(calm music) (bell dinging) - [Narrator] In Florence, Italy, the Renaissance capital.

In the heart of the artisans' district, Conservator Rossella Lari awaits her next art patient.

Over 20 feet long and 6 feet high, this magnificent but damaged canvas weighs 200 pounds and is nearly a half millennium old, yet brand new to most eyes in the art world.

- It's one of these works that you see and you really can't believe what you're seeing.

- [Narrator] It takes six men to hoist the huge opus through the second floor window of Lari's studio.

Yet, the painting's creator, a 16th-century female artist named Plautilla Nelli can be credited with the real feat.

- Plautilla was the start of it all.

She was the first of the greats.

And it's just amazing to think about what she was able to achieve.

- [Narrator] Nelli's grand masterpiece is the only known "Last Supper" painted during the Renaissance by a woman.

- It takes courage, but even more than that it takes professional training.

And we don't know how she achieved that.

- [Narrator] It is an extraordinary painting.

One that has inspired a modern movement to rediscover hundreds of other compelling treasures, all created by women artists.

(gentle music) - Renaissance Woman Restored is made possible through the generous support of the following.

(calm music) (dramatic music) - [Narrator] This all happened in Florence.

Florence, the cradle of the Italian Renaissance.

Florence is where it all started.

- [Narrator] Florence, Italy is a city beautifully preserved.

Its 16th-century history is marked by revolutionary discoveries in science, religion, politics and art.

- Art is everywhere here.

And the question arises, where are the women artists?

- If you ask anyone, do you know any female painters in the Renaissance?

They obviously say Artemisia Gentileschi.

She is the number one, she is the most famous one.

- [Narrator] Today, the work of another woman, Plautilla Nelli is getting it's dues.

- Plautilla is very different.

She is an artist whose art is regalvanizing the artistic discourse today.

- [Narrator] In the 1500s, Nelli was recognized here as the first professional woman painter of Florence and best known for her Lamentation with Saints, found today at Florence's San Marco Museum.

- [Wicks] As we found out more and more about her, it just enriched the whole picture historically of what women were able to do within convent walls in the 16th century.

- [Narrator] Nelli entered the convent at age 14.

Here, she found opportunities and independence as a Dominican nun.

- The concept of the convent has usually been associated with a kind of repression or kind of negativity.

That is, female convents, especially nuns were kept there almost in seclusion.

That's not really the case, especially in Florence.

In Florence, the great majority of members of these communities were women from very noble families with very good education even before entering the convent.

It's important to understand that it was a place of great creativity, of great communication and not a seclusion from the world.

- [Narrator] As a nun, a traditional workshop apprenticeship was not possible.

So, Nelli was self-taught.

Eventually, she earned commissions that were not available to women outside the convent.

- So, if you can imagine in Renaissance Florence when women could not train, they couldn't study anatomy, they couldn't do history painting, they couldn't earn money, they weren't citizens, they didn't have legal status, et cetera.

So Nelli within the walls of her convent was able to create a life and an identity for herself and economic independence.

Noblewomen, particularly, would want Nelli's small scale works for their chapels and for their places of prayer.

- [Narrator] In Renaissance Italy, only the master artists proved their skills by authoring a "Last Supper", taking their place among the ranks of a multi-century tradition that began with Taddeo Gaddi and continued with the likes of Domenico Ghirlandaio and Andrea del Sarto.

Nelli broke with custom when she produced her version of the famous scene.

(dramatic music) - The "Last Supper" it's overwhelming.

I mean, it's one of these works that you see and you really can't believe what you're seeing.

I'd like to kind of think she was saying, "Okay guys, I want my due."

- [Narrator] Unlike her male counterparts, Nelli signed her "Last Supper".

- There's obviously a reason why she signed that one painting and signed it the way she did.

And there's a part of me that kind of wants to think that she did it just to say, I'm a woman and I can paint Last Suppers too.

- [Narrator] Alongside her name, Nelli inscribed the Latin phrase, "Pray for the paintress".

Likely meant for her fellow nuns, her words became the driving motto behind her painting's restoration.

(dramatic music) (lively music) - [Narrator] It came from Santa Maria Novella, a museum and monastery where for centuries, it hung in silence; damaged by flooding, invisible.

Until U.S.

Author and Philanthropist, Jane Fortune founded an organization called Advancing Women Artists and spearheaded a movement committed to restoring and returning art by women to the eyes of the world.

(crowd cheering) - In the silence of her studio, Rossella Lari approaches Nelli's "Last Supper" again and again.

Clues to Nelli's process are captured by conservation scientists who use diagnostic analysis and reflectography to uncover the chemical composition of the pigments.

(in foreign language) - [Translator] Plautilla paints with brushstrokes that are loaded with color.

They are very dense.

It is almost as if she is sculpting, searching for form.

- She is not producing a commonplace, a quintessential Last Supper, a basic Last Supper.

She's producing a Last Supper where the moment of revelation, so to speak, is in the realm of sorrow, of shock, of lack of any kind of comprehension.

(in foreign language) - [Translator] Plautilla's painting is a grand, spectacular work, a complex machine.

It's rather theatrical, as we can see from the feet under the food-laden table and the play of hands, which she subtly depicts, using anatomical details.

The hands are very expressive and they convey the Saints' mood and emphasize their facial expressions.

- [Narrator] The canvas revealed very little underdrawing, but studies exposed where the artist changed her mind and included painstaking features that defy its monumental size.

(in foreign language) - [Translator] All of her attention to detail for the human body.

In the hands, we discovered tendons, veins, fingernails complete with cuticles.

Or the fact that every Apostle has very long eyelashes.

- [Narrator] Centuries of grime were removed, centimeter by centimeter.

And Nelli's love for realism emerged with increased clarity.

- [Translator] During cleaning, several details emerged that were previously illegible.

For example the three small flowers printed on Judas' bag of coins, and the shadows that the Apostles' bodies cast on the painting's background.

- One of the interesting things about the table in the "Last Supper" painted by Plautilla Nelli is the variety of ceramics, glassware, platters, utensils arranged across the tablecloth.

They are likely to have been objects used at the convent.

(in foreign language) - [Translator] It's likely the nuns set up a still-life scene featuring the salt cellars, the knives, so that they could paint them as accurately as possible.

Even the bread is real.

- You have Nelli doing her still life scene on the "Last Supper".

She sets the table but at the same time she doesn't shy away from the male figure.

And despite the imperfections of the male figure, she didn't do the beards successfully.

She never saw hair and she never saw beards.

She didn't even see her own hair.

- [Translator] During this period of time, when the painting was inside the laboratory, I felt a strong presence, the presence of this woman, of Nelli, and her fellow nuns, who, undoubtedly, participated in the creation of this painting.

- She is tackling this multiple-figure "Last Supper" with 13 figures, life-size, with a group of women.

And so you have brotherhood on the canvas, and you have sisterhood creating the canvas, and it's actually this incredible work of unity, and has proved to be an incredible work of unity also today for us.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] It would take several years to restore Nelli's "Last Supper".

Outside the restoration studio, detective work intensified to find, repair and exhibit Nelli's many other devotional works, such as the choir books at the San Marco Museum, containing two of her earliest pictures.

- It's very likely that Plautilla's introduction to painting was on a miniature scale.

But there is a huge difference between painting with a watercolor medium on parchment and covering a tall canvas that has to be previously prepared with oil paint.

And how she made the leap across that gap is a mystery we still have to resolve.

- [Narrator] The rediscovery of Nelli's many "Saint Catherines", suggested the serial production of paintings for sale.

- In Florence, in the 1500s, there was a large demand for devotional objects of all kinds, sculptures, paintings, for use in the family home.

It was believed that it was important to bring children up surrounded by images of the infant Christ, of the loving mother, as role models for them in their family lives.

- People in the Renaissance, particularly noble people, believed that art by pious women had spiritual qualities.

And so, in some way, their paintings were imbued with spirituality and they were almost like relics.

- [Narrator] Art historians know that Nelli inherited 500 drawings by Fra Bartolomeo, a leading high Renaissance painter.

- He left his sketchbooks to her, and that shows really how much other artists at the time cherished her.

Plautilla Nelli was very famous in her own period of time.

She was mentioned by Vasari, so one would have thought that she could have just shared the same fame as her contemporaries, but she didn't.

In part, it was because she was a nun for sure.

But in a much bigger part is because she was a woman.

- [Narrator] She trained by copying his style, and later would use them as cartoons.

Nelli was equally influenced by Beato Angelico, and later, bonfire-of-the-vanities friar Savonarola.

- Savonarola was against, very much against the pagan contamination in artistic production of the 15th century.

He asked the people of Florence to burn the more luxurious things, the more lavish things, the more expensive things.

- [Narrator] To discourage sloth, Savonarola encouraged nuns to produce simple sacred images.

His legacy deeply influenced Nelli's workshop.

- And that is true for instance of the crucifix.

Savonarola thought that the crucifix was a perfect subject for art, because people would immediately understand both the symbol of the crucifix, but also the man on the cross, namely Christ and his pain and his suffering and his sacrifice for humanity.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Devoured by woodworm and warped by time and the elements, Nelli's "Crucifixion" was the central lunette in a three piece series, all rescued by AWA.

A vacuum bubble suffocated the parasites, so that restoration could begin.

- If you look at it with critical eyes, or if you look at it searching for a masterpiece, et cetera, you can snub the painting very easily, right without realizing that the fact that she was painting a partially nude male figure in Renaissance, Florence as a convent artist, then this was incredible.

This was incredible.

(in foreign language) - [Translator] You get a very strong sense of how this nun painter came into real contact with the canvas, her creation.

Most likely, she was a strong, extremely decisive woman, who was prepared to achieve the goals she set for herself.

(in foreign language) - She took chances, she did things that no one ever did.

She painted paintings that were larger than life.

She didn't seem to be afraid of things during that time.

- We started knowing about three works, signed and confirmed by Nelli.

And with the help of international scholars, and with the help of restorers and restoration artists, her body of works grew.

The interest in Nelli and her works grew.

And so now we're looking at an artist that has many, many attributions that are very interesting.

We have a discussion among art historians throughout the world, looking at Nelli's works.

- [Narrator] These rediscoveries laid the groundwork for the Uffizi Gallery's first-ever monographic show on the artist in 2017.

- She had her first show in 500 years at the Uffizi, and that probably was the most incredible thing of all, that after 500 years, she finally got her due.

And the public got to see her.

- She was really a star artist of her time and she would have stayed that if she would have been a man.

And for us it was a groundbreaking show not just in terms of Plautilla's reestablishment in the artistic canon, for us it was also groundbreaking as it was the first in a series of exhibitions that we are dedicating to women artists and to women in society.

- [Narrator] During its 15 years of existence, Advancing Women Artists had restored 22 works from Nelli's forgotten oeuvre.

- I think that AWA's activity was really crucial to get women artists on the map.

And I think that we really made a number of significant steps ahead.

We're not quite there yet, but we can see every year now there are monographic exhibitions dedicated to women artists throughout Europe.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] Restoration of Nelli's art became a catalyst for change in Florence.

Her inscription, "Pray for the paintress" became a call to action.

- I was fascinated with her, and I thought, well, if she's the first-known woman painter of Florence, everybody must know who she is in Florence.

Well, lo and behold, nobody knew who she was.

And I figured if they didn't know her and she's the first-known woman painter of Florence, how many others don't they know?

- [Narrator] Inspired by the Nelli quest, philanthropists, museum executives, researchers and conservators continued to scour Florence's cultural venues for other compelling art works by women.

- We're going into the storage deposits and we are actively searching for paintings.

And so it has added a whole new element to what I do as a conservator.

And so that's a really exciting detective element in what we do.

(upbeat music) - I do think we as a collective group have made a difference in Florence as far as actually making them more aware of women artists and their importance.

Recognize them, just recognize them, that they are important and they have done important things.

(gentle music) - One day we were in the studio, and seeing the painting in the studio is a really unique experience because it's actually eye level.

And so you had these 12 apostles and the Christ figure, looking basically directly at them.

And one of our supporters said, "Each one of us should adopt an apostle".

Because we were looking for ways to say, How can people approach this painting?

How can they participate in this process?

We didn't want companies, we didn't want companies to support the painting.

We actually wanted people.

- [Narrator] Art lovers from 19 countries joined the "Last Supper" quest, led by the patrons who became adoptive parents of Nelli's 12 Apostles.

- Once you get involved with Nelli, once she gets in your soul, she's in your soul.

She's with you every day.

I'm not kidding you, she's amazing.

- [Narrator] The world had mobilized, conservation of Nelli's "Last Supper", her grand masterpiece was finally complete.

- Once you see a painting cleaned, and can see the quality of the artist's work, the attention to detail, the color relationships that the artist has set up, it's much easier to acknowledge and appreciate what that artist has done.

(crowd chattering) - [Narrator] On October 17, 2019, Plautilla Nelli's restored "Last Supper" was presented in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella and displayed in its museum.

(crowd chattering) After centuries in hiding, Nelli is once again visible.

- She is not a artifact, an archeological artifact that has no life, but is an artist whose art is regalvanizing the artistic discourse today.

Because we have to understand that Plautilla Nelli is here today and is important for us today, for the world that we live in here today.

(in foreign language) - [Translator] Sometimes, I would think about her and ask myself, how she was feeling at a certain moment.

It was a lot of fun, because at times, it felt like an exchange.

How did it change me?

This painting has aged me.

(Rossella laughing) - This particular painting has meant so much to me that it will be restored and that the world sees it.

I feel very good that I was able to fulfill my quest.

And I have to say, in all that I've done with Nelli and all the paintings that we've restored, my whole doing it, I wanted to give her a voice.

I wanted her to be heard 'cause she wasn't heard, she hadn't been heard and I wanted her to be heard.

And the irony in the whole situation, what happened was I got my voice and she gave me my voice.

(upbeat music) - I think we can reflect for a long time about Nelli's power and about how inspiring she was.

But I have to say that I'm very inspired by the connection that's been created between the past and the present.

I really think that there is a bridge, but it also is a bridge into the future.

- To know that it's a women artist makes you curious about her history, and how did she do she was able to do.

You admire her, and you want to know more about her .

So it's been a wonderful adventure and the adventure has to continue.

We have to keep answering that question, where are the women artists?

we have to keep going.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Renaissance Woman Restored, is made possible through the generous support of the following.

(calm music)