Lois B. and Michael K. Torf Gallery
September 9, 2023 – January 7, 2024

According to the Boston Museum of Fine Art’s website, the upcoming Strong Women in Renaissance Italy exhibition “explores female experience and agency in Renaissance Italy, bringing together approximately 100 works of art—mostly from the MFA’s own collection but including several key loans—that illuminate various facets of women’s lives, from the domestic and civic spheres to religious experience and devotional practice. Women were artists, patrons, collectors, writers, musicians, apothecaries, and active members of the workforce in many areas—for example, in convents, they participated in textile and manuscript production, education, medicine and botany. The exhibition highlights individual women such as the painter Sofonisba Anguissola, who served at the court of King Phillip II of Spain and painted more self-portraits than any other Italian Renaissance artist, male or female; and Isabella d’Este, one of the most influential patrons and collectors of her time. Representations of women in historical, religious and mythological contexts are explored as well, including images of the biblical heroine Judith, the saint Mary Magdalene and the sorceress Medea. Grouped in thematic sections, the objects on view include sculpture, paintings, maiolica vessels and plates, prints, manuscripts, printed books and textiles.”