Antonietta Brandeis

Czech/Italian, 1848-1926

Antonietta Brandeis was a Czech artist who established a significant career in Italy as a painter of vedute, landscapes, genre scenes, portraits, and religious works. She first studied under Czech painter Karel Javůrek in Prague, then moved with her family to Venice, where she enrolled in the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts. At the Academy, she studied with Michelangelo Grigoletti, Domenico Bresolin, Napoleone Nani, Pompeo Molmenti, and Federico Moja, earning multiple honors in areas such as perspective, life drawing, and drawing of sculpture.

Brandeis’s output is most closely identified with detailed architectural scenes of Italian cities rendered with clarity and precision. She often exhibited under the name “Antonio Brandeis,” preferring to obscure her gender in a time when female artists were judged differently. During her career she also painted altarpieces and religious works, some of which survive in churches on the Croatian island of Korčula.

Later in life, Brandeis settled in Florence, where her legacy became intertwined with local institutions. In her will she bequeathed much of her work and sketchbooks to the Innocenti Institute in Florence, which still holds several of her paintings and archives. Today her works are preserved in both public and private collections in Italy and abroad, and her contributions are increasingly recognized by institutions aiming to recognize women artists.