Elisabetta Sirani - "Porcia hurting in the thigh" (1664, oil on canvas, 101 x 138 cm, Fondazione Cassa di Rispamio, Bologna)
Elisabetta Sirani was an artist of Italian classicism, belonging to the Bologna School. This school originated in the Workshop of the Carracci and one of their most famous representatives was Guido Reni,of which we have already seen several works. But I'm sure this girl's name only rings a few. And it's a shame, because she was a great painter. He had trained in the workshop of his father, Giovanni Andrea Sirani, disciple of Guido Reni, but in a very short time managed to give soups with slingshot to his father. She became very famous and ended up running the family workshop, where she trained many other women. He died very young, at the age of 27, but despite being active for only a decade he left a very extensive production.
This is one of his best works, a painting depicting a historical fact starring another woman of break and tears, the Roman Porcia Catonis,daughter of Cato and wife of Marcus June Brutus, one of which was charged to Julius Caesar. The story of the painting appears in the Lives of Pluto. Porcia suspected that her husband was hiding her plans about the conspiracy against Julius Caesar and to get him to trust her, he cut his thigh with a knife, making himself a much more serious wound than the scratch that Sirani has painted, since it caused him severe fevers. Holding the pain like a jabata, she waited a whole day to teach Brutus the wreck, showing her that women are as strong as men and that she would be able to keep it a secret even if they tortured her. Unsurprisingly, Brutus brought her up to date on the whole thing.
Although the painting was commissioned by wealthy sed merchant Simone Tassi, Sirani he hesd is more than likely to choose the subject, with which he was already claiming his trade. It's easy to make a comparison between Porcia's show of strength and the difficulties Sirani had to overcome in order to become famous in a male-led art world. Porcia holds the dagger and Sirani holds the brushes, attributes that were then typical of men, rejecting the traditional female spinning and knitting activities performed by the three women at the bottom of the painting. A full-rule feminist plea.
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