Amid the silence of the cloisters in sixteenth-century Florence, Plautilla Nelli emerges not only as the first known female Renaissance painter of the city but also as a visionary who transformed religious reclusion into a space of artistic power; born into a wealthy Florentine family and cloistered at fourteen in the convent of Santa Caterina, she absorbed the theological fire of Savonarola and trained herself by copying the works of Fra Bartolomeo, whose sketches she inherited, developing a style marked by emotional intensity, devotional clarity and feminine subtlety, evident in pieces such as Lamentation with the Saints, Dolorosa, or her exceptional The Last Supper, a seven-meter masterpiece that defied the limits imposed on women by painting a theme traditionally monopolized by men; her figures, often described as having “feminine features” due to her lack of access to male anatomical studies, reveal instead a deliberate aesthetic that privileges affect over anatomy, rendering her Christ and apostles not as static icons but as psychologically expressive presences; Nelli established an all-female workshop inside her convent, where she trained other nuns and fulfilled numerous commissions from wealthy Florentine patrons, gaining recognition even from Vasari, who mentioned her in his Lives, a rare honor for a woman; after centuries of obscurity, her Last Supper—once neglected and nearly lost—was restored thanks to the Advancing Women Artists Foundation, and now hangs in Santa Maria Novella, a vivid symbol of how cloistered creativity can transcend the walls that once confined it, reclaiming a rightful place in the visual legacy of the Renaissance.
