Giovanna Garzoni was born around 1600, probably in Ascoli Piceno. Her father, Giacomo Garzoni, was of Venetian origins, but little else about him has been ascertained. According to a family tree that was part of Garzoni’s estate upon her death, her mother, Isabetta Gaia, was the daughter of Nicolò Gaia, and he, in turn, was the son of Piero Gaia, a baron of Montpellier (AASL, Miscellanea Garzoni, unnumbered folio). Nicolò Gaia has been identified by Gerardo Casale (Casale 1991) with a goldsmith who worked in Venice, Ferrara, and then Ascoli. Garzoni’s only sibling was a brother named Mattio. A soldier by profession, Mattio sometimes traveled with Garzoni as her chaperone, as did her father.

Garzoni may have first studied art at a very young age with her maternal uncle, a Venetian painter named Pietro Gaia who had trained under Palma the Younger before settling in Ascoli. After this initiation, Garzoni went to Venice to continue her study of art, perhaps under Palma directly, given her apparent access to Palma’s compositions (Casale 1991). Her earliest known artwork is a large oil painting of St Andrew measuring 158 x 115 cm and now in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Venice. Signed prominently “GIOVANNA GARZONI F.”, it was one of a series of similarly sized paintings of the apostles in Venice’s church of the Ospedale degli Incurabili and must date from 1617 or shortly thereafter (Casale 1991). Among the other artists who contributed to this commission were several highly regarded Venetian painters, including Domenico Tintoretto and Palma the Younger.

At the same time that Garzoni was studying oil painting, she also studied music. Through the writings of Cristofano Bronzini, we know she visited the Medici court in Florence around 1618 or 1619 in order to demonstrate to the Archduchess Maria Magdalena von Habsburg her excellence in playing stringed instruments, singing, calligraphic writing, and painting miniatures. Her gift to the Archduchess of a painted miniature representing Mary Magdalene is untraced. During her first stay at the Medici court, the young prodigy may have encountered three individuals who would later be of importance in her career: the antiquarian Cassiano dal Pozzo, the Medici court artist Jacopo Ligozzi, and Artemisia Gentileschi (Barker 2018).

Garzoni learned the art of calligraphy from a certain Giacomo Rogni of Venice. Through these exercises, Garzoni attained unparalleled coordination and control over the graphic instrument, as is evident from her book of calligraphy (the Libro de’ caratteri cancellereschi corsivi) at the Biblioteca of the Accademia di San Luca (inv. n. 1117), many of whose sheets probably date from shortly after her visit to Florence (Cosgrove 2020).

Of all Garzoni’s skills, the most in demand was miniature painting, carried out with pigments such as watercolor, gouache, or tempera on a support of parchment or vellum. Her Self-Portrait as Apollo (Palazzo del Quirinale), made when she was around age twenty, is her earliest surviving work in this medium, and reminds us of her strong interest in music during her youth. The practice of miniature painting soon led to her induction into the Venetian market for portrait miniatures. Made in Venice in 1625 is her signed and dated Portrait of a Gentleman now at the Stichting Historische Verzamelingen van het Huis Oranje-Nassau in the Hague.

At around the same time that Garzoni began orienting her career around portrait miniatures, in 1622 she married a Venetian portraitist, Tiberio Tinelli. Her sizable dowry included her personal collection of musical instruments (a theorbo, a lute, a harpsichord, and an organ) as well as many miniatures presumably by her own hand (Pagotto 2019). The happiness of the union was impeded by Tinelli’s insolvency and Garzoni’s refusal to break a vow of celibacy. She had made the vow many years earlier after it was predicted that she would die in childbirth. Our artist sought divorce after just a year of marriage. In 1624, the marriage was legally dissolved thanks to a court case in which several household servants testified that Tinelli had resorted to witchcraft (Bottacin 1998).

Shortly after February of 1630, Garzoni left Venice at the invitation of Fernando Afán Enríquez de Ribera, the Duke of Alcalá and Viceroy of Naples (Casale 1991). A document mentions trouble with family members as a motive for the move, but the plague that was advancing from Southern Germany into Northern Italy is another probable motive for her journey south. Gentileschi, who had moved to Venice around 1627, received the same invitation from the Duke of Alcalá and perhaps even traveled to Naples with Garzoni. This journey may have given Garzoni her first opportunity to visit Rome, where Cassiano Dal Pozzo introduced her to Anna Barberini, the powerful consort of Pope Urban VIII’s papal nephew, and perhaps as well to members of the scientific academy called the Accademia dei Lincei. Garzoni’s botanical illustrations bound together under the title Piante Varie (now at the Dumbarton Oaks Rare Book Library in Washington, DC) may have been made for a member of the latter organization around this time.

Garzoni had set up a workshop in Naples by July of 1631. This is the date when two agents of the Duke of Alcalá visited her here to collect artworks for the Duke, including several portraits and an image of Saint John the Baptist. Within about a year, Garzoni was released from the Duke of Alcalá’s service in order to join the court of Christine of France, Duchess of Savoy, as the “Miniaturist of Her Royal Ladyship”. For the five years that she lived in Turin, Garzoni received the extraordinary annual salary of 1000 gold scudi annually in exchange for making portraits, sacred images, mythological scenes, and still-lifes (Casale 1991).

Exemplary of her work for the Savoy court is her portrait miniature of Zaga Christ, a Catholic pretender to the Ethiopian throne who was welcomed as a guest by the Duke of Savoy. The painting is notable for the minute and exacting portrayal of the costume details, as well as for the sitter’s look of gentle amiability and nobility of character. Garzoni must have befriended this foreign sitter, since she signed the back of his portrait not only in Italian but also in her sitter’s native Ethiopic script (The Immensity of the Universe, p. 128).

Following the Duke of Savoy’s death in 1637, the political instability of Christine of France’s regency propelled Garzoni into the service of Christine’s sister the Consort Queen of England Henrietta Maria (ffolliott 2020). At the same time Garzoni was in London, so was Gentileschi; indeed, the two may have traveled there together in 1638 (Barker 2021). While in London, Garzoni seems to have met Inigo Jones, the renowned court architect who built the Queen’s House in Greenwich and who had amassed a collection of drawings and prints during his earlier travels on the continent. Evidently Garzoni gained access to Jones’ collection, since she made several ink-on-paper copies after one of its elements: Albrecht Dürer’s Sketches of Animals and Landscapes of 1521 (now at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute). Based on that sheet, one of Garzoni’s ink-on-paper copies is the Lioness, flawlessly reproducing each line in the original, as well as Dürer’s monogram (Biblioteca of the Accademia di San Luca, Libro di Miniature e Disegni, c. 6). Garzoni must have greatly admired Dürer, for the inventory of her possessions at her death shows that she owned a copy of his Mother and Child with Saint John (ASR, Trenta Notai Capitolini, uff. 22, testamenti vol. 543, Marchetti Franciscus 1670, inventario dei beni di Giovanna Garzoni, c. 109r,  in Casale 1991, p. 224).

Garzoni and other Italian artists who had been enjoying Queen Henrietta Maria’s favor hastily decided to depart from England due to mounting objections to the Catholic presence at the court of Charles I. By 1640, she was ensconced in Paris under the protection of Cardinal de Richelieu, the powerful minister of Louis XIII. At this time, Garzoni executed the portrait miniature of Cardinal de Richelieu - perhaps the last portrait made before his death - with remarkable tenderness (Gallerie degli Uffizi, inv. 1894, no. 8936).

In Paris, Garzoni crossed paths with an Italian artist under Richelieu’s protection, Stefano della Bella (Fumagalli 2000). This fortuitous encounter with the prolific etcher was soon followed by an invitation from the Medici to settle in Florence with a salaried position as a court artist. Her presence on and off in the Tuscan capital between 1642 and 1651 is attested to by records of multiple Medici commissions. Some of these commissions were reproductive miniatures such as the Madonna della Seggiola after Raphael (Paris, Galerie Ratton-Ladrière) (Fumagalli 2021). However, the majority of these commissions were still-lifes, and it was at this time that she completed many of her most famous and striking masterpieces in this genre. The best known and most numerous of these masterpieces are her twenty portrait-like representations of fruits and vegetables placed in dishes, such as the Cherries and Carnations in a Plate (Galleria degli Uffizi, inv. Galleria Palatina 1890, no. 4764) (Meloni Trkulja 1986), all of which were apparently made for Grand Duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici. When taking on her vegetable subjects, Garzoni experimented boldly with the artistic format. In a few instances, she revived the exacting technical style practiced decades earlier by the above mentioned court artist Jacopo Ligozzi, such as with her curiously embellished Hyacinth with Four Cherries, a Lizard, and an Artichoke from the year 1648 (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Gabinetto dei disegni e delle Stampe, n. 2147 Orn).

Although Garzoni had returned to live in Rome by 1652, she nevertheless continued to work for the Medici until her last years, always basing her paintings on the study of real objects and living exemplars. Among the most complex still-lifes Garzoni ever undertook are the cathedral-format floral compositions for Cardinal Giovan Carlo de’ Medici and Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere made in this final Roman period. These miniatures combine rare exotic flowers with such contrasting elements as Chinese porcelain, Central American shells, and local insects, as seen in the Yixing Vase Containing Various Flowers on a Marble Shelf Between Two Shells, With Butterflies Above (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Gabinetto dei disegni e delle Stampe, n. 2152 Orn). Such intricately observed and meticulously detailed works were no longer within Garzoni’s physical capacity due to the vision problems that began to afflict her in 1659 (Casale 1991). At this point, she turned almost completely to the textile arts, specifically decoupage (The Immensity of the Universe, p. 189). The sole example of her textile work that can be identified today is an Altar Frontal (or Antependium) measuring 102 x 432 cm, which was made for the high altar of the Basilica of Sant Maria Novella in Florence during her Florentine period, in 1647 (Zonta, Conti 2015). It had been commissioned by Preacher-General Remigio Fontani, who paid her 200 lire for her work.

Beginning in 1654, there are documents tracing Garzoni’s affiliation with the Accademia di San Luca, the artists’ association in Rome. Although she never was formally inducted as a member, she made generous contributions that surpassed the cost of membership dues and she participated in at least some of the social and religious activities of this community. In her last years, she lived in a house in the “piazza of the Tor de’ Conti” very near the Accademia and she even built a house along the flank of SS. Luca e Martina, which was the church that served the Accademia’s membership. In 1670 she was buried in this church, and, according to her last wishes, the Accademia received the greatest share of her considerable estate (Lukehart 2020).

In the late seventeenth century, after Garzoni’s death, Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere gathered thirty-eight of Garzoni’s miniatures and hung them on the walls of the room she had constructed for her most precious treasures: the Stanza dell’Aurora at the Villa del Poggio Imperiale in Florence. Garzoni’s artworks were displayed in this special room together with many other objects, all representing the pinnacle of what could be achieved, whether by humankind or by nature: rare pieces of Chinese porcelain, small bronzes representing heroic male nudes, portrait miniatures, and exquisite treasures fashioned from precious materials like ivory, rhinoceros horn, nautilus shells, and coconuts. Thus, amidst some of the most wondrous objects on the planet, Garzoni’s miniatures took their rightful place of honor.

Sheila Barker

Fonti archivistiche e Bibliografia

Archivio dell’Accademia di San Luca, Miscellanea Garzoni, unnumbered folio.

Archivio di Stato di Roma, Trenta Notai Capitolini, uff. 22, Testamenti, vol. 543, Marchetti Franciscus 1670, inventario dei beni di Giovanna Garzoni.

Silvia Meloni Trkulja, “Garzoni Giovanna”, in Il Seicento fiorentino: arte a Firenze da Ferdinando I a Cosimo III, exhibition catalog (Florence 1986), edited by G. Guidi e D. Marcucci, 3 vols, Florence 1986, III, pp. 97-99.

Gerardo Casale, Giovanna Garzoni, ‘insigne miniatrice’ 1600-1670, Milan-Rome 1991.

Francesca Bottacin, “Appunti per il soggiorno veneziano di Giovanna Garzoni: documenti inediti”, in Arte Veneta, 52, 1998, pp. 141-147.

Elena Fumagalli, “Giovanna Garzoni in Paris”, in S. Meloni Trkulja, E. Fumagalli, Nature morte. Giovanna Garzoni, Paris 2000, pp. 11-13.

Elisa Zonta and Susanna Conti, “Nuove sperimentazioni per il restauro di un’opera tessile polimaterica fra ricamo ad applicazione e dipinto: il ‘paliotto fiorito’ di Santa Maria Novella”, in OPD Restauro, 27, 2015, pp. 276-290.

Sheila Barker, “‘Marvellously gifted’: Giovanna Garzoni’s first visit to the Medici court”, in The Burlington Magazine, 160, 2018, pp. 654-659.

Fiorella Pagotto, “Un effimero matrimonio artistico: il pittore Tiberio Tinelli e Giovanna Garzoni, pittrice e musicista”, in Aldèbaran V. Storia dell’arte, edited by Sergio Marinelli, Verona 2019, pp. 111-118.

The Immensity of the Universe in the Art of Giovanna Garzoni, exhibition catalog (Florence 2020), edited by S. Barker, Florence 2020.

Sheila Barker, “The Universe of Giovanna Garzoni. Art, Mobility, and the Global Turn in the Geographical Imaginary”, in The Immensity of the Universe, pp. 16-29.

Aoife Cosgrove, “‘E scrittrice, e pittrice’: Giovanna Garzoni and the Art of Calligraphy”, in The Immensity of the Universe, pp. 30-35.

Sheila ffolliott, “‘La Miniatrice di Madama Reale’: Giovanna Garzoni in Savoy”, in The Immensity of the Universe, pp. 46-53.

Elena Fumagalli, “Miniature Painters at the Medici Court in the Seventeenth Century”, in The Immensity of the Universe, pp. 54-61.

Peter M. Lukehart, “Giovanna Garzoni, ‘Accademica’”, in The Immensity of the Universe, pp. 96-105.

Matteo Procaccini, Giovanna Garzoni, in Le Signore dell’Arte. Storie di Donne tra ’500 e ‘600, catalogo della mostra, Milano, Palazzo Reale 2021, Skira, Milano 2021, pp. 246-257 e schede 4.10-4.20, pp. 338-342.

Sheila Barker, “Art as Women’s Work: the Professionalization of Women Artists in Italy, 1350-1800”, in By Her Hand, catalogo della mostra, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT 2021-2022; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI 2022, p. 47; Ibidem, schede nn. 35, 36 e 37 di Oliver Tostmann, pp. 126-129.

Scheda biografica “Garzoni Giovanna” in Centro di documentazione delle donne artiste di Bologna: https://www.cittametropolitana.bo.it/pariopportunita/Garzoni_Giovanna