Barbara Longhi of Ravenna: 1552 - 1638

Barbara Longhi: “Unique paintings for their purity of line and soft brilliance of color.” Giorgio Vasari, Le vite (1568).

In sixteenth-century Ravenna, Barbara Longhi (1552–1638) is the first female painter to concentrate in her oeuvre on small devotional paintings associated with concepts of love and tenderness between the Mother of God and her Child, Christ (Madonna and Child). These Marian paintings reveal a fusion between physical motherly love and spiritual devotion and are steeped in the ...