The Kitchenmaid 1725

Giuseppe Maria Crespi painted 'The Kitchenmaid' sometime in the early 1700s, during a period when the institutions and conventions of art-making were being renegotiated across Europe. The artist depicts a young woman in a domestic interior, performing a mundane task, which was highly unusual at a time when the art world largely consisted of religious and historical scenes, and portraits of the rich and powerful. Crespi was working in Bologna, a city whose art academy was one of the most progressive in Europe, and which had pioneered life drawing classes for women artists. In this context, the simple realism of Crespi’s genre painting can be understood as a quiet challenge to the conventions of the time. We can understand Crespi’s aims better by examining the social and institutional structures of the Italian art world. By researching its academies and the careers of the artists who succeeded in it, we can get a sense of the many other artists whose voices were excluded.