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Lavinia Fontana Masterpiece Rediscovered After 150 Years in Museum Storage

The tender family portrait had been wrongly attributed to a male painter of the Northern Renaissance.

A woman walks by a recently discovered painting by Italian artist Lavinia Fontana, entitled "Portrait of a Gentleman, his Daughter and a Maid" (C) on display at the Museum de la Chartreuse in Douai northern France on March 21, 2025. (Photo: Sameer Al-Doumy/France-Art-Painting-Museum)

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By Jo Lawson-Tancred

March 26, 2025
4:50 pm
Los Angeles, CA

A small museum in northern France has announced the surprise discovery of a new masterpiece by Lavinia Fontana, one of the most celebrated woman painters of the Italian Renaissance. The lost work had been languishing in storage for over 150 years, long credited to a male Flemish painter, but an expert now claims it is the only group portrait by Fontana in France. Portrait of a Gentleman, his Daughter and a Servant is from the last quarter of the 16th century and is held in the collection of the Musée Chartreuse de Douai in northern France. It depicts a father and his daughter in formal, stiff white collars, meeting the viewer’s gaze. In the background, a more sensitively rendered, informally dressed servant woman lifts a curtain while carrying in

Portrait of a Gentleman, his Daughter and a Servant is from the last quarter of the 16th century and is held in the collection of the Musée Chartreuse de Douai in northern France. It depicts a father and his daughter in formal, stiff white collars, meeting the viewer’s gaze. In the background, a more sensitively rendered, informally dressed servant woman lifts a curtain while carrying in a basket of fruit. The artwork was gifted to the museum in 1857 by Doctor Énée-Aimé Escallier.

The painting first drew the attention of 16th-century Italian art specialist Philippe Costamagna—curator of the Fragonard Museums—during a visit to the Chartreuse Museum last year, where he was part of a team of experts brought in to study and restore its collection of Italian paintings. With his expertise in the Mannerism movement specifically, Costamagna recognized something unexpected in the portrait that had previously been attributed to Pieter Jansz. Pourbus, a Northern Renaissance painter working just a bit earlier than Fontana.

“People told me, ‘it’s a northern painting,’” Costamagna told AFP. “I said ‘no, it’s an Italian painting, Bolognese in spirit from A to Z. Everything is reminiscent of it: the little girl with the little flowers, the strokes on the collar and on the sleeve.”

Lavinia Fontana, Portrait of a Gentleman, his Daughter and a Maid. (Photo: Ville de Douai – musée de la Chartreuse)

It is Costamagna who subsequently studied the brushwork and reattributed the artwork to Fontana. Though it is yet to undergo a full restoration, it is now being re-presented to the public this week, to coincide with the launch of the museum’s new exhibition, “Nicolas-Guy Brenet, a painter to the king in Douai in the 18th century,” on view through June 23.

“The painting is in excellent condition; it hasn’t been badly restored in the past, so it hasn’t been distorted,” said Costamagna. “The restoration will enhance it.”

Considered one of Europe’s first professional woman artists, Fontana is rightly being institutionally recognized as a trailblazer. The addition of one of her works to the Chartreuse Museum’s collection could prove a major windfall as institutions the world over clamor to add a Fontana to their collections. These include the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, which recently acquired her Portrait of Antonietta Gonzales (ca. 1595), and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which bought her Portrait of Bianca degli Utili Maselli and her Children (ca. 1604) last year.

In 2023, Fontana received a landmark solo museum show of over 60 paintings and drawings at the National Gallery of Ireland to mark the occasion of the restoration of perhaps her most ambitious painting, The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon (1599). The work had for 150 years been left blackened by smoke after it was perilously rescued from the Palais Royale in Paris, which was set alight by revolutionaries in 1871.

Lavinia Fontana, Portrait of Bianca degli Utili Maselli and Her Children (ca. 1604). (Photo: Legion of Honor)

The Chartreuse’s stroke of luck is not the first time a Fontana has been rediscovered in an unlikely location. One miniature portrait of an Italian noblewoman, long incorrectly attributed to the painter Bronzino, surfaced unexpectedly at an auction in Texas in January. It is currently on display at London’s Strawberry House until April 23.

Fontana was born in Bologna in 1552, the daughter of successful Mannerist artist Prospero Fontana, who taught her to paint. As well as portraits, she produced some grand mythological scenes, as well as altarpieces and devotional paintings for private prayer. In 1577, Fontana married the painter Gian Paolo Zappi who, recognizing her outsize talents, put aside his own aspirations to support her as her agent. The couple had 11 children. The Popes Gregory XIII and Clement VIII were among Fontana’s many high-profile patrons and she commanded high fees for her works.

In 1603, Fontana settled in Rome, where she became the first woman to be elected to the prestigious Academy of Saint Luke. She died there in 1614. Her amazing life story was recently made the subject of a children’s book, on which more than 40 museums collaborated. Part of an initiative to promote women artists backed by Stanford University, the new release launches next week at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.

It is thought that some 130 extant paintings can currently be attributed to Fontana, although, with renewed interest there may yet be many more discoveries, like this one, in store.

Source: artnet