda
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2019
Claude Mellan
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1668
Jacob Adam and Joseph Müller
Portrait of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa
1793
Claude Mellan
The Three Graces (frontispiece to Balthazar de Vias's Charitum libri tres)
1658
Antoine Trouvain, Jean-Marc Nattier, and others
Le Mariage de la Reine
1702–1712