author
contessa Lilian Priuli-Bon
1869–1952
Best known for a lively early study of the Renaissance painter Sodoma, this countess wrote with the curiosity of an art lover and the confidence of an independent scholar. Her work carries readers into the world of Italian art history at the turn of the twentieth century.
1 Audiobook
Sodoma
by contessa Lilian Priuli-Bon
About the author
Contessa Lilian Priuli-Bon (1869–1952) is chiefly remembered for Sodoma, a book on the Renaissance painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi that first appeared in 1900 and has remained her best-known published work.
Sources available online suggest she moved in an international cultural world and has been described as having Swedish and Welsh family background, later becoming part of the Venetian Priuli-Bon family by marriage. Those details appear in later essays about her and are not as easily documented in standard reference sources, so they are best taken as carefully reported rather than fully settled.
For modern readers, her appeal is straightforward: she wrote art history in an accessible, character-driven way, helping bring an important Italian painter to a wider audience. Reliable, easily accessible biographical information about her is limited, which makes her surviving work all the more interesting.