FONTANA, Lavinia (1552-1614), daughter of Prospero (see below), was a painter of no little fame, especially in portraits. She was greatly employed by the ladies of Bologna, and, going thence to Rome, painted the likenesses of many illustrious personages, being under the particular patronage of the family (Buoncamρagni) of Pope Gregory XIII., who died in 1585. The Roman ladies, from the days of this pontiff to those of Paul V., elected in 1605, showed no less favour to Lavinia than their Bolognese sisters had done; and Paul V. was himself among her sitters. Some of her portraits, often lavishly paid for, have been attributed to Guido. In works of a different kind also she united care and delicacy with boldness. Among the chief of these are a Venus in the Berlin museum; the Virgin lifting a veil from the sleeping infant Christ, in the Escorial; and the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon. Her own portrait in youth—she was accounted very beautiful—was perhaps her masterpiece; it belongs to the Counts Zappi of Imola, the family into which Lavinia married. She is deemed on the whole a better painter than her father; from him naturally came her first instruction, but she gradually adopted the Caraccesque style, with strong quasi-Venetian colouring. She was elected into the Academy of Rome, and died in that city in 1614.

FONTANA, Prospero (1512-1597), a painter, was born in Bologna, and became a pupil of Innocenzo da Imola. He afterwards worked for Vasari and Pierino del Vaga. It was probably from Vasari that Fontana acquired a practice of offhand, self-displaying work. He undertook a multitude of commissions, and was so rapid that he painted, it is said, in a few weeks an entire hall in the Vitelli Palace at Città di Castello. Along with daring, he had fertility of combination, and in works of parade he attained a certain measure of success, although his drawing was incorrect, and his mannerism palpable. He belongs to the degenerate period of the Bolognese school, under the influence chiefly of the imitators of Raphael—Sabbatini, Sammachini, and Passerotti being three of his principal colleagues. His soundest successes were in portraiture, in which branch of art he stood so high that towards 1550 Michelangelo introduced him to Pope Julius III. as a portrait-painter; and he was pensioned by this pope, and remained at the pontifical court with the three successors of Julius. Here he lived on a grand scale, and figured as a sort of arbiter and oracle among his professional brethren. Returning to Bologna, he opened a school of art, in which he became the preceptor of Lodovico and Agostino Caracci; but these pupils, standing forth as reformers and innovators, finally extinguished the academy and the vogue of Fontana. His subjects were in the way of sacred and profane history and of fable. He has left a large quantity of work in Bologna, -—the picture of the Adoration of the Magi, in the Church of S. Maria delle Grazie, being considered his masterpiece— not unlike the style of Paul Veronese. His death took place in Rome in 1597.