Carlotta Petrina
Petrina (September 6, 1901 – December 11, 1997) was an American illustrator and printer, awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1933 for her illustrations to accompany John Milton's Paradise Lost.
Carlotta Petrina
- Born
- 1901 · Kingston.
- Nationality
- United States
- Occupation
- illustrator
- Education
- Art Students League of New York · Cooper Union
- Honours
- Guggenheim Fellowship
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Petrina (September 6, 1901 – December 11, 1997) was an American illustrator and printer, awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1933 for her illustrations to accompany John Milton's Paradise Lost.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Note VALÉORINE
Carlotta Petrina (1901–1997) was an illustrator, of American nationality. The illustrator was born in Kingston and died in Brownsville. Carlotta Petrina was educated at Art Students League of New York and Cooper Union. Honours include Guggenheim Fellowship.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 26 September 2026
VALÉORINE
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Carlotta Petrina. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q20857854 · wikipedia · Carlotta Petrina
In this article
Early life and education
Early life and education
Charlotte F. Kennedy was born in Kingston, New York, the daughter of Gilbert F. Kennedy (a lawyer) and Helen McCormick Kennedy (an illustrator). She was educated at the Art Students League and at Cooper Union in the 1920s.
Career
Career
Petrina won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1933 (postponed until 1934) to do lithography in Paris. Her "beautiful but heartbreaking" illustrations for John Milton's Paradise Lost were published in 1936. The artist used herself as a model for Eve, and her late husband as the model for Adam, lending a particular intimacy and poignancy to the images. Milton scholar Virginia Tufte made a biographical film about Petrina, titled Reaching for Paradise: The Life and Art of Carlotta Petrina (1994). Petrina also illustrated editions of Norman Douglas's South Wind (1932), Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 2, and the John Dryden translation of Virgil's Aeneid (1944), She made some illustrations for an edition of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, but they were not used in the final publication. Drawings by Carlotta Petrina were included in the second Whitney Biennial in 1933. Among her quirkier projects, she illustrated a short humorous novel called Clovis by Michael Fessier (1948), about a parrot with human intelligence.
Personal life and legacy
Personal life and legacy
Charlotte Kennedy changed her name to Carlotta when she married fellow artist John Petrina in 1921. John was born Giovanni Antonio Secondo Petrina in Treviso, Italy. They had a son, Antonio. John died in 1935, in a car accident, while the Petrinas were traveling in Wyoming. Carlotta Petrina died in 1997, age 96, in Brownsville, Texas. The Carlotta Petrina Museum and Cultural Center in Brownsville exhibits her works and other artifacts from her life, as well as hosting classes and performances.
Identity and overview
Identity and overview
The following is established of the heading itself.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Kingston.
Birth place
Brownsville.
Death place
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1."2 Brooklyn Fellowship Winners Will Pursue Facts and Fancies" Brooklyn Daily Eagle (March 28, 1933): 15. via Newspapers.com
- 2.Carlotta Petrina, Guggenheim Foundation fellows index.
- 3.Wendy Furman-Adams and Virginia James Tufte, "Ecofeminist Eve: Artists Reading Milton's Heroine" in Jennifer Munroe and Rebecca Laroche, eds., Ecofeminist Approaches to Early Modernity (Palgrave Macmillan 2011): 68-73.
- 4.Lloyd Dickson, "Against the Wiles of the Devil: Carlotta Petrina's Christocentric Illustrations of Paradise Lost" Milton Studies 25(1989): 161-195.
- 5.Wendy Furman and Virginia James Tufte, "'Metaphysical Tears': Carlotta Petrina's Re-Presentation of Paradise Lost Book IX" Milton Studies 36(1998): 86-108.
- 6.Virginia James Tufte, University of Southern California, Emeriti Center.
- 7.South Wind (New York 1939).
- 8.Herbert Farjeon, ed.,Henry the Sixth: Parts I, II, and III (Limited Editions Press 1940).
- 9.The Aeneid (Limited Editions Club 1944).
- 10.George Macy Companies, Inc. Limited Editions Club and the Heritage Press: A Preliminary Inventory of its Art Collection at the Harry Ransom Center University of Texas at Austin.
- 11.Helen Appleton Read, "American Art Comprehensively Represented in Whitney Museum's Second Biennial" Brooklyn Daily Eagle (December 10, 1933): 14B-C. via Newspapers.com
- 12.Michael Fessier, Clovis (New York: Dial Press 1948).
- 13."John A. Petrina, Noted Illustrator, Fatally Hurt in Auto Mishap" Kingston Daily Freeman (June 17, 1935): 1. via Newspapers.com
- 14.Steve Clark, "Center Provides Alternatives in Poor Neighborhood" Brownsville Herald (December 7, 2013).
- 15.J. Noel Espinoza, "Petrina Museum Due Tribute" Brownsville Herald (March 27, 2000).
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
Further particulars
Held on the record
Further particulars
Open the remaining particulars
This entry is compiled from 5 catalogued sources across 4 independent registers. The registers consulted are Internet Archive, Wikidata, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Wikipedia. Every statement above is held against the register that stated it; where the registers are silent, the entry is silent.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 17 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Illustration
5,224 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Carlos Enríquez GómezIllustrator
- Carlos MegliaIllustrator
- Carlos Stohr BreuerIllustrator
- Carlos Vázquez ÚbedaIllustrator
- Carme Solé VendrellIllustrator
- Carmen Lomas GarzaIllustrator
- Carol BarkerIllustrator
- Carol Stuart WatsonIllustrator
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Carlotta Petrina?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.