Artemisia Gentileschi, 1593-1652/3
Inspired by the current exhibition at Norfolk’s Chrysler Museum, Women of the Chrysler, here’s a list of women and paintings in historical fiction. On one side of the easel, we have women painting:
- Artemisia Gentileschi, the first woman elected to Florence’s Accademia dell’Arti, inspires two novels: The Passion of Artemisia, by Susan Vreeland and Artemisia, by Alexandra Lapierre.
- The Creation of Eve, by Lynn Cullen, features Renaissance portraitist Sofonisba Anguissola.
- The Birth of Venus, by Sarah Dunant, follows a fictional woman painter through Savonarola’s Florence.
- Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper, by Harriet Scott Chessman, was inspired by five Mary Cassatt paintings of her ailing older sister.
- With Violets, by Elizabeth Robards, chronicles the affair between Berthe Morisot and Edouard Manet.
- Emily Carr paints the Canadian landscape in The Forest Lover, by Susan Vreeland. Find more artists and their lovers in Vreeland’s collection of short stories, Life Studies.
- Keeping the World Away, by Margaret Forster, concerns British painter Gwen John.
- Frida Kahlo is the subject of two novels: Frida, by Barbara Mujica and In the Casa Azul: a Novel of Revolution and Betrayal, by Meaghan Delahunt.
- China’s Pan Yuliang is The Painter from Shanghai, by Jennifer Cody.
On the other side of the easel, we have the muses–wives, mistresses, patrons, and daughters who have inspired great paintings:
- Leonardo’s Swans, by Karen Essex, features Isabella and Beatrice d’Este, sisters and rival patrons of da Vinci.
- Lisa di Antonio Gherardini is immortalized by Leonardo da Vinci in I, Mona Lisa, by Jeanne Kalogridis.
- Meet Leonardo’s mother, Caterina, in Signora da Vinci, by Robin Maxwell.
- In Portrait of an Unknown Woman, by Vanora Bennett, Tudor portraitist Hans Holbein paints Sir Thomas More’s daughters.
- Girl with a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier, views Vermeer through the eyes of his maid, Griet.
- The Wayward Muse, by Elizabeth Hickey, is pre-Raphaelite muse Jane Burden; she was the model for Rossetti’s Proserpine.
- A young woman from the Paris Opera ballet is the model in Dancing for Degas, by Kathryn Wagner.
- Stephanie Cowell writes the portrait of a marriage in Claude and Camille: a Novel of Monet. Read this one with: Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: the Model-Wives of Cezanne, Monet, and Rodin, by Ruth Butler.
- In The Last Van Gogh, by Alyson Richman, Vincent paints his doctor’s daughter, Marguerite Gachet. Read with: Portrait of Dr. Gachet, by Cynthia Saltzman.
- Sunflowers, by Sheramy Bundrick, supposes the narrator’s affair with Van Gogh.
- Virginie Gautreau and John Singer Sargent scandalize society in I am Madame X, by Gioia Diliberto. Read more in: Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X, by Deborah Davis.
- Gustav Klimt paints the fashionable Emilie Flöge in The Painted Kiss, by Elizabeth Hickey.
Have other favorites? Share them in the comments!
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