Unfinished: The Inspired Life of Elisabetta Sirani

They called her La Maestra.

Elisabetta Sirani was a talented and prolific artist in Seventeenth Century Italy. Trained by her father, she was running his studio by the time she was sixteen and earned her first official commission the following year. Over her short career she produced more than 200 paintings, etchings, and prints, had patrons that included royalty and noble Italian families, and founded one of the first art schools in Europe exclusively for women. When she died aged only 27 of a mysterious ailment, all of Bologna mourned.

Her fame has been eclipsed by her male counterparts, and her work often claimed as theirs. Doubted, scorned, admired, copied, and misunderstood, this is her story.