ABSTRACT
The reverberations of de Pizan’s trenchant comment have sparked the creation of the present anthology, which seeks to make more accessible some of the most essential and interesting biographical sources on early modern women artists. The life stories have been arranged according to date of original publication, or for those texts left unpublished until the twentieth century, by approximate date of composition. The introduction to each life story similarly attempts to provide an historical framework for understanding the narrative and the artist’s place in history. The Select Bibliography provides full references for sources that were particularly useful in researching the artist’s life, and to sources that will lead the reader to further information. The publication of collective lives of artists flourished in Italy in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with biographers concentrating on regions that Vasari had overlooked or neglected due to his Florentine bias.
