By Lena Ann Rimmer (Dickinson College)
On Monday, February 24th, 2025, Syracuse University Florence and the Advancing Women Artists Foundation, promoted by Calliope Arts, hosted a Wikipedia Editing Marathon at the Villa Rossa. The event was open to graduate and undergraduate students and the focus was to edit existing Wikipedia articles and write new articles on Wikipedia concerning female artists who were members of the Accademia dell’Arte di Disegno in Florence.
Although the presence of these women artists has been recorded at some level, there is a lack of scholarship on many of them, even on basic databases like Wikipedia. These artists were members of the Accademia and received commissions, sometimes becoming very successful. Getting even minimal information on these women on Wikipedia opens a conversation about their presence and careers, even inspiring further research and interest by scholars. Advancing Women Artists (AWA) works on restoring artworks by female artists while also creating more scholarship on these women to establish their presence in the digital world.
During this event groups of Syracuse Florence staff and students worked on both creating new pages for female artists and expanding existing pages. The event began with a presentation on the current AWA restoration project, which centers around the female artist, Violante Beatrice Siries. Siries was an established portraitist in 18th-century Florence, even gaining patronage by members of the Medici family. She was taught by other artists in addition to attending the Accademia, and later, she taught other female artists.
Paintings done by Violante were discovered in a private Prior’s Chapel in the monastery of the Certosa di Firenze. One of these paintings depicts a post-Annunciation reading Madonna and the other a portrait of Saint Catherine. The paintings were placed here with a third painting depicting Saint Agnes that is being restored alongside the other two. Although originally attributed to Violante during the process of restoration, it has been discovered that the painting is not by Violante. Violante has been the subject of previous AWA restoration projects, and there was existing information including a Wikipedia page on her. However, there is always space to expand and improve.
After a brief editing tutorial, attending staff and students split into smaller groups and got to work. During the editing marathon, three groups of Syracuse students and faculty worked on collecting information for three different female artists into new and existing Wikipedia pages. This process involves taking information from a source and paraphrasing it into an article as opposed to directly quoting or writing one’s own thoughts and ideas. Everything on Wikipedia has to be tied back to a reputable source in an accurate way, which at times can be a tedious writing process. Through Wikipedia pages, writers can directly link other pages mentioned, for example, other artists, locations, and cultural and historical events. This connection pushes them as recommended to readers which will hopefully allow the public to become more knowledgeable on these often-overlooked female artists. With these articles, these artists do have a presence and even a better chance of additional research.
One group included members of the Italian and art history departments who worked with students on translating the Italian version of Violante Siries’ page onto the smaller English version of her Wikipedia page. This involved translating sentences and then cross-referencing sources to fit them into the English page. Frequently, Italian artists will have more information accessible in Italian sources, which leads to pages being written in Italian. Wikipedia publishes the page only in the language it is written. In this case, this meant Violante Siries had a much longer Italian Wikipedia page compared to her English page. While this ensures the information on each page will be clear as opposed to auto-translated, it can be limiting for readers.
Another group included AWA art restorer and Syracuse alumnae Elizabeth Wicks. With this direct connection to past AWA projects, Wicks and her group were able to help make edits to other existing female artists’ pages, all of whom AWA has restored works for previously. The third group began the process of creating a new Wikipedia page for the artist Carlotta Lenzoni De’Medici. Although there was some existing information online, collecting the sources onto one Wikipedia page can make research easier in the future or possibly inspire new research into the life and career of the artist. The process of creating a new Wikipedia page is more complicated than editing an existing page and requires additional approval; as of March 2025, this page is still not live.
Although the event was only two short hours, the group was able to accomplish a lot. This is nowhere near the end of this project, and readers and historians should be aware that, although the presence of women artists was not always publicized, they existed. From the list of female artists that were members of the Accademia dell’Arte di Disegno, several do not have Wikipedia pages or easily accessible information. These were artists and teachers, and although not nearly as common as male artists, their presence needs to be recorded.