Colnaghi Foundation Journal 03 - Magazine - Page 132
130
Due donne virili: Laura Martinozzi, Angelica Kauffman, and a rediscovered drawing by Andrea Lanzani
Due donne virili: Laura Martinozzi, Angelica Kauffman, and a rediscovered drawing by Andrea Lanzani
Two years later she was immortalized by a hitherto
unidentified artist as she lay in state in the church San
Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. It is a delicate rendering,
evocative of her humility and piety, whilst blanketed
in a morbid peace. It could not be further from the
Baroque plaquette of her image in the Palazzo Ducale,
Sassuolo, bedecked in jewellery and lavish draperies
(fig. 3). Her life post-Modena, nevertheless, befitted her
status; she lived on 12,000 silver ducatone a year, along
with necessary trappings of wealth, including a fleet
of carriages for every circumstance.15 She continued to
surround herself with pious supporters: Santa Teresa
d’Avila was her protector, to whom she requested
intercession at the time of her death; and Lucrezia
Barberini, who had become an Ursuline sister, was
Fig. 3 / Unknown, Plaquette
with Profile of Laura
Martinozzi, gilded plaster,
Sassuolo, Palazzo Ducale.
Fig. 4 / Libro dei Defunti,
Rome, San Carlo alle
Quattro Fontane.
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at her deathbed. She died, aged forty-eight, at the
Ursuline convent in the via Vittoria, but was dressed
in a Trinitarian habit, with a cross appliqued on the
front of the habit, as she lay in state, in accordance
with the order of the church in which she lay. Laura
had envisaged herself dying in Modena, stipulating in
her will that she should be buried there. However, her
mother, Margherita had lived close to San Carlino in
Rome and was buried there, which explains this choice
of temporary interment.16 The Libro dei Defunti, clearly
details Martinozzi’s interment and her subsequent
exhumation eight years later, listed just below the entry
for her mother (fig. 4).17 Her corpse was retained at the
Salesian convent in Modena, until her burial in San
Vicenzo, the Este mausoleum.
