If we asked readers to name female painters, not many names would likely come up. Most would mention Frida Kahlo and Berthe Morisot, and some might also recall Dora Maar, Yayoi Kusama, or Paula Rego; Spaniards might remember Maruja Mallo, and those who have seen the respective films might think of Leonora Carrington and Margaret Keane.

All of these women have in common that they are contemporary; if we go back in time to the Modern Age, we might find Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Clara Peeters. But there have been female artists since prehistory, and one of the notable ones from Antiquity was the Greek Iaia of Cyzicus.

Cyzicus was a Greek city located in Mysia, the northwestern region of Anatolia that faced the Propontis, as the Sea of Marmara was called in ancient times (connecting the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles). The name of the city comes from the eponymous character who, according to Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, was king of the Doliones, those descendants of Poseidon who lived on a Phrygian island in that area and were freed from the threat of the Earth-born (six-armed giants) by Heracles when he arrived there on the ship Argo, captained by Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece.

Iaia paints her self-portrait using a mirror, work by Johann Georg Hiltensperger
Iaia paints her self-portrait using a mirror, work by Johann Georg Hiltensperger. Credit: Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons

It was actually a colony of Miletus disputed between Greeks and Persians, surrendered to the latter after the Ionian Revolt in 499 BC, and reclaimed by the Athenians in 411 BC, only to pass into Spartan hands thereafter.

After the death of Alexander the Great, it became linked by marriage to the Attalid dynasty of Pergamon and remained independent until the Mithridatic Wars, during which the Romans declared it Libera civitas (“free city”), expanding its borders to make it the most important city in that region along with Nicaea and Nicomedia.

Iaia lived precisely during the Roman era, specifically in the late Republic (in fact, she died in 27 BC, the same year Octavian became emperor).

Iaia (sometimes called Marcia in Rome) practising sculpture in an anonymous illustration from a 1450 French edition of Bocaccio's De mulieribus claris
Iaia (sometimes called Marcia in Rome) practising sculpture in an anonymous illustration from a 1450 French edition of Bocaccio’s De mulieribus claris. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

The truth is that we do not know much about her because in Antiquity, and especially in the Greco-Roman world, the social status of women was very low, and they received little attention, especially if they did not belong to the upper classes. It is supposed that she was born around 100 BC and, upon reaching a certain age, moved to Rome, possibly attracted by the demand for artists in the city.

Therefore, Iaia had already begun in pictorial art and probably also in sculpture. Later on, we will see that she also practiced encaustic painting (technique on ivory), although her great specialty was painting on panels; something that is practically unknown today because hardly any works on those supports by any Greek artist have been preserved: neither by Apelles, nor by Parrhasius, nor by Zeuxis, nor by Protogenes, while only some illustrated ceramic vases survive from Polygnotus. As can be deduced, nothing made by Iaia remains either.

Therefore, what we know about her art is thanks to documentary sources, and even then, there aren’t many. The main one is the Naturalis Historia by Pliny the Elder, written long after her death, in 77 AD.

Another version of Iaia (as Marcia) with her self-portrait, in this case from an edition of De mulieribus claris of 1403 illustrated by the Master of the Coronation of the Virgin
Another version of Iaia (as Marcia) with her self-portrait, in this case from an edition of De mulieribus claris of 1403 illustrated by the Master of the Coronation of the Virgin. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

In it, the Roman author cites her as one of the six great female painters of Antiquity, along with Timarete (daughter of the painter Micon, she was the first known in history, around the 5th century BC), Irene (like the previous one, daughter of a painter – Cratinus -, she lived in the 1st century AD), Aristarete (who was trained by her father, a potter named Nearchus), and Olympia (of whom we only know that she had a disciple named Autobulus).

We have mentioned six and only listed four (five, with Iaia). The sixth would be Calypso, but there are doubts about whether she was an artist or just a character (the eponymous nymph who detained Odysseus on her island in Homer’s Odyssey), painted by Iaia, as she is the only one Pliny mentions without any details about her work or relatives. Additionally, her name appears as Calypso senem, which could mean that she painted Old Age but could also be a corruption of the Latin accusative Calypsonem (which would demonstrate her status as a mere subject herself).

In any case, let’s return to Iaia, whom Boccaccio calls Marcia Severa in his work De mulieribus claris (published in 1362), probably confusing her with one of the three Roman vestal virgins who were prosecuted between 115 and 113 BC. They were accused of breaking their vows of chastity with Lucius Veturius and his friends, denounced by a slave to whom they had not granted the promised manumission for helping them. The other two were Emilia and Licinia, all ending up condemned to capital punishment; they were buried alive.

Iaia as Marcia Varronis, appears in this German woodcut illustrating a 1474 edition of <em>De mulieribus claris</em>
Iaia as Marcia Varronis, appears in this German woodcut illustrating a 1474 edition of De mulieribus claris. Credit: kladcat / Wikimedia Commons

Iaia had nothing to do, then, with Marcia, despite Boccaccio also giving her the surname Varron because he explains that she was in Rome during the youth of Marcus Terentius Varro, who was Pompey’s right-hand man during the civil war and was pardoned by Julius Caesar, appointing him director of public libraries (later he fell out of favor with Mark Antony, but was reinstated by Octavian and then devoted himself solely to writing).

Insisting on her perpetua virgo (perpetual virginity, also highlighted by the medieval Venetian writer Christine de Pizan in her book La cité des dames), perhaps because she belonged to some cult or priesthood that required it, he adds that she never painted men and remained single all her life, so she had no descendants.

Her forte was painting, which she not only handled skillfully but also quickly: “No one had a faster hand than her in painting” says Pliny, comparing her to the time male artists like Sopolus or Dionysius took, which allowed her to charge more for the commissions she received (mostly from patrician women).

Yet another version of Iaia painting her self-portrait with a mirror: in an edition of Bocaccio's book of 1473
Yet another version of Iaia painting her self-portrait with a mirror: in an edition of Bocaccio’s book of 1473. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

The fact is that we do not know exactly what she painted, beyond later references to a large panel she left in Neapolis (Naples), a self-portrait made using a mirror (the first female one known in history), and a painting of an old woman.

Pliny and Boccaccio testify that Iaia used the cestrum, a kind of chisel or spatula with which she practiced encaustic painting, a technique Vitruvius describes from the same period (“one must apply a layer of hot wax over the painting and then polish it with very dry linen cloths”), although by then it was considered somewhat outdated.

The famous Fayum mummy portraits are done this way, although on wood (in fact, these are portraits of the deceased on their own sarcophagi), while she did it on ivory.

In short, we can add another woman to the list of artists we mentioned at the beginning. It’s a pity we cannot see her work.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on May 31, 2024: Iaia de Cícico, la pintora griega de la Antigüedad autora del primer autorretrato femenino del que hay noticia

Sources

Plinio el Viejo, Historia natural | Giovanni Bocaccio, De las mujeres ilustres en romance | Peter H. O’Brien, Iaia (fl. c. 100 bce) (en encyclopedia.com) | Frances Borzello, Seeing ourselves. Women’s self-portraits | Anthony Corbeil, A new painting of Calypso in Pliny the Elder | Wikipedia

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