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Virginia da Vezzo

Claude Mellan, Michel Odieuvre

Virginia da Vezzo

1625

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Claude Mellan, Michel Odieuvre

Virginia da Vezzo

1625

Physical Qualities Engraving, Sheet: 240 × 158 mm. (9 7/16 × 6 1/4 in.) Plate: 120 × 83 mm. (4 3/4 × 3 1/4 in.)
Credit Line Blanche Adler Memorial Fund
Object Number 2019.43
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 "VIRGINIA DE VEZZE DA VELLETRI PITTRICE"; in image, lower margin, in plate, four lines of text beginning "Qui saggia mano ha di Virginia accolto [...]", below this text, in lower margin, in plate "Cl. Mellan franc. f. Rom. 1626. A.P.D.R."; below image, lower right, in plate "Odieuvre / excud."

Artist

Claude Mellan

French, 1598-1688
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Publisher

Michel Odieuvre

French, 1687-1756
Meet Michel →