Pray for the Paintress
Plautilla Nelli didn’t begin as Suor Plautilla.
She was born Pulisena Margherita into a Florentine merchant family. Plautilla was a name she adopted upon entering the Convent of Santa Caterina di Cafaggio at fourteen – a convent under the control of the Dominican friars of San Marco. It would be a name that quietly but firmly place her into the history of Italian art.
Like so many girls of the sixteenth century, this wasn’t simply a spiritual decision. Convents offered a practical solution: they avoided the cost of a dowry. Her sister followed her into the same space, becoming Suor Petronilla, and would later write a biography of Girolamo Savonarola, the man whose influence shaped the world they had entered. His mysticism ran through everything, not abstractly, but in the structure of daily life.
Work mattered. Discipline mattered. Idleness, above all, was to be avoided.
Savonarola actively promoted the creation of devotional images by religious women as a way of avoiding sloth. Art wasn’t about innovation, individuality, or even recognition. It was about function. Images were valued for their devotional effectiveness, their ability to move the viewer spiritually, rather than for stylistic or compositional originality.
A Studio Within Walls
Santa Caterina became a working artistic environment. Women were excluded from formal training, from guilds, from studying anatomy (especially the male nude), and from travelling for commissions. Here, they built something enclosed but functional: a studio system in all but name. Senior nuns likely designed and painted, while others assisted. They produced altarpieces, panel paintings, wood lunettes, book illustrations, illuminated manuscripts, and devotional objects.
It was spiritual labour, but it was also economic. After 1566, when the Tridentine decrees banned convents from seeking donations outside their walls, the sale of artwork became fundamental to survival.
Plautilla was at the centre of it. She ran a working studio within the convent, knew prominent male painters, and had wealthy patrons connected to the convent commissioning work directly. Giorgio Vasari, who mentioned very few women in his Lives, wrote:
“in the houses of gentlemen throughout Florence, there are so many pictures, that it would be tedious to attempt to speak of them all.”
Francesco Pitti even wrote that he would have paid any amount the nuns had asked for a work he received.
Learning Without Access
Plautilla is recognised as the first known female artist of Florence, and she got there without access to any of the systems that defined artistic training. She was self-taught, but not in isolation. She learned by copying. Agnolo Bronzino, Andrea del Sarto, and, most importantly, through the drawings of Fra Bartolomeo, which passed through Fra Paolino and were eventually left to “a nun who paints” in Santa Caterina.
Unusual for her time, Plautilla worked at scale: large altarpieces, expansive compositions, work that demanded space, both physically and intellectually. Her style is often described as simple, but that simplicity carries a strong, direct spirituality. Her figures are defined by their emotional clarity, particularly in their faces.
Plautilla signed her paintings. That alone is significant. It places her firmly among her contemporaries, asserting authorship in a space that rarely allowed women to claim it. But she did not sign her name.
Instead, she wrote: Orate Pro Pictora – Pray for the paintress.
It is both a request and a declaration. She names herself not through identity, but through action.
A CLOSER LOOK: The Last Supper
Basilica of santa maria novella, florence
Her Last Supper makes all this visible at once.
Stretching over seven metres, it is the first known depiction of the subject painted by a woman. Created for a Dominican convent in Florence, it reflects the world in which it was made.
Despite having just announced that one of the apostles will betray him, Christ sits calm and composed at the centre, haloed and dressed in red and blue, the traditional colours symbolising his divinity and humanity. Leaning against him is St John the Evangelist, the youngest apostle, whose closeness reflects devotion and trust.
Along the table, the apostles react with shock, questioning, and prayerful gestures. Yet one figure sits apart. Judas occupies a small stool in front of the table, his body turned slightly away. In his hand he holds a small bag, likely containing the thirty pieces of silver. His position disrupts the symmetry of the composition, marking him as separate from the group before the betrayal has even fully unfolded.
Symbols of the Eucharist appear across the table: bread for Christ’s body, wine for his blood, and a lamb placed before Christ, foreshadowing sacrifice. Unlike the dramatic interpretations of many of her male contemporaries, Nelli’s scene remains composed and devotional, suited to the quiet rhythm of convent life.
In the upper left corner, almost easy to miss, she leaves it again: Orate Pro Pictora.
What She Built
Plautilla Nelli didn’t have access to the systems that defined Renaissance art. She couldn’t join a guild, study anatomy, travel, or work in mixed workshops. But within the walls of Santa Caterina, she became part of an enclosed, female-led artistic environment, sustained by patronage and necessity. There, she produced work at scale and became central to both the spiritual and economic life of the convent. And to Florence.
And through it all, she didn’t ask to be remembered. Only to be prayed for.
