Violante Beatrice Siries
Violante Beatrice Siries was an Italian painter. She was born in Florence and studied under Hyacinthe Rigaud and François Boucher in Paris from 1726. Returning later to Florence she married Giuseppe Cerroti and continued her artistic studies under Conti.
Siries was talented in several genres, but established herself as a famous portraitist. She succeeded in gaining the patronage of the Medici family and their financial partners the Gondi family in Florence after the death of Giovanna Fratellini and travelled to Rome and Vienna to execute commissions.
Her most ambitious work was a fourteen figure family group of the emperor Charles VI, the father of Maria Theresa, and three of her self-portraits are preserved in the Uffizi Gallery. In later life Siries became a respected teacher and her pupils included Anna Bacherini Piattoli.
At least one of her self-portraits is part of the Uffizi Gallery's collection. She is one of the artists whose art is being worked on being restored by the Advancing Women Artists Foundation. She was also mentioned in Jane Fortune's book Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence, which discusses female Florentine artists.
