The Virgin Mary, probably post-Annunciation, sets her sewing aside and stands poring over an open book. Her expression is sweet, untroubled, but we can still assume she is searching for wisdom or trying to find the explanation behind the Archangel Gabriel’s appearance in Scripture. The first lines of her open page are written in Hebrew characters, but the rest of the “writing” is invented Hebrew-type symbols arising from the imagination of the work’s author Violante Siriès Cerroti, the eighteenth-century woman who painted this Reading Madonna for the prior’s cell at Certosa di Firenze. What the “real” writing says has not yet been determined, but it is just one of the clues whose path we will follow over the next six months, thanks to Accademia Women: Violante, a project co-organized by Florence’s Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (AADFI) and Syracuse University in Florence (SUF), with the support of the AWA Legacy Fund.
In the summer of 2020, with the closure of Advancing Women Artists, the organization’s board of trustees made a final gift to Florence, which is a delight to announce this December as Natale draws near. The idea first formed as AWA’s seven-woman team sought a local institution closely linked to the history of art by women. The AADFI proved the obvious choice because, since the acceptance of Artemisia Gentileschi in 1616, its multi-century history in support of female art education is unparalleled in Florence and the world. An Accademia member and a deft painter of devotional works and Grand Tour portraiture, Violante Siriès Cerroti (1709–83) was the first woman to copy at the newly formed Uffizi Gallery in 1770. Today, she is at the forefront of the project, which foresees the restoration of her Certosa work, badly damaged by a fallen crucifix on the tiny chapel’s altar.
Displayed on either side of Siriès Cerroti’s large-scale Madonna are two small oval panels depicting pious women: Saint Agnes with a lamb and Saint Catherine with her martyr’s wheel. These works, also in the restoration studio as Violante attributions, pose a plethora of questions for conservator and archivist alike. According to project conservators Marina Vincenti and Elizabeth Wicks, Saint Catherine’s delicate face and the refinement of her jewels and costume, appear more akin to other canvases created by Violante’s hand, but “the jury” is still out on the matter, and will be until the first week in June, when findings from the project are presented at the AADFI. The Florentine readers can mark their calendars for June 3, 2025, for a day of research and art restitution with scholars and the public at large. The half-day conference is also set to include the presentation of works by Siriès Cerroti’s pupil, also called Violante (Ferroni) whose works AWA restored prior to its closure at the ancient hospital of San Giovanni di Dio. Ferroni, another “Accademia woman”, born in 1720, also painted devotional works, the most famous of which were displayed in the hospital’s entrance as signs of hope for plague victims who gathered there to heal.
But how did the Reading Madonna come to Certosa di Firenze and why did an all-male monastic community commission this site-specific painting to a woman artist? Therein lies another of the project’s guiding questions. Yet, I’d also like it to serve as an invitation to take the short uphill trek up to that vast monastery space, which is most often celebrated for its Pontormo frescoes, but surprisingly unknown to both visitors and locals, a fact that can only be explained by the monastic origins of the place. Today, the Carthusian complex is managed by the San Leolino community and it is open for tours several times a week, as well as being a stage to numerous concerts and musical performances year round. For those of us with no musical notes at our disposal, the only words I can muster to describe this vast architectural gem are these: Go there and be speechless too. See it for yourself.
Violante: Accademia Women is sponsored by the AWA Legacy Fund, conceived and funded by Connie Clark, Pam Fortune, Nancy Galliher, Nancy Hunt, Donna Malin, Margie MacKinnon and Alice Vogler.
