Juana Romani (Italian painter) 1867 - 1923
Giovanna Carolina Carlesimo, called Juana Romani, was born in Velletri, near Rome in Italy, but moved with her mother Marianna Schiavi and her stepfather Temistocle Romani to France as a child. She began her training as the pupil of Jean Jacques Henner before becoming a student of Roybet. Like Roybet, she chose historical and literary subjects and painted many portraits of young, mysterious women in costume. She particularly enjoyed accurately rendering the refined materials of Renaissance fabrics. She exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon beginning in 1888. Since 1903 she begins to have hallucinatory psychoses and was confined to a psychiatric hospital. She died there, forgotten, in 1923. Text courtesy Paolo Coronas and Gabriele Romani For more background information.
