Antonietta Brandeis

Antoinetta Brandeis (1848–1926)

Antonietta Brandeis (also known as Antonie Brandeisova and Antonio Brandeis) (1848–1926), was a Czech-born Italianlandscape, genre and portrait painter, as well as a painter of religious subjects for altarpieces.

She was born on January 13, 1848, in Miskovice (near Kutná Hora) in Eastern Europe. The first bibliographical indication of Antonietta Brandeis dates from her teens, when she is mentioned as a pupil of the Czech artist Karel Javurek of Prague. After the death of Brandeis' father, her mother, Giuseppina Dravhozvall, married the Venetian Giovanni Nobile Scaramella; shortly afterward the family apparently moved to Venice. 

In the 1867 registry of the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts, Brandeis is listed as being enrolled as an art student. At this time, Brandeis would have been nineteen, and one of the first females to receive academic instruction in the fine arts in Italy. In fact, the Ministry granted women the legal right to instruction in the fine arts only in 1875, by which time Brandeis had finished her education at the Academy.

In 1876 and 1877 she exhibited three landscapes of Venice at the Promotrice Veneta, which sold to foreign collectors. In November 1877 Brandeis showed the large painting Palazzo Cavalli a Venezia at the exhibition of the Hungarian Fine Arts Society in Budapest. In both Florence and Budapest, Brandeis showed her work under the name “Antonio Brandeis”. The biographer De Gubernatis offers the following explanation for the change of name: “her first pictures received praise and criticism; she took the criticism, but when she was praised as a woman she was annoyed, and therefore exhibited under the name Antonio Brandeis.”

During the years 1878 to 1893 Brandeis painted and exhibited numerous works, primarily scenes of Venice, and although she resided chiefly in that city she also traveled and painted in Verona, Bologna, Florence, and Rome. As well as in Venice and Florence, she exhibited in Turin, Milan, and Rome. In 1880 she was present at the International Exposition of Melbourne with three paintings: Palazzo Cavalli, A Balcony in Venice and The Buranella- native of Burano Island near Venice.

On October 27th 1897 at the age of 49, Brandeis married the Venetian Antonio Zamboni, a knight and officer of the Italian Crown and knight of the Order of SS. Maurizio and Lazzaro. The couple continued to reside in Venice and Brandeis continued to show at Italian exhibitions in Venice, Florence, and Rome although more sporadically and with fewer works than before. Although she participated in the International Exposition of Watercolourists in Rome in 1906 with a “Study” and in the Società Promotrice delle Belle Arti in Florence in 1907 and 1908 with two oil paintings, De Gubernatis quotes Brandeis as saying in 1906, that even though she resides in Venice “I am a foreigner, and for some time I have not taken part in Italian Exhibitions, sending all my paintings to London. Antonio Zamboni died 11 March 1909 and from then on, Brandeis resided primarily in her Florentine home on Via Mannelli, continuing to paint in her studio there until her death on March 20th 1926.

According to her last will and testament, dated 1 January 1922, and preserved in the archives of the Innocenti Foundling Hospital in Florence, Brandeis left the bulk of her worldly goods to the orphanage, including her sketchbooks and her works of art still in her possession, except for four paintings, for which she left money to be well framed and given to the Modern Art Gallery of the Pitti Palace. Laura Capella, daughter of her dear friend and fellow artist Giulia Capella, painted the portrait of Brandeis in 1924 which hangs in the Benefactors Room of the Innocenti Institute. Most of Brandeis' belongings, including her artworks, were sold at public auction in December of 1926, but the Innocenti Institute still conserves at least twelve of her oil paintings, as well as numerous watercolors and sketchbooks, which provide much information about the artists painting technique.

As well as at the Innocenti Institute and the Gallery of Modern Art at the Pitti Palace in Florence, Antonietta Brandeis’ works are in private collections in many parts of the world. Her works can also be found at the University of Virginia Art Museum, the Gloucester City Museum and Art Gallery, the Revoltella Museum in Trieste, and on the island of Korcula, Croatia (in the chapel of St. Luke in the Korcula town cemetery, the Cathedral of Korcula, St. Vitus Church in Blato and the parish church of Smokvica).