Caterina Ginnasi [SEP] place of birth
Caterina Ginnasi
Caterina Ginnasi (1590 – 30 November 1660) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Rome.
Ginnasi was orphaned under a young age, and placed in the care of her uncle, Cardinal Domenico Ginnasi, who was the dean of the Holy College in Rome. He had arranged for her to marry a cousin, but she chose to remain single and dedicated herself to painting. She started training under the painter Gaspare Celio, and then under Giovanni Lanfranco. She was a contemporary
that once stood on the façade of the old palace.
The modern chapel inside this building contain the only identified works of Caterina Ginnasi, including the altarpiece of the "Martyrdom of St Lucy", and the lunette with a "Last Supper" in the sacristy. Among its funereal monument inscriptions, the one for Caterina harkens to a morbid post-reformation focus on the afterlife; the inscription can be translated as:
"Caterina Ginnasi, nephew of Cardinal Ginnasi, because of her fruitful virtue, mother of the