Virginia Vezzi o da Vezzo

(Velletri, 1601 - Prigi, 1638)

Oil on canvas

cm. 60,5x50. Framed

After moving to Rome with her family in 1611, Virginia immediately showed an excellent artistic aptitude, although her first training remains uncertain. It is certain that by 1622 she was living in Via Frattina, where the following year Simon Vouet, newly arrived in the city, also took residence, and shortly thereafter Virginia began to frequent his workshop, becoming his distinguished follower. In 1624 she was admitted to the Accademia di San Luca, among the few women to receive such public recognition in the seventeenth century, and in 1626 she married Vouet in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina. In 1627 the couple moved to Paris, where Virginia continued her activity as an artist and drawing teacher, repeatedly serving as a model in her husband’s works until her early death in 1638. The beautiful painting presented here may be considered a possible self-portrait, based on comparison both with Claude Mellan’s engraving of her likeness, executed in Rome in 1626, and with the drawing portraying her made in 1636 by her pupil Marie Metezeau, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Rennes.