Plautilla Nelli: Florence’s Forgotten Renaissance Artist

In sixteenth-century Florence, where art was a male domain, a fourteen-year-old girl from a wealthy merchant family crossed the threshold of a Dominican convent. No one expected that Pulisena Margherita Nelli, who took the religious name Plautilla, would become the first known female painter of Renaissance Florence and the creator of works that for centuries were attributed to male artists.

A Merchant’s Daughter in an Artist’s Habit

The Nelli family belonged to Florence’s mercantile elite. Plautilla’s father, Piero di Luca Nelli, ran a profitable textile business, and the family’s roots traced back to Tuscany’s Mugello valley, also the birthplace of the Medici. To this day, Florence’s Via del Canto de’ Nelli recalls the family, and the New Sacristy of the San Lorenzo church was built on the site of their former estates.

At the time, about half of educated girls entered convents because their families couldn’t afford suitable dowries. For young Pulisena, however, the Santa Caterina di Cafaggio convent turned out not to be a prison, but a gateway to an artistic career inaccessible to secular women. The institution was run by Dominicans from San Marco, under the influence of Girolamo Savonarola, who encouraged nuns to paint and draw as acts of devotion and protection against idleness.

Plautilla never received formal artistic training. She was self-taught, copying the works of the era’s greatest masters, including Agnolo Bronzino and Andrea del Sarto. Most crucial, however, was the legacy of Fra Bartolomeo, whose drawings came to the convent via his pupil, Fra Paolino. He handed them to „a nun who paints,” as sources described her. That nun was Plautilla herself.

A Signature in a Man’s World

Plautilla Nelli signed her works with an unusual inscription: Pray for the Paintress. This was more than a signature. It was a manifesto for the presence of women in a male-dominated art world. The nun didn’t hide her gender but instead highlighted it deliberately.

Giorgio Vasari, the most important sixteenth-century art historian, mentioned her in his famous Lives, making her one of the very few women included in that monumental work. He wrote that so many of her paintings adorned the homes of Florence’s nobility, listing them would be too tedious—a testament to her popularity during her lifetime.

Nelli attracted numerous patrons, including women, creating both large-scale paintings and miniatures. She served three times as prioress of her convent, all while training future generations of nun-painters. The Dominican Fra’ Serafino Razzi named six of her students, who continued the tradition of painting in the convent.

Nelli’s Ambitions

Most nun-artists confined themselves to miniatures, textiles, or small sculptures in terracotta and wood. Plautilla Nelli broke with this convention spectacularly. Her Last Supper, painted in the 1560s, measures seven meters long and two meters high. It is the only work she signed with her full name.

Florence has the world’s richest tradition of Last Supper depictions. Nelli was the first woman to tackle this subject, placing herself alongside Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, and Domenico Ghirlandaio.

The painting underwent four years of painstaking restoration and returned in October 2019 to exhibition at the museum next to the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, where it can be admired opposite a work by Alessandro Allori depicting the same scene.

Critics have noted that the male figures in Nelli’s paintings have feminine features. This resulted from a simple fact: her religious vows forbade her from studying the nude male body. What would have been a major obstacle for many artists, Nelli turned into a signature element of her style.

Emotion Etched in Paint

What sets Plautilla Nelli’s paintings apart from those of her influences is the extraordinary emotional intensity of her figures. Her Lamentation with Saints, now in the San Marco Museum, depicts the stark pain surrounding Christ’s death through reddened eyes and visible tears on the faces of women. Such direct emotional expression was unheard-of in the art of the era.

Author Jane Fortune described this painting as an example of Nelli’s deep understanding of human suffering, which she skillfully transferred onto canvas. Perhaps life in the cloister, far from secular distractions, enabled her to observe human emotions more keenly and depict them more truthfully. The Lamentation was restored in 2006, leading to the rediscovery of this forgotten artist’s legacy.

Among Nelli’s other preserved works are Saint Catherine Receiving the Stigmata and Saint Dominic Receiving the Rosary, displayed at the Andrea del Sarto Last Supper Museum in San Salvi. Her Crucifixion can be seen at the Certosa di Galluzzo monastery near Florence, and Pentecost at the Basilica of San Domenico in Perugia. The Uffizi Gallery holds nine of her drawings, restored in 2007, including Bust of a Young Woman and Head of a Youth.

Forgotten and Rediscovered

For centuries, Plautilla Nelli remained nearly forgotten. Her achievement—entering the elite circle of monumental religious painters—faded from historical memory. Only recent research and restorations have restored her rightful place in art history.

Nelli’s story shows how many women’s talents may have been lost in a world that systematically limited their opportunities. Paradoxically, her convent gave her the space for growth that a secular woman could never have received. Within those cloistered walls, she painted, taught, and created works that have endured for five centuries.

Sister Plautilla died in 1588, leaving behind a legacy that is only now being fully appreciated. Her signature, Pray for the Paintress, proved prophetic. After centuries of oblivion, her art has finally received the attention, research, and admiration it always deserved.