Self-Portrait (Allegory of Painting)

In the handbooks the 17th century worked from, Painting was a woman. Cesare Ripa described her in 1593, with a gold chain at her neck and tangled hair, and a painter who wanted to picture his own art had to picture somebody who was not himself. A woman at an easel could be both at once. Artemisia Gentileschi had made exactly that picture in England around 1639. This canvas came out of Bologna a generation later, about 1660 by the usual citation and about 1656 by the Italian state catalogue, and it shows a woman in a turban at her easel with palette and brushes in hand. The catalogue files her as the allegory of Painting and as the painter herself, Ginevra Cantofoli, though it files her with a reserve. The name comes from old academy records, there is very little by her to compare the canvas with, and an old restoration of uncertain date may have taken a signature off it.