Eirene or Irene () was an ancient Greek artist described by Pliny the Elder in the 1st century. She was the daughter of a painter, and created an image of a girl that was housed at Eleusis.

One of the five or six female artists of antiquity mentioned in Pliny the Elder's Natural History (XL.147-148) in A.D. 77: Timarete, Irene, Aristarete, Iaia, Olympias, and possibly Calypso.J. Linderski. The Paintress Calypso and Other Painters in Pliny. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. Bd. 145 (2003), pp. 83-96 https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20191706.pdf

During the Renaissance, Giovanni Boccaccio, a 14th-century humanist, included Eirene in De mulieribus claris (Latin for On Famous Women). Some of the paintings he credits to Eirene are an older Calypso, the gladiator Theodorus, and Alcisthenes, a famous dancer.

See also Women artists

Sources

References Pliny the Elder. Naturalis historia, XXXV.40.140, 147. Harris, Anne Sutherland and Linda Nochlin. Women Artists: 1550-1950. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Knopf, New York, 1976.