Claude Mellan, Michel Odieuvre
Anna Maria Vaiani
1624-1634
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Claude Mellan, Michel Odieuvre
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 Wing Rotations 2024
Jacobs Wing Rotations 2025
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 [...]"