Active in: Italy
Alternate names: Barbara Sirani Borgonini

Biography

The second of four children born to the painter Giovanni Andrea Sirani (1610–1670) and his wife Margherita Masini, Barbara Sirani was one of the three Sirani daughters who became professional painters in Bologna in the seventeenth century. She trained with her father and her sister Elisabetta (1638–1665). She married the musician Giovanni Francesco Borgognini in 1666 and later works are signed Barbara Sirani Borgonini.

Sirani found success as a painter of historical, Biblical, and mythological narratives, although she sometimes made portraits. Most of her surviving work consists of altarpieces made for churches in Bologna. Early in her career, she made copies of works by her sister Elisabetta. After the unexpected death of Elisabetta in 1665, Sirani made several posthumous and allegorical portraits of her; some are known through drawings, such as Death Disarming Virtue, now in the collection of the Uffizi Gallery. A portrait of Elisabetta painted on copper has been attributed to Sirani. She continued to paint until at least 1689, the date recorded on her altarpiece at Trebbo di Reno. Sirani died on February 18, 1692, at the age of fifty-one.

Selected Works