Sofonisba, Lavinia, Artemisia: Their Radical Late Work

by Mary D. Garrard

A groundbreaking account of the fascinating late paintings of three women Renaissance artists by one of the field’s pioneers

Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Artemisia Gentileschi—the most important women artists of Renaissance Italy—all deviated radically from their earlier work in their last years. Because their late paintings are anomalous and puzzling, they have been virtually ignored, and treated as peripheral to the artists’ core identities and oeuvres. In this book, Mary Garrard, a founding pioneer in feminist art history, presents a major reevaluation of the late works of Anguissola, Fontana, and Gentileschi, showing how in their final years they deliberately changed direction to produce bold, transgressive, and surprising paintings that upended gendered expectations.

While great male artists have been praised for their “heroic” or “tragic” late works, historians have largely overlooked the creative imaginations of older women artists. In this important book, Garrard questions that bias as she explores the adventurous late-life art of Anguissola, Fontana, and Gentileschi. What emerges is a compelling account of how each artist met the universal experience of ageing with an idiosyncratic response—Anguissola through influential formal innovation, Fontana through quirky yet deadly serious humor, and Gentileschi through satirical dialogue with her own early work.

Adding new chapters to the stories of these artists, Sofonisba, Lavinia, Artemisia challenges art historians and critics to consider what is missed when late-life creativity goes unnoticed.

208 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication February 16, 2027

About the author

Mary DuBose Garrard (born 1937) is an American art historian and emerita professor at American University. Best known for her groundbreaking feminist scholarship, Garrard has drawn on feminist theory and activism to illuminate and reinterpret art of the Italian Renaissance-Baroque period. Her publications include two books and other writings on Artemisia Gentileschi, work that pioneered modern scholarship on a major 17th century Italian artist; and her most recent book, Brunelleschi’s Egg: Nature, Art and Gender in Renaissance Italy (2010). With Norma Broude, she co-edited four books on feminism and art history that have become basic texts in American universities; and co-curated the recent exhibition Claiming Space: Some American Feminist Originators for the AU Museum, Katzen Arts Center. Garrard has lectured extensively on Renaissance art, feminist art, and feminist issues in universities, colleges and museums across the country. She was one of the leaders of the feminist movement in art professions, and was the second national President of Women's Caucus for Art.