Sure, she can play the virginal, but can she paint? That was the question of Giorgio Vasari, whose seminal art history marveled at the first Italian women to become professional artists.  Dr. James Magruder will look at how the first cohort of Italian female artists depicted themselves and some of the women around them, first as gentlewomen and increasingly as intellectuals.  Where Vasari positioned them as marvels of Nature, they depicted Nature to prove their full humanity, as well as full equality with their fathers, teachers, and husbands.