Joséphine Calamatta

Joséphine Calamatta (March 1, 1817 – December 10, 1893) was a French painter and engraver who painted portraits as well as symbolistic, religious and allegorical pictures.

Her own pictorial voice featured striking and strong use of colour, and was reminiscent of Italian Renaissance art and paintings of the Spanish Baroque painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

As her father travelled often because of his work as perpetual secretary of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and his own research, her early education and that of her only sister[2] were left in the hands of their pious mother.

In 1839, Joséphine, at the age of 16, became engaged to the Italian painter and engraver, Luigi Calamatta (1802–1869), whom she had met whilst he was collaborating in Paris with his friend Ingres.

Today, his portrait painted by Joséphine hangs in the Galleria di Arte Moderna in Palazzo Pitti in Florence.

Now, free of family ties, Joséphine settled in Paris where she barely supported herself with her painting and where she failed to become recognized for her considerable talent.

Joséphine did not attend the wedding as it is probable that she did not approve of the difference in the ages of the two fiancées nor that the young couple would live with Maurice's mother who exercised a strong hold over him.

Her gravestone simply reads 'Anne Joséphine Cécile Raoul Rochette, widow Calamatta, in religion Sister Marie-Joseph of Mercy.

In the same document, she stated that she bitterly regretted the mistakes she had made in her past and the bad example she set asking her daughter and her family to forgive her from the bottom of her heart.