Barbara Longhi was born in Ravenna, Italy, in 1552. Her father, Luca Longhi was a Miniaturist and painter. Barbara was a person of the number of females artists from the Renaissance Era who acquired prominence on the account of their major cultural shifts, specially to Humanism, in the period. Pretty significantly less details are available about her lifestyle and is effective. Skillfully, she assisted her father in generating massive altarpieces. Most of her operates had a great deal of resemblance with that of her father. Out of her 15 paintings, 12 have Madonna and Boy or girl as the notion. A popular Italian painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari praised Barbara’s operates for their “purity of line and tender brilliance of shade.” Fond warmth involving Madonna and the toddler appreciably characterize these compositions. At that time, the artist, while perfectly recognized domestically, did not get any recognition outdoors her native place.
Most of the early will work of Longhi have been straightforward artworks that laid a lot more emphasis on linearity than modeling. She painted ‘St Catherine of Alexandria’ (1589) for the Monastery of Classe, Ravenna. This painting is thought of as Barbara’s self-portrait. In the following a long time, she commenced to use hues that were extra good. Moreover, she started off making use of a approach that was borrowed from painters these as Correggio and Parmigianino, in which a curtain was draped about a column with the sky or landscape in the backdrop. This is clearly noticed in one of her paintings termed the ‘Virgin and Kid with St John the Baptist’ (1595-1600). This gave the artist’s will work a special identification.
The painter also applied pyramidal composition as very well as the Sfumato Method in her artworks, which offer the glimpses of the designs of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. Just after 1600, Barbara Longhi shifted her focus to painting spiritual and devotional scenes in the position of total-determine artworks established in an architectural setup. This new design was a reflection of the solid spiritual concepts of the Counter Reformation process going on in society then. A single of her most sizeable devotional creations that is also an expression of the tips of the Counter Reformation is ‘The Virgin with Sleeping Child’ (1600-05). This painting concentrated on the near relation in between the viewer and the depicted figures, rather of Mannerism. Commenting on Barbara’s paintings, Germaine Greer mentioned, “Her output was significant, and her images, all little, are amazing for their purity of line and comfortable brilliance of colour depth and feeling that is captured in these paintings.” Barbara Longhi died in the 12 months 1638 but not prior to, she experienced designed a niche for herself by her one of a kind model and paintings.
