In 16th-century Italy, a woman was more likely to be married off to settle a land dispute than become an acclaimed artist.
But a new exhibition in regional Victoria highlights not one but three female Italian artists who, 400 years ago, smashed the glass ceiling and achieved international fame for their art.
However, few would know their names today because at some point after Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana and Artemisia Gentileschi became famous, their artistic careers were written out of history.
Hamilton Gallery's show Emerging From Darkness: Faith, Emotion and The Body in The Baroque is the latest in a growing number of exhibitions aiming to shine a light on the many female artists whose extraordinary contributions have been overlooked.
Not one woman
When National Gallery of Victoria curator of international art Laurie Benson was a high school student, there were two standard art history textbooks to read — Ernst Gombrich's The Story Of Art and Anthony and HW Janson's A History Of Art.
"There are no women in either of those books — not one — and that's insane," Mr Benson said.
"But that's the story of art, and it's still in print; I mean, you can still buy those books."
Mr Benson is the co-curator of Emerging From Darkness, which features artworks in the context of a dramatic change in painting style that occurred in the late 1500s, when Mannerism gave way to the more naturalistic Baroque style.
Artists Sofonisba, Lavinia and Artemisia were there for the historic change and, by pursuing professional artistic careers, made history themselves.
Sofonisba, the exception
A biography recorded by Raffaele Soprani in 1674 depicts Sofonisba Anguissola as the darling of the art world, a woman who led a charmed and long life of adoration and abundant wealth, and who was acutely aware of her own merits.
She lived to be 93, and was a well-documented influence on the next generation of Italian artists.
But in 1532 when Sofonisba was born, there were no art schools — artists trained with a master, residing in the living quarters attached to his workshop.
La Trobe University art historian Dr Lisa Beaven — who is curating the exhibition with Mr Benson and Ian Brilley of the Hamilton Gallery, along with Dr David Marshall from the University of Melbourne — said this apprenticeship system was unthinkable for women.
"A women's virtue was important, you couldn't go off and live in a strange man's house, along with a whole lot of other male apprentices. It just wasn't possible," Dr Beaven said.
"Female artists were either married to a painter or they were the daughter of a painter as well," she said.
"And the only exception is actually Sofonisba."
But 400 years ago, in a time when a woman's virtue was her worth and currency, Sofonisba and her sister Elena did what no Italian woman had done — they became apprentices to a male artist outside of their family.
This extraordinary arrangement was thanks to their father Amicare Anguissola, an open-minded and cultured nobleman who counted Michelangelo among his friends, and sent the girls to artist Bernardino Campi's workshop for three years.
Sofonisba showed particular talent and continued her training at a second workshop, as a pupil to the frescoe specialist Bernardino Gatti.
It was there, aged 19 and under Gatti's tutelage, that she sketched a quirky little drawing that lit a flame under her fledgling art career.
She went 1550s viral.
Sofonisba's 1554 meme
The charcoal sketch was for Michelangelo who, via her father, had challenged Sofonisba to master two of the most difficult human expressions — someone laughing and someone crying.
There were no cameras to freeze a moment and copy it, so Sofonisba teased her baby brother Asdrubale, made him cry, and sketched A Boy Bitten by a Crawfish.
Like a Renaissance version of a meme, the sketch tells a funny story of a common "life" moment (a child spitting the dummy).
Michelangelo, (the influencer) passed her sketch on to several noblemen, including the grand duke Cosimo de Medici, and it eventually travelled to the hands of artist and writer Giorgio Vasari, who placed the sketch in a book alongside others by esteemed masters.
This early-career acknowledgement gave Sofonisba the courage to pursue painting as a career, which she did until she was too old to see.
Paid in diamonds
Sofonisba became such a renowned portrait artist in her home town of Cremona that she was invited to the court of King Philip II of Spain, and employed as a lady-in-waiting to his third wife, Elizabeth of Valois.
While there, Sofonisba taught the king's child bride to paint.
She was also commissioned to paint several members of the royal family and was rewarded with extravagant gifts of jewels. Her portrait of the prince fetched a large diamond.
Over time, the king grew so fond of Sofonisba that he organised her marriage and provided her dowry.
Sofonisba and Rubens
In the Hamilton Gallery, Sofonisba's portrait of a bishop has an esteemed position alongside a Rubens.
Mr Benson says the two works were hung together because they are of equal excellence.
"[The Rubens] is a world-renowned painting, one of the best Rubens in the whole country," he said.
"It's been paired up with the Sofonisba portrait because Sofonisba Anguissola is principally a portrait painter and her portraits are extraordinary.
"You can just tell, looking at this picture, that this was painted by an extraordinary painter, because there's so much character, there's so much personality.
"And all women artists of this period, they're emerging out of centuries of prejudice against women artists," he said.
"So she really had to almost be better than the men in order to achieve any success."
Lavinia, a maverick
Lavinia Fontana was born in 1552 and, astonishingly for the times, soon became the main breadwinner in her family by selling her art.
In the Hamilton Gallery, Lavinia Fontana's work hangs next to a larger religious painting by her father, who taught her how to paint so that she could eventually take over his studio.
Mr Benson said her eventual professional success was contingent on her marriage to a sub-par artist.
"She married this mediocre painter called Gian Zappi," Mr Benson said.
He became her proxy manager, to circumnavigate laws that prohibited women from engaging in commerce.
"Women had almost no freedom whatsoever. Women couldn't enter into financial contracts and so her husband acted as her manager and he would have signed all the contracts on her behalf," Mr Benson said.
"And in a total gender-role reversal, he became the principal carer for their 11 children. She was practically back in the studio within days of giving birth."
Becoming Bologna's 'It girl'
Initially, Lavinia's clients were men, acquaintances of her father's, but she also became known for her religious paintings and, in 1584, was the first woman in Italy to work on an altarpiece.
In the second decade of her career, Lavinia strategically relocated her whole family and art studio into the heart of Bologna, close to the palaces, so she had only to step outside her door to be rubbing shoulders with potential clients.
In this instance, being a woman paid off.
Sixteenth-century decorum meant that even noblewomen would have been at risk of rumour and vilification if they spent hours sitting for a portrait painted by a man, but Lavinia carried no such risk.
She quickly became the "It girl" of Bologna, loved especially for her precision with details like intricate lace, fabric and jewellery — important marks of the latest fashion, and the sitter's social stature.
With razor-sharp business acumen, Lavinia would court the egos of her noble clients by making them godparents to her children, or naming daughters after them.
By the time Lavinia Fontana was in her 50s, she had worked her way to the top.
"She was internationally renowned. She was a much sought-after artist and she was pretty much ordered to Rome, to work for the pope as a court painter in the Vatican," Mr Benson said.
"That would have been a position that every artist working in Rome would have wanted to do. We're talking hundreds of really fantastic artists.
"So she was certainly respected," he said.
Though a successful artist, Lavinia died in her 60s and, tragically, only three of her 11 children made it to adulthood.
The rape of Artemisia
Born in 1593, Artemisia Gentileschi was working class and fought for steady income her entire life, often living from commission to commission, plagued by debts and unpaid art supply expenses.
When she was just 12 years old, Artemisia's mother died, leaving her with artist father, Orazio, who taught her to paint.
When Artemisia was 18, landscape painter Agostino Tassi was working with her father on a commission in the Quirinal Palace and was hired as her tutor.
Art historian Dr Beaven said Orazio did not know that Tassi had violent and criminal intent.
"In 1611, she was raped by Agostino Tassi, who ironically comes to her house to teach her perspective," she said.
During the violent rape, Artemisia fought back, scratching Tassi's face and gouging him.
"Once it was over, she picks up a dagger and throws it at him," Dr Beaven said.
Artemisia later stood at trial against Tassi, but the trial was not for the offence of rape, instead it was "about her father Orazio Gentileschi taking Agostino Tassi to trial to force him to marry Artemesia," Dr Beaven said.
"In those days, that's how they saw [rape] — as actually having ruined her marriageability."
Immediately after the trial, Artemisia married a Florentine man and embarked on her artistic career in her new city.
Dr Beaven said Artemesia became known for her skilled renditions of the female form and faces, and was often commissioned to paint biblical stories of heroic women, such as Saint Catherine and the rape of Lucretia.
"I think everyone has agreed that Artemisia brings another dimension to the strong female," she said.
Religious commissions took her to Rome, Florence, Venice and Naples, while later in life she was invited to London by King Charles I.
Lucretia, as never before
For Dr Beaven, Artemisia Gentileschi's large work depicting legendary heroine Lucretia is one of the most treasured in the room.
"There are no paintings by Gentileschi in public collections in Australia," Dr Beaven said.
"This particular painting has been seen by very few people since it was painted, and has never been seen [before] in Australia."
It tells the story of Lucretia's rape and subsequent suicide, which sparked a rebellion and ultimately resulted in the liberation of Rome and the foundation of the Roman Empire.
Artemisia painted The suicide of Lucretia four times throughout her life.
Dr Beaven says that like the other famed yet forgotten female masters, Artemisia is long overdue for a return to the spotlight.
"In the case of Artemisia, she was enormously famous in the 17th century," she said.
"She was a celebrity figure, then she was almost completely forgotten and had to be rediscovered in the 20th century."
These days, Artemisia is one of the most documented Baroque female artists. She was the first woman to be allowed to join the Academy of the Arts of Drawing in Florence and is considered a master painter of the 17th century.
"We are in a moment where paintings by women are being taken out of the storerooms of art galleries all around the world, and it's really interesting, there are actually far more than we realised," Dr Beaven said.
The Emerging From Darkness exhibition is on display at the Hamilton Gallery until April 14.