Elisabetta Sirani is a woman, a painter and, even before all this, a person who lived in the seventeenth century.
Raised in her father’s workshop, Giovanni Andrea Sirani, also a painter, Elisabetta decided she wanted to be a painter. At first she began as an apprentice, then she became an artist of important fame.
What Elisabetta does that is particular – and so important as to break the customs and fashions of the time, especially in reference to the female world – is to put her signature on her works, that is, on her paintings or, better, on her creatures.
She was the first woman to sign her paintings: sometimes she even portrayed herself with small images, as if they were her signature.
Yes: her signature, her name, her, her person.
Elisabetta paved the way for other painters, she gave other women the opportunity to establish themselves in this world – that of painting and art – no longer as minor presences, but as protagonists of the major arts.
Like poetry. Like painting, in fact.
All this is told in a show staged by Martina Vianovi, entitled Elisabetta’s signature.
Martina Vianovi wrote it and plays it.
He wrote it, interprets it and puts it before our eyes: sometimes with kindness, sometimes calmly, other times with a very strong rhythm.
Other times, he simply slaps it in our face and that’s it.
The words of this playwright and actress reach inside, they arrive straight, they are imprinted in your mind.
And if you are a woman, they leave a deep mark, they delve into the many years in which women were not even able to sign their names.
And if you are a man, they rest somewhere in your memory, where perhaps you can understand the history from which we come.
This is a show within a show: music, lights, words.
A story told by a single person, just as it was a single person – a single woman – who initially signed it.
A signature.
What we call a logo today.
What tells about us, like a brand, a recognizable sign, a gesture that represents us.
It is the sign of an identity, visible or invisible, but always personal.
Today that sign is called a “tag”, it transforms into a name written under a photo, into a quote, into a shared image – often without even asking permission.
The name: the name of a person, the name of a woman, the name of a person’s identity.
Even before being a selfie.
Even before being a video, an audio, a photo in a message.
Even before being thrown to social media.
Even before being exposed – perhaps for having had an intimate or sexual relationship with a man, or with whoever you want.
A signature.
Elisabetta Sirani not only inaugurated what today we would call property rights or royalties to be deposited: she established the importance of the person, of identity.
And not recognizing this identity is a violation.
Taking it for granted is a violation.
Putting your signature on a painting, on a letter, on anything else, means putting a piece of yourself into it.
And Martina tells us this – and Elisabetta tells it to us together.
To whom, among other things, a crater on Venus was dedicated.
And so Elizabeth is on Venus: perhaps signing on another planet.
Who knows, maybe even up there you can proudly carry your identity, whatever it may be.
