Plautilla Nelli: The Complete Story
Plautilla Nelli, 1524 to 1588, was the first known woman painter of Florence. A self taught Dominican nun, she ran a convent workshop of women and made the only Last Supper known to be painted by a woman in the Renaissance.
For centuries her name slipped out of the story of Florentine art. It is being put back. Here is who she was.
The first woman painter of Florence
Nelli was born into a well off Florentine family and entered the convent of Santa Caterina as a teenager. There she taught herself to paint.
The art historian Giorgio Vasari, who chronicled the great masters, noted her by name. That alone tells you she was known in her own day.
A nun who ran a workshop
Inside the convent, Nelli led a workshop of other nuns who painted and sold devotional works. She was effectively the head of a small business in an age that barred women from the painters' guild.
Demand was real. Her works went into convents, churches and private homes across Tuscany.
The Last Supper no one expected
Her boldest work is a Last Supper almost seven metres wide, with life sized apostles. No other woman of the Renaissance is known to have attempted the subject at that scale.
Hidden for years and badly aged, it was restored and unveiled in 2019 at the basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Visitors can now stand before it.
Painting without the rules men had
Women were forbidden to study anatomy or the male nude. Nelli worked around that, copying and adapting from prints and from masters she admired.
Her style is tender and devotional, rooted in the warm Renaissance of Florence. She worked in oil and tempera rather than grand fresco.
Three works that define her
First, the Last Supper, her monumental statement and the reason she is back in the spotlight.
Second, the Lamentation with Saints, a grieving scene now in the museum of San Marco.
Third, her Saint Catherine works, the kind of intimate devotional image her workshop made again and again.
The myth of the minor nun
Nelli is often filed as a pious amateur. The scale and ambition of her Last Supper say otherwise.
Her near disappearance was not about talent. It was about who gets remembered. A foundation devoted to women artists in Florence has spent years restoring and showing her again.
Where her Last Supper hangs
Her restored Last Supper is at Santa Maria Novella in Florence. The Uffizi holds and has exhibited her work too.
What time nearly erased
Much of Nelli’s output is lost or hidden under other names, the fate of many women who worked outside the guild.
A Florence foundation devoted to women artists spent years tracing and restoring her work, including the long cleaning of her Last Supper. Each new attribution adds a little more to a story that was almost deleted.
Plautilla Nelli, questions readers ask
When was Plautilla Nelli born? In 1524 in Florence. She died there in 1588.
Why does she matter? She is the first known woman painter of Florence and led a workshop of nuns.
What is her most famous work? A nearly seven metre Last Supper, the only one known by a Renaissance woman.
Did she have training? No. She was self taught, barred from the guild and from studying anatomy.
Where can I see her work? Santa Maria Novella and the Uffizi in Florence.
If Nelli pulled you in, you will love these too:
The Old Masters Were Women Too, the talents the textbooks left out.
10 Women Artists You Need to Know, a guided tour of overlooked greats.
The complete story of Botticelli, the Florence she painted in.