A groundbreaking reassessment of the Italian painter Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614), focusing for the first time on her erotic pictures, including a newly discovered work. This volume offers an unprecedented study of Fontana’s engagement with sensuality, power and patronage – reshaping our understanding of one of the most important female artists of the Renaissance.
 
Drawing together new findings and long-overlooked evidence, this book makes the case that Lavinia Fontana was a highly innovative artist, particularly in the field of erotic art. It highlights the crucial role played by her elite patrons and the sophisticated cultural circles in which she worked, and also offers a new history of the Aphrodite Kallipygia motif (‘Venus with the Beautiful Bottom’) – bringing together the relevant imagery and texts to trace its development and significance.
 
At its heart is a previously unknown painting depicting three female nudes. Unpublished and unstudied until now, the work demonstrates extraordinary finesse and technical precision. Its unusual support, which subtly reflects the viewer, heightens the painting’s sense of intimacy and invites a direct encounter with the figures – one of whom is identified as Maria de’ Medici, soon to be Queen of France. The book traces the far-reaching implications of this striking identification and the iconographic innovations the painting introduces. A second key work, Mars and Venus, is newly attributed to Fontana.