Lavinia Fontana: Trailblazer, Rule Breaker explores this female Renaissance artist’s fascinating biography and the cultural climate that enabled her to become the first woman artist in Western Europe to gain commercial success beyond the confines of a court or a convent. Bringing together several strands of scholarship on Fontana and her contemporaries, it provides context to her career and examines areas underrepresented in current scholarship on the painter, including information on her workshop practice.  Focusing on the portraiture for which she was renowned, Lavinia Fontana tells stories that will be universally familiar—tales of family bonds, sibling rivalries, engagements, weddings, births, and deaths. Written by Aoife Brady, with contributions from one of the leading scholars on Fontana, Babette Bohn, and a foremost expert on Renaissance fashion, Jonquil O’Reilly, this engaging book explores Fontana’s world and how she forged a successful career in the male-dominated world of Renaissance Italy.     Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (May 6–August 27, 2023)

Guido Reni was the star painter of the Italian Baroque, one of Europe's most successful artists, sought after by prominent patrons. Whether his subject matter was the Christian heaven or the world of classical mythology, Guido Reni was unmatched in his ability to translate the beauty of the divine into painting, which earned him the name "il divino". Later misunderstood and sidelined, he deserves to be rediscovered. Drawing on new research findings, the catalogue accompanying the exhibition at the Stadel Museum provides insights into his artistic activities, but also his ambiguous personality. Bringing together his fascinating paintings, drawings, and etchings for the first time in more than thirty years, it offers a new perspective on one of the greatest names of Italian art.