A center for female creativity for more than five centuries, Florence hosts innumerable works by significant women painters from the Renaissance onward. Invisible Women sheds light on these groundbreaking women artists and their virtually unknown works.

This PBS television special is based on Jane Fortune’s book Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence, published by The Florentine Press in 2009. Producer Todd Gould and Executive Producer Clayton Taylor worked together with Fortune and the Advancing Women Artists to create this five-part program. It spotlights the quest to research, restore and exhibit of works of art by women in Florence’s museums, including feature segments on newly restored masterpieces by Baroque master Artemisia Gentileschi and the native Florentine Renaissance painter Plautilla Nelli. In an effort to raise awareness regarding the need to salvage and promote works by the city’s lesser-known women artists, the documentary features preeminent restoration experts and international executives from several museums in the United States and from the Polo Museale Fiorentino.

INVISIBLE WOMEN was awarded an Emmy in the best Historical/Cultural Program category by the regional National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2013.

WFYI productions filmed the documentary which included footage provided by The Florentine Press, Artemedia and Bunker Film, and coordinated by the media agency Flod. The Emmy nomination was received just ten days after the program’s premiere screening at the US Consulate in Florence. First aired in Indianapolis, the national broadcast of Invisible Women statewide has been going strong since 2012.