Lavinia Fontana acquired by the Legion of Honor Museum
May 1 2024
Picture: news.artnet.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News has broken that the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco has acquired Lavinia Fontana's Portrait of Bianca degli Utili Maselli and Her Children. Regular auction watchers will remember that this painting sold at Sotheby's New York back in 2012 for $602,500. It would be fair to suggest that the value of works by female artists on this scale, and with this much swagger, has skyrocketed since 2012.
According to the article linked above:
For the first time four centuries, the work will be on public view, according to Legion of Honor director and CEO Thomas P. Campbell. The work will hang “alongside masterpieces by El Greco, Titian, Moroni, and Bronzino,” he noted over email, and “significantly expand the narrative that visitors encounter in our Renaissance galleries.” The portrait is now the museum’s oldest work by a female artist, second only to Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s famed painting Psyche Bidding Her Family Farewell (1791).
The museum has sought to add exceptional paintings by women to their collection for some time now. “When you bring works of art attributed to women into a collection where the level of quality is already very high,” curator Emily Beeny mused over the phone, “it’s important that those works be of commensurate quality so that you don’t invite invidious comparison.”
