Giovanna Fratellini

Giovanna Fratellini built her career inside the Medici court in Florence at a time when a woman running a portrait studio was unusual. Born Giovanna Marmocchini Cortesi in 1666, she learned miniature painting from Ippolito Galantini and pastel from Domenico Tempesti, and worked in oil, chalk, pastel and enamel as the commission required.

By 1706 she had been admitted to Florence's drawing academy, and from 1717 she served as official portraitist to Violante of Bavaria, the grand princess of Tuscany. Her self-portrait in the Uffizi is unusually frank. She shows herself at work on a small portrait of her son Lorenzo, and gives her own thin lips and plain features honestly, without the flattery she extended to her aristocratic sitters. She died in Florence in 1731.