Matilde Malenchini

Matilde Malenchini, née Meoni (3 December 1779, Livorno – 8 September 1858, Fiesole) was an Italian portrait and genre painter in the Academic style.

In 1796, she married Vincenzo Francesco Malenchini, a painter and musician. Although they soon separated, she retained his name for the rest of her life. In 1807, she entered the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, where she studied under the guidance of Pietro Benvenuti. During these years, for practice and for pay, she copied the works by old Italian and Dutch masters at the Uffizi Gallery. In 1811, she received a four-year annual stipend from Elisa Bonaparte to study in Rome at the "Pontificia Accademia romana delle belle arti di San Luca".

While there, she made the acquaintance of the French Governor of the Papal States, General François de Miollis, who was also an art collector. He eventually purchased eighteen of her works and helped her establish a studio in the convent of Trinità dei Monti. She focused on painting church interiors and worked with scholarship students from the Académie Française who were living at the Villa Medici. In 1815, she was named a "Professor of Merit" at the Accademia di San Luca.

She also met the Belgian writer, Louis de Potter, with whom she had a long and intense relationship. From 1817 to 1819, they both shared a home with the painter François-Joseph Navez. They attempted to obtain an annulment of her previous marriage by appealing to the Roman Curia, but their requests coincided with some scandalous trials involving monks and nuns, which made the Curia unusually cautious. To complicate matters, her husband, who supported the request, had problems with the police.

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