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AWA Legacy Fund sees dream unfold
by Linda Falcone
The article was originally published in Restoration Conversations magazine
Issue 06, Autumn/Winter 2024
Certosa di Firenze, ph. Olga Makarova, 'Violante: Accademia Women'
Undisturbed silence has characterised the vast Certosa di Galluzzo charterhouse, since its construction in 1341, as home of the Carthusian monks. Now a base for the San Leolino community, its grand cloister defies all description, and its artworks, including five lunettes painted by Pontormo in the early 1520s, will bring even the non-religious to a quietness akin to prayer, thanks to their silent beauty. The artwork displayed in this fortress-like structure, made strong by contemplation not weaponry, could represent lifetimes of labour for a team of endlessly patient conservators.
Marina Vincenti and Elizabeth Wicks, the two restorers with whom I visited the Certosa last winter, with complex manager Father Bernardo Artusi as guide, were looking for the one woman in the place – eighteenth-century painter Violante Series Cerroti – whose Reading Madonna is displayed above the altar, in what may well be the smallest chapel on the premises, right off the prior’s tiny bedroom. Despite its dire need for restoration the Cappella del priore is a pastel-hued Rococo gem. In the scene of the Siriès Cerroti altarpiece, a sweet Madonna has placed her daily sewing aside, and is praying over a large prayer book in Hebrew script. The painting is an ode to daily work and devotion, but as modern women, we cannot help but revel in the message between the lines: its protagonist is a literate woman seeking knowledge, independently.
The Prior's Chapel, with Siriès Cerroti's Reading Madonna and attributed ovals, ph. Olga Makarova
In oval niches on either side of the altar are two female saints: Agnes with a lamb and Catherine with her martyr’s wheel, also attributed to Siriès Cerroti, due to stylistic similarities with her confirmed oeuvre. These delightful, delicately bejewelled depictions of pious women recall the ‘realm’ women have always accessed, no matter the era, that of sacrifice. The restoration of all three paintings is the diamond point of a new project, organised by the AWA Legacy Fund called ‘Violante: Accademia Women’. It was almost four years in the making, and its ‘backstory’ is one of carefully planned partnerships, which gave rise to an all-woman team of ‘art detectives’ and documentarians, committed to safeguarding ‘forgotten’ art and bringing new research to light.
Before Advancing Women Artists (AWA) closed its doors in July 2020, with 70 restored artworks by women to its credit, AWA’s board of Trustees began the search for its final project, to be rolled out post closure, via what they called the AWA Legacy Fund. “We wanted a project that would reflect the organisation’s values, rooted in a Florentine institution that lies at the heart of the city’s history from the female perspective,” says AWA Legacy Director, Margie MacKinnon, to describe the guiding goals of the seven-women team, whose support made this legacy project possible, namely, Connie Clark, Pam Fortune, Nancy Gallagher, Nancy Hunt, Donna Malin and Alice Vogler, as well as MacKinnon herself.
“Syracuse University in Florence was our first choice as ‘the project’s godmother’,” explains Alice Vogler, former AWA Secretary. “Back in 2005, Syracuse University in Florence (SUF) published a book on Johnathan Nelson’s research into Renaissance painter Plautilla Nelli, underwritten by Jane Fortune, founder of AWA, and following her support of the restoration of Nelli’s Lamentation with Saints at the San Marco Museum. The rescue of that painting started Jane’s quest to restore more art by women, a journey we all came to share,” says Vogler. “We wanted our legacy project to involve university internship opportunities as well, to inspire students to explore art by women, so it is like coming ‘full circle’.”
Conservators Marina Vincenti and Elizabeth Wicks prepare for transport of the artwork, ph. Olga Makarova
For the project’s Florentine partner AWA board members also intended to seek out an institution relevant to women artists through the ages. There is only one institution whose history forms part of the experience of every professional female artist in Florence. Only one institution consistently guaranteed them the prestige they would need to make their way in the world as money-earning painters and gave them the ‘stamp’ of approval that allowed their names – if not their artwork – to survive through the centuries, and that is Florence’s Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, AADFI.
With the partners on board, it was decided that the project content would be restoration-based, and include a grant for research and video documentation, as well as occasions for the public to see the art. “Artist Violante Siriès Cerroti, and her Reading Madonna fit the bill.
AWA Legacy Research Grant awardee is scholar Giulia Coco, curator at the much-loved Accademia Museum. “My research will centre on Violante Siriès Cerroti, as a woman traveller and artist, who succeeded – via international experiences in France and Austria – in broadening the horizons of Florentine women in the arts, beyond the Medici court, in which she herself trained under Giovanna Fratellini. Very well integrated in the artistic and aristocratic circles of Florence, she was well known and sought after by international travellers and artists in Tuscany,” Coco says.
“In 1733, at the age of just 24, Siriès Cerroti was elected to the AADFI,” the curator continues. “Certainly, this prestigious nomination, was, in part, obtained thanks to personal and family ties, but it was also a sign of encouragement for a figure who contributed greatly to the ‘emancipation’ of women’s painting, beyond portraiture – the genre early women artists most often practiced. Above all, as a female artist, Siriès Cerroti was endowed with a sense of autonomy and independence, values she was able to convey, through teaching, to a new generation of women painters such as Maria Hadfield Cosway and Anna Piattoli Bacherini.”
The project’s research and restoration elements began their operative phase in September 2024, and are scheduled for presentation at Certosa di Galuzzo in May 2025, following tours for the general public and a half-day seminar focused on new discoveries linked to Siriès Cerroti and Violante Ferroni, the last artist whose works AWA restored back in 2020. While Dr Coco follows new leads, filmmaker Olga Makarova will document each phase of this three-pronged restoration, from removal to re-installation. This project brings together a team of talented and creative women from the present, and sets them ‘on the trail’ of two women artists deserving further study. The team feel hopeful about the discoveries that are sure to come to the fore. Newly restored paintings, and ever-emerging cultural horizons, for women from multiple eras – that’s what it’s all about.
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