ABSTRACT
In her book La semplicità ingannata (1654), the nun Arcangela Tarabotti recorded the many talents of her sister Caterina. Arcangela was not alone in admiring her sister’s artistic abilities. Marco Boschini also praised Caterina’s skills and noted her training with Chiara Varotari. However celebrated by contemporary critics and peers, Caterina was nevertheless condemned to oblivion. Through the study of archival sources and published documentation, this essay proposes to retrieve Caterina Tarabotti’s life and career from historical obscurity in order to give a window onto the experience of female artists in seventeenth-century Venice.
