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Virginia da Vezzo
Public Domain

Claude Mellan and Michel Odieuvre

Virginia da Vezzo

1625

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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 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 "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

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
Anna Maria Vaiani
1624–1634
Theodore Russell Davis and Haviland & Co.
"Baltimore Oriole, and Virginia Creeper" Dessert or Fruit Plate
1878–1879
Claude Mellan and Michel Odieuvre
Maddalena Corvina
1635
Wenceslaus Hollar
Unus Americanus ex Virginia
1644
Claude Mellan
From the series "Galleria Giustiniana del Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani"
1630
Kevin MacDonald
Gas Station, Davis, West Virginia
1978
Claude Mellan
Diane de Versailles
1668
Francesco Bartolozzi and Pietro Longhi
Vezzoza giovinetta un morbo assale . . . (The dentist)
1746–1814
Claude Mellan
The Three Graces (frontispiece to Balthazar de Vias's Charitum libri tres)
1658
Esther Willits Fell
"Virginia Star" Quilt Top
1874–1889
Antoine-Louis Barye
Leaping Virginia Stag
1874–1899