Jane Fortune
Author, journalist and philanthropist, patron of the arts
Jane Fortune, author, journalist and philanthropist. Born: 9 August 1942, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Died: 23 September 2018 in Indianapolis, aged 76
While wandering through an antique book fair in Florence, Italy, in 2005, Jane Fortune, a philanthropist from Indiana, came across a book about Plautilla Nelli, Florence’s first known female artist, whose works date from the 1500s.
The book inspired Fortune to visit the San Marco Museum in that city to see Nelli’s painting“lamentationwithsaints.” Sadly, Fortune saw, it was caked with dirt and had lost its lustre. She decided then and there to pay for its restoration.
At the age of 63, Fortune thus began the final and perhaps most notable chapter of a long life as a patron of the arts. She founded a nonprofit foundation called Advancing Women Artists to find and salvage art createdbywomenbetweenthe 16th and 20th centuries. Her resurrection of these works, many of them Renaissance treasures lost to history and secreted in Tuscan churches and attics for centuries, earned her, in the Italian press, the nickname “Indiana Jane”.
She died on 23 September in her hometown, Indianapolis. She was 76. The cause was ovarian cancer, said her brother, William L Fortune Jr.
Her rescue of “Lamentation With Saints” was especially fortunate.
When the painting was removed from the wall, it was found to be crawling with woodworms. If the insects had gone undiscovered, they could have damaged a large portion of the museum’s collection.
In addition to reclaiming forgotten paintings and sculptures, the foundation seeks to have the restoration work performed by female conservators and to exhibit each final product.
“In the long run, they would have a voice and reclaim their places in history,” Fortune said of the paintings this year.
Female artists were extremely rare back then; Fortune estimatedthatperhapsfewerthan 15 were in Florence during the 1500s and 1600s. Women were not allowed to attend workshops or see nude male bodies, so those who learned to paint did so by studying with their fathers, who often then put their own signatures on the canvas. This has made it even harder to detect works actually done by women. When she studied art in Florence as a college student, Fortune said, no women were ever mentioned.
“The idea to restore art by women started as a way for me to give something back to the city I most love,” she wrote in the The Florentine, Tuscany’s English-language newspaper, in 2015.
Thefoundationhasidentified 2,000 forgotten works, some of which are awaiting restoration, said Linda Falcone, director of Advancing Women Artists and a close friend of Fortune’s. It has restored 61 such objects “to their original dignity”, she said, and shown them in prominent places in Florence, including the Uffizi, the Basilica of Santa Croce’s cloister and the Accademia.
The most significant reclaimed works include Artemisia Gentileschi’s “David and Bathsheba,” at the Palatine Gallery in Florence and Nelli’s “Last Supper” which is to be unveiled at the Santa Maria Novella Museum there next year after four years in the restoration studio.
“Jane often said that when she found Nelli, she found her voice and the creative side of herself,” Falcone said. “We tend not to talk about people in that age range, particularly not 63-year-old women. But a person can find their vocation late in life. In 13 years, she did a lifetime of work.”
Her feat of revealing part of Florence’s history to its own people earned her the Fiorino d’oro, the city’s highest honour, in 2015.
“We consider Dr Fortune one of our citizens, one of us,” Mayor Dario Nardella of Florence said in presenting her the medal. He called her “a great Florentine”.
Jane Fortune was born in Indianapolis on 7 August, 1942, the oldest of four children of William L and Jane (Hennessy) Fortune. Her mother had been a journalist. Her father was a journalist who was later elected Indiana state treasurer; he had come from a long line of civic leaders and philanthropists who were instrumental in developing Indianapolis.
Fortune graduated from public high school in Indianapolis and attended Western College for Women in Ohio. She spent her junior year in Florence, where she began her lifelong love affair with the city. She continued her studies at Rosemont College, outside Philadelphia, but did not graduate.
Her marriage, to John Medveckis in 1964, ended in divorce. Besides her brother, William, she is survived by a son, John, and a daughter, Jennifer Medveckis Marzo, both from her first marriage; and two other siblings, Pamela and Richard Fortune.
Fortune remained in the Philadelphia area, supporting museums and educational programmes there and in New York and Washington, with much of her focus on increasing the accessibility of the arts to people with disabilities.
Eventually, at a charity event in Philadelphia, she met Robert R Hesse, who had been president of the Chautauqua Institution, the arts and education organisation in upstate New York, as well as executive director of the Joffrey Ballet and who was later the chief fundraiser for UNICEF.
“They were seated at the same table, and they couldn’t stop talking about the arts,” William Fortune Jr said. “It was a kismet moment. Bob provided the nurturing that she needed for her later accomplishments.”
They were partners for 25 years. Together they created the Indianapolis City Ballet in 2008. As lovers of Italian food, they opened a seasonal Tuscan restaurant, Bella Fortuna North, in Northern Michigan. And they established a small vineyard there, where they made pinot grigio and prosecco with grapes from vines brought from Italy.
They had homes in Indianapolis; Boca Grande, Florida; Leland, Michigan, and Florence. Hesse died in 2016. KATHARINE Q SEELYE New York Times 2018. Distributed by NYT Syndication Service.