[.ca] Garzoni (ISBN 2909808742)

Remarkable Watercolors:
95 pages; 44 superb color illustrations (42 full page); 11 3/4" wide by 9 1/2" high by 3/4" thick; published in France; a must for any fine-art library! Anyone who loves visual art will be entranced by Giovanna Garzoni's magnificent watercolors of still life, depicting flowers, fruit, vegetables, herbs, insects, etc. which reveal elements and their surfaces to be painted with far greater authenticity than even trompe l'oeil. The eye delights not only in the sensitive, precise detail, but the powerful composition and design and the beautifully lyrical color. Giovanna Garzoni's astonishing work was exhibited recently at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. (2002). "Giovanna Garzoni was born in Ascoli Piceno, a town in the Marche region of Italy, which lies at the center and the east of the country. On both her father's and her mother's sides, she came from a family of minor Venetian artists and artisans . . . She had a precocious artistic disposition so that, in 1616, stating that she had been born with the century and was thus sixteen, she signed a well constructed Holy Family then, shortly afterwards, a Saint Andrew. These two paintings were done in the style of Palma Giovane, whose pupil she is thought to have been. But, at that time, a woman could not make a successful career out of large-scale oil paintings. So she turned to scientific illustrations, miniature portraits and calligraphy, the fields which were deemed suitable for a woman, since hey allowed her to work at home." Garzoni 's life is well documented in this book which offers English, German and French translations of the text. Garzoni's brief marriage encounter ended in annulment (her choice). She spent her life as a working artist who lived and worked for aristocratic patrons, Grand Dukes and Duchesses, at the time of the Medici and Barbarini, in in the various prestigious courts all over Italy and also for a brief time in France.