Su un equivoco storiografico: Ginevra Cantofoli e Luigi Gentile

By relying on new documentary material, a review of sources and some critical insights, this chapter sheds new light on the female painter Ginevra Cantofoli, inscribing her in the context of seventeenth-century Bolognese painting. This paper first dwells on the spread of art academies in Bologna, focusing on the “Cenacolo” of Elisabetta Sirani, an entity comparable, while maintaining its own specificity, to the corresponding male. The second section re-examines Cantofoli's production starting from the only painting, recently emerged, that is with certainty referable to her, through which we will try to demonstrate how a group of works previously attributed to her should instead belong to the Flemish painter Luigi Gentile.