Last Supper with Female Old Masters
Mixed, acrylic painting and color pencils
90 x 300 cm
2023
This work takes as a reference the painting "The Last Supper" (c. 1550) by the Italian painter Sister Plautilla Nelli (1524-1588), the first woman in the history of art to represent this theme. In the proposal, the artist has replaced the faces of Jesus Christ and the Twelve Apostles with the self-portraits of the Great Renaissance and Baroque Women Masters of Art History, to present them to the viewer from a position of sacralized authority. The work is also a tribute to the pioneering feminist artist Mary Beth Edelson (1933-2021), and her work "Some Living American Women Artists" (1972), a photographic collage based on Leonardo's "The Last Supper" (1495) in which she replaced the heads of Jesus Christ and the Apostles with the portraits of female artists of the time such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Yoko Ono or Louis Bourgeois.
From left to right, in the painting we can recognize: Mary Beale (1633-1699), Michaelina Wautier (1617-1689), Virginia da Vezzo (1601-1638), Clara Peeters (1594-1657), Giovanna Fratellini (1666-1731), Sofonisba Anguissola (1532- 1625), Catharina van Hemessen (1528-1588), Sister Plautilla Nelli (1524-1588), Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656), Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614), Marietta Robusti (1560-1590), Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665) and Judith Leyster (1609-1660).
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