Active in: Florence
Alternate names: Suor (Sister) Plautilla Nelli

Biography

Sister PlautillaNelli, a nun, and self-taught, gained sufficient stature as an artist in her lifetime to come to the attention of Giorgio Vasari who, in his 1568 edition of his Vite praised Nelli’sdrawings (as equal to those of Prosperiza de’ Rossi) adding that her “diligence” resulted in works that “amazed” artists. Active her entire adult life in the (no longer extant) Dominican convent of Santa Caterina of Siena in the Piazza San Marco, Florence, Nelli maintained an active workshop, trained other nuns, served several times as prioress, while steadily decorating her church and convent with sacred images.

Nelli is the most important female representative of a tradition among Dominicans who supported their artist friars and nuns, including the 15th century Dominican Fra Angelico who embellished his monastery of San Marco, adjacent to Nelli’s convent. Jonathan Nelson notes (see bibliography) that by the time of Nelli’s death in 1588, her convent of Santa Caterina had a well-established reputation for producing paintings and terracotta sculptures. He credits Nelli with assuming the “mantle” of primary ‘image maker’ for the Dominicans, a position formerly held by Fra Bartolommeo (d. 1517) at the adjacent monastery of S Marco. Nelli’s role as principal artist is confirmed by the fact that she inherited the contents of Fra Bartolommeo’s workshop via her friend Fra Paolino (d. 1547). This remarkable legacy confirms that Fra Paolino had confidence in Plautilla’s abilities as an artist, as well as an interest in promoting the ongoing production of sacred art to support the spiritual needs of adherents to the Dominican belief system. Plautilla, at twenty-three, was thus provided with an abundance of source material from which to continue production of art works conforming to the Dominican Order’s devotional strictures. The 2,000 plus drawings, sketches, and other materials from Fra Bartolommeo and Fra Paolino remained in the possession of Plautilla’s convent until 1727 whereupon they were sold.

From Vasari’s Vite and surviving examples of Nelli’s work, we know that she supplied paintings for many parts of her convent including its refectory, the oratory, the work room, and various chapels in the church. Having seen her work in situ, Vasari credited Nelli with producing a larger oeuvre than other women artists noting her production of miniatures, altarpieces and devotional images both large and small. We also know that Nelli earned income for her convent with the sale of her works to other churches as well as private clients.

Nelli remains significant today for many reasons. She is the first woman artist from the Italian Renaissance from whom a significant body of works survives. She is the only woman artist known to have produced a Last Supper, linking her with the likes of Leonardo, Castagno, Perugino, and del Sarto, among others. She belongs to the handful of women artists recognized for her achievements in her own lifetime by Vasari, and she is among the few women artists of the period from whose hand not only paintings, but also drawings survive. She ran what is arguably the largest workshop of artist/nuns in Italy at that time. Moreover, despite her dependence on models provided by her Dominican artist predecessors, notably Fra Bartolommeo, Nelli was independent enough to add her own original voice and vision to her images, injecting a higher level of emotion into her Lamentation, for example, while giving her Last Supper numerous details she clearly must have noticed as a nun running her convent with dedicated efficiency: the creases in the carefully unfolded table cloth; the various kinds of breads the disciples ate; the intricate decoration of the pottery from which Christ and his disciples took their final meal. The highly unusual representation of salad and beans on the table relate to the traditional role of women in food preparation. The three vessels in Chinese porcelain, and the Venetian glassware shown nearby, probably reflect expensive gifts received by the convent. In the upper left corner, Nelli signed the work ‘Suor Plautilla/Orate Pro Pictora’ [Pray for the Painter], a female variation of the phrase used by Fra Bartolommeo.

Jonathan Nelson’s entry on Nelli for the Grove Dictionary of Art, points out that Nelli’s order (the Dominicans) encouraged the nuns’ artistry helping Nelli to thrive creatively, noting that of the thirty-seven 16th century Italian women artists recorded in contemporary texts, nearly a third were Dominican nuns. According to Fra Razzi, (see bibliography) Nelli taught a number of nuns to paint including Prudenza Cambi, Maria Ruggieri and Agata Traballesi.

Plautilla directed a workshop of nuns who followed a long-standing practice among medieval and Renaissance artists in terms of producing multiple copies of a given sacred subject. Such replication served purpose above and beyond assuring efficiency of production. A replica would retain the potential miracle working powers of the original; replicas catered to devotional practices that required specific visual elements, resulting in nearly identical works. Moreover, the possession of a sacred subject identical to a work known to belong to other members of a social group or religious confederacy likely reinforced a shared sense of community among the faithful, giving visual expression to essential elements of their commonly held religious beliefs. It is also very likely that the possession of a sacred subject made by an artist who was also a “religious,” a member of a religious order, augmented the sacred power of the work in the mind of its owner, while its origins from the hands of a woman, a nun, would doubtless have been recognized as exceptional in the Plautilla’s day.

Besides serving the nuns of her convent, we know from Vasari that Nelli provided works for private clients within Florence as well as for other churches outside the city. Given her convent’s connection to the Dominican St. Catherine of Siena, d. 1380, it is not surprising that Nelli and her workshop specialized in images of St. Catherine. Modern scholarship suggests Nelli may also have contributed to St. Catherine’s devotional cult that intensified during the lifetime of St. Catherine de’ Ricci (1522-1589, beatified 1732, canonized 1746), and considered a living saint during her lifetime. Active in the Domenican convent of St. Catherine in Prato, (see Navarro, bibliography below) Ricci may have inspired a number of images conflating St. Catherine of Siena with St. Catherine de’ Ricci. Nelli was also influenced by the teachings of that great (if ill fated) Dominican reformer, Savanarola, who was burned at the stake in 1498 but whose zealous piety remained a powerful legacy long after his death. Nelli’s sister Petronilla (a fellow nun in the convent) wrote a biography of Savanarola which she bequeathed to Nelli upon her death.

When Nelli’s convent closed in the early 19th century, the works preserved therein were scattered, stored away, and largely neglected and forgotten. Thanks to the efforts of the late Dr. Jane Fortune and the Advancing Women Artists Foundation which she established, a number of important works by Nelli have been rediscovered and carefully restored, and research on her accomplishments supported. [Heidi Gealt]

Selected Works