Irene Parenti Duclos (or Irene Parenti, or her academic nickname Lincasta Ericinia) (1754–1795) was an Italian painter and poet. Her work as an expert copyist of old master paintings was highly valued in her era, and brought her honors from several Italian art academies. Moreover, she achieved particular renown as a pioneer in the revival of encaustic painting. Career Irene Parenti Duclos was the daughter of Tuscan painter Giuseppe Parenti, under whom she presumably received her earliest professional training. The first documented notice of Irene Parenti Duclos' painting activity is her 1773 petition to make painted replicas of works in Florence's Uffizi Gallery, where both male and female artists were permitted to set up their easels in its halls and copy old master paintings and ancient marble statues. Between 1773 and 1793, Duclos executed thirty-nine oil copies at the Uffizi, largely in response to the market demand for replicas from British Grand Tourists. In addition to conventional oil painting, Duclos practiced the ancient technique of encaustic painting, a rare skill she had learned while in Bologna in 1784-85 from the Spanish Jesuit antiquarian José María Pignatelli, who was canonized in 1954. Her achievements in this new field of encaustic painting brought Duclos rapid fame and her works in this technique garnered high prices. In 1785, Duclos' encaustic paintings were shown to English painter Emma Jane Greenland while she was visiting Florence in 1785; Greenland would go on to publicize the technique in England. A member of the art academies of Rome and Bologna as well as an "Accademico Professore" in Florence’s Accademia del Disegno since 1783, Duclos was additionally recognized for her poetic talents with an induction into the literary circle of the Accademia degli Arcadi. Original works Duclos’ Portrait of Joseph Hilarius Eckel (Galleria degli Uffizi, Inv. 1890, no. 311), a Jesuit numismatist from Vienna, was commissioned in 1773 by the Uffizi's director Raimondo Cocchi for the gallery's portrait series of "Famous Men" . Duclos’ signed and dated 1783 Self-portrait (Galleria degli Uffizi, Inv. 1890, no. 5556; currently in storage) depicts the artist holding the tools of her trade while dressed elegantly with an intaglio jewel depicting Mercury and an elegant coiffure. This picture was originally displayed in the Accademia del Disegno in the frame that still holds it today; here, Duclos' portrait was hung between those of two other female academicians: engraver Anna Borghigiani and pastellist Chiara Spinelli.