WOMEN ARTISTS
IN ALL AGES AND COUNTRIES.

By
MRS. ELLET,
AUTHOR OF “THE WOMEN OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION,” ETC.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.

1859.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine, by
Harper & Brothers,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

TO
MRS. COVENTRY WADDELL,
WHOSE ELEGANT TASTE AND APPRECIATION OF ART, AND WHOSE LIBERAL KINDNESS TO ARTISTS, HAVE FOSTERED AMERICAN GENIUS,
This Volume is Inscribed
BY HER FRIEND

THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.

I do not know that any work on Female Artists—either grouping them or giving a general history of their productions—has ever been published, except the little volume issued in Berlin by Ernst Guhl, entitled “Die Frauen in die Kunstgeschichte.” In that work the survey is closed with the eighteenth century, and female poets are included with painters, sculptors, and engravers in the category of artists. Finding Professor Guhl’s sketches of the condition of art in successive ages entirely correct, I have made use of these and the facts he has collected, adding details omitted by him, especially in the personal history of prominent women devoted to the brush and the chisel. Authorities, too numerous to mention, in French, Italian, German, and English, have been carefully consulted. I am indebted particularly to the works of Vasari, Descampes, and Fiorillo. The biographies of Mdlles. Bonheur, Fauveau, and Hosmer are taken, with a little condensing and shaping, from late numbers of that excellent periodical, “The Englishwoman’s Journal.” The sketches of many living artists were prepared from materials furnished by themselves or their friends.

It is manifestly impossible, in a work of this kind, to include even the names of all the women artists who are worthy of remembrance. Among those of the present day are many who have not yet had sufficient experience to do justice to their own powers, and any criticism of their productions would be premature and unfair.

No attempt has been made in the following pages to give elaborate critiques or a connected history of art. The aim has been simply to show what woman has done, with the general conditions favorable or unfavorable to her efforts, and to give such impressions of the character of each prominent artist as may be derived from a faithful record of her personal experiences. More may be learned by a view of the early struggles and trials, the persevering industry and the well-earned triumphs of the gifted, than by the most erudite or fine-spun disquisition. Should the perusal of my book inspire with courage and resolution any woman who aspires to overcome difficulties in the achievement of honorable independence, or should it lead to a higher general respect for the powers of women and their destined position in the realm of Art, my object will be accomplished.

E. F. E.

CONTENTS.

WOMEN ARTISTS.

CHAPTER I.
THE EARLY AGES.

Women in Art.—Kind of Painting most practiced by them.—Feminine Employments in early Ages.—The fair Egyptians.—Women of Assyria and Babylon.—Grecian Women.—Sculpture and Painting in Greece.—The Daughter of Dibutades.—The Lover’s Profile.—The first Bas-relief.—Timarata.—Helena.—Anaxandra.—Kallo.—Cirene.—Calypso.—Other Pupils of Grecian Art.—The Roman Women.—The Paintress Laya.—Lala.—Influence of Christianity on Art.—Adornment rejected by the early Christians.—Art degraded for Centuries.—Female Influence among the Nations that rose on the Ruins of Rome.—Wise and clever Princesses.—Anna Comnena.—The first Poetess of Germany.—The first Editress of a Cyclopædia.—The Art of Illuminating.—Nuns employed in copying and painting Manuscripts.—Agnes, Abbess of Quedlinburg.—Princesses at work.—Convent Sisters copying and embellishing religious Works.—The Nuns’ Printing-press.—The first Sculptress, Sabina von Steinbach.—Her Works in the Cathedral of Strasburg.—Elements that pervade the Sculpture of the Middle Ages.—Painting of the Archbishop crowning Sabina.

“Men have not grudged to women,” says a modern writer, “the wreaths of literary fame. No history of literature shows a period when their influence was not apparent, when honors were not rendered to them;” and the social condition of woman has been generally allowed to measure the degree of intellectual culture in a nation. Although in the realm of art her success is more questionable, she may yet claim the credit of having materially aided its progress. Woman is the type of the ornamental part of our life, and lends to existence the charm which inspires the artist, and furnishes him with an object for effort. Her native unconscious grace and beauty present the models which it is his highest merit to copy faithfully.

A New England divine says, “Woman, like man, wants to make her thought a thing.” “All that belongs to the purely natural,” observes Hippel, “lies within her sphere.” The kind of painting, thus, in which the object is prominent has been most practiced by female artists. Portraits, landscapes, flowers, and pictures of animals are in favor among them. Historical or allegorical subjects they have comparatively neglected; and, perhaps, a sufficient reason for this has been that they could not command the years of study necessary for the attainment of eminence in these. More have been engaged in engraving on copper than in any other branch of art, and many have been miniature painters.

Such occupations might be pursued in the strict seclusion of home, to which custom and public sentiment consigned the fair student. Nor were they inharmonious with the ties of friendship and love to which her tender nature clung. In most instances women have been led to the cultivation of art through the choice of parents or brothers. While nothing has been more common than to see young men embracing the profession against the wishes of their families and in the face of difficulties, the example of a woman thus deciding for herself is extremely rare.

We know little of the practice of the arts by women in ancient times. The degraded condition of the sex in Eastern countries rendered woman the mere slave and toy of her master; but this very circumstance gave her artistic ideas capable of development into independent action. These first showed themselves in the love of dress and the selection of ornaments. From the early ages of the world, too, spinning and weaving were feminine employments, in which undying germs of art were hidden; for it belongs to human nature never to be satisfied with what merely ministers to necessity. The ancient sepulchres and buried palaces disclosed by modern discovery display the love of adornment prevailing among the nations of antiquity. Women rendered assistance in works upon wood and metal, as well as, more frequently, in the productions of the loom. The fair Egyptians covered their webs with the most delicate patterns; and the draperies of the dead and the ornamented hangings in their dwellings attested the skill of the women of Assyria and Babylon.

The shawls and carpets of Eastern manufacture, and other articles of luxury that furnished the palaces of European monarchs, were often the work of delicate hands, though no tradition has preserved the names of those who excelled in such labors.

Among the ancient Greeks the position of woman, though still secluded and slavish, gave her a nobler life. The presiding deities of the gentle arts were represented to popular apprehension in female form, and, doubtless, the gracious influence the sex has in all ages exercised was then in some measure recognized. Poetry had her fair votaries, and names are still remembered that deserve to live with Sappho. Schools of philosophy were presided over by the gifted and cultivated among women.

Sculpture and architecture, the arts carried to greatest perfection, were then far in advance of painting; at least, we know of no relics that can support the pretensions of the Greeks to superiority in the latter. “What is left,” says a writer in the “Westminster Review,” “of Apelles and Zeuxis? The few relics of ancient painting which have survived the lapse of ages and the hand of the spoiler all date from the time of the Roman Empire; and neither the frescoes discovered beneath the baths of Titus, the decorations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, nor even the two or three cabinet pictures found beneath the buried city, can be admitted as fair specimens of Grecian painting in its zenith.”

THE DAUGHTER OF DIBUTADES.

But, though few Grecian women handled the pencil or the chisel, and women were systematically held in a degree of ignorance, we find here, on the threshold of the history of art, a woman’s name—that of Kora, or, as she has been called, Callirhoe, the daughter of a potter named Dibutades, a native of Corinth, said to have resided at Sicyonia about the middle of the seventh century before Christ. Pliny tells us she assisted her father in modeling clay. The results of his labor were arranged on shelves before his house, which the purchasers usually left vacant before evening. It was the office of his daughter, says a fanciful chronicler, to fill the more elaborate vases with choice flowers, which the young men came early to look at, hoping to catch a glimpse of the graceful artist maiden.

As she went draped in her veil to the market-place, she often met a youth, who afterward became an assistant to her father in his work. He was skilled in much learning unknown to the secluded girl, and in playing on the reed; and the daily life of father, daughter, and lover presented an illustration of Grecian life and beauty. The youth was constrained at length to depart, but ere he went the vows of betrothal were exchanged between him and Kora.

Their eve of parting was a sad one. As they sat together by the lamplight the maiden suddenly rose, and, taking up a piece of pointed charcoal from the brasier, and bidding the young man remain still, she traced on the wall the outline of his fine Grecian profile, as a memorial when he should be far away. Dibutades saw the sketch she had made, and recognized the likeness. Carefully he filled the outline with clay, and a complete medallion was formed. It was the first portrait in relief! Thus a new art was born into the world, the development of which brought fortune and fame to the inventor! The story is, at least, as probable as that of Saurias discovering the rules of sketching and contour from the shadow of his horse. It was neither the first nor the last time that Love became a teacher. Might not the fable of Memnon thus find its realization?

It is related that Dibutades, who had followed up his medallions with busts, became so celebrated, that many Grecian states claimed the honor of his birth; and that his daughter’s lover, who came back to espouse her, modeled whole figures in Corinth. A school for modeling was instituted about this time in Sicyonia, of which Dibutades was the founder.

At a later period we hear of Timarata, the daughter of a painter, and herself possessed of considerable skill, as Pliny testifies, he having seen one of her pictures at Ephesus, representing the goddess Diana.

Several names of female artists have come down from the time of Alexander the Great and his luxurious successors. Art began to have a richer and more various development, and women were more free to follow their inclinations in its pursuit. One belonging to this age was Helena, who is said to have painted, for one of the Ptolomies, the scene of a battle in which Alexander vanquished Darius; a picture thought, with some probability, to have been the original of a famous mosaic found in Pompeii.

Anaxandra, the daughter and pupil of a Greek painter, appears to have labored under the same royal patronage, as well as another female artist named Kallo, one of whose pictures, presented in the Temple of Venus, was celebrated by the praise of a classic poetess; the fair painter being declared as beautiful as her own work. Among these pupils of Grecian art we hear also of Cirene, the daughter of Kratinos, whose painting of Proserpina was preserved; of Aristarite, the author of a picture of Esculapius; of Calypso, known as a painter de genre. Her portraits of Theodorus, the juggler, and a dancer named Acisthenes, were celebrated, and she is said to have executed one that has been transferred from the ruins of Pompeii to Naples, and is now called “A Mother superintending her Daughter’s Toilet.” The name of Olympias is remembered, though we have no mention of her works. Beyond these few names, we know nothing of the female artists of Greece.

THE ROMAN PAINTRESS.

Among the Romans we find but one female painter, and she was of Greek origin and education. The life of the Roman matrons was not confined to a narrower sphere, and the influence conceded to them might have been eminently favorable to their cultivation of art. But, with the nation of soldiers who ruled the world, the elegant arts were not at home as in their Hellenic birth-place. They flourished not so grandly in the palmiest days of Rome, as in the decay of the Empire. The heroic women celebrated in the history of the Republic, and in Roman literature, had no rivals in the domain of sculpture and painting. The one whose name has descended to modern times is Laya. She exercised her skill in Rome about a hundred years before Christ. The little knowledge we have of her paintings is very interesting, inasmuch as she was the pioneer in a branch afterward cultivated by many of her sex—miniature painting. Her portraits of women were much admired, and she excelled in miniatures on ivory. A large picture in Naples is said to be one of her productions. She surpassed all others in the rapidity of her execution, and her works were so highly valued that her name was ranked with the most renowned painters of the time, such as Sopolis, Dionysius, etc. Pliny, who bears this testimony, adds that her life was devoted to her art, and that she was never married. Some others mention a Greek girl, Lala, as contemporary with Cleopatra, who was celebrated for her busts in ivory. The Romans caused a statue to be erected to her honor.

INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Painting was destined to higher improvements under the mild sway of the Christian religion than in the severer school of classical antiquity. Woman gradually rose above the condition of slavery, and began to preside over the elements that formed the poetry of life. But changes involving the lapse of centuries were necessary, before Art could be divested of her Athenian garment, and put on the pure bridal attire suited to her nuptials with devotion. After the destruction of the Roman Empire, there is a long interval during which we hear of no achievement beyond the Byzantine relics, and the mosaics of the convents and cemeteries.

Even the beauty of early art, associated as it was with the forms of a pagan mythology, was detested by the votaries of a pure and holy faith. The early Christians rejected adornment, which they regarded as inconsistent with their simple tenets, and as an abomination in the sight of God. Thus, for seven hundred years art was degraded, and only by degrees did she lift herself from the dust.

In the mean while female influence grew apace among the nations that rose upon the ruins of Rome. Amalasuntha, the daughter of Theodoric the Great, was worthy of her sire in wisdom and knowledge of statesmanship, while she is said to have surpassed him in general cultivation, and to have rendered him essential service in his building enterprises. Theudelinda, Queen of the Longobards, adorned her palace at Monza with paintings celebrating the history of her people; and, from the time of Charlemagne, each century boasted several women of political and literary celebrity. There was the famous nun Hroswitha, who, in her convent at Gandersheim, composed an ode in praise of Otho, and a religious drama after the manner of Terence; there was the Greek princess Anna Comnena, the ornament of the Byzantine court; there was the first poetess of Germany, Ava; with Hildegardis, Abbess of Bingen; Heloise, the beloved of Abelard; the Abbess of Hohenburg, who undertook the bold enterprise of a cyclopædia of general knowledge; and a host of others.[1]

[1] Later, Angela de Foligno was celebrated as a teacher of theology. Christina Pisani wrote a work, “La Cité des Dames,” which was published in Paris in 1498. It gives account of the learned and famous Novella, the daughter of a professor of the law in the University of Bologna. She devoted herself to the same studies, and was distinguished for her scholarship. She conducted her father’s cases, and, having as much beauty as learning, was wont to appear in court veiled.

ILLUMINATIONS.

Noble women became patrons of art, particularly that branch cultivated with most success in the decline of the rest—miniature painting upon parchment. From being merely ornamental this became a necessity in manuscript books of devotion, and the brilliant coloring and delicate finish of the illuminations were often owing to the touch of feminine hands. The inmates of convents and monasteries employed much time in painting and ornamenting books, in copying the best works of ancient art, and in painting on glass; the nuns especially making a business of copying and illuminating manuscripts. Agnes, Abbess of Quedlinberg, was celebrated as a miniature painter in the twelfth century, and some of her works have survived the desolation of ages. “The cultivators of this charming art were divided into two classes—miniaturists, properly so called; and miniature caligraphists. It was the province of the first to color the histories and arabesques, and to lay on the gold and silver ornaments. The second wrote the book, and the initial letters so frequently traced in red, blue, and gold: these were called ‘Pulchri Scriptores,’ or fair writers. Painting of this description was peculiarly a religious occupation. It was well suited for the peaceful and secluded life of the convent or the monastery. It required none of the intimate acquaintance with the passions of the human heart, with the busy scenes of life, so essential to other and higher forms of art.”

The labors of nuns in ornamental work in the Middle Ages were not confined to illuminating and miniature painting; but it is not our province to enumerate the products of their industry, nor to chronicle the benefits they conferred on the sick and poor. The fairest princesses did not disdain to work altar-pieces, and to embroider garments for their friends and lovers.

In the commencement of the fourteenth century a female painter, named Laodicia, lived in Pavia, and Vasari mentions the Dominican nun, Plautilla Nelli. “In 1476, Fra Domenico da Pistoya and Fra Pietro da Pisa, the spiritual directors of a Dominican convent, established a printing-press within its walls; the nuns served as compositors, and many works of considerable value issued from this press between 1476 and 1484, when, Bartolomeo da Pistoya dying, the nuns ceased their labors.”

THE FIRST SCULPTRESS.

Germany had the honor of producing the first female sculptor of whom any thing is known—Sabina von Steinbach, the daughter of Erwin von Steinbach, who in that wonderful work, the cathedral of Strasburg, has reared so glorious a monument to his memory.

The task of ornamenting this noble building was in great part intrusted to the young girl, whose genius had already exhibited itself in modeling. Her sculptured groups, and especially those on the portal of the southern aisle, are of remarkable beauty, and have been admired by visitors during the lapse of ages. Here are allegorical figures representing the Christian Church and Judaism; the first of lofty bearing and winning grace, with crowned heads, bearing the cross in their right hands, and in their left the consecrated host. The other figures stand with eyes downcast and drooping head; in the right hand a broken arrow, in the left the shattered tablets of the Mosaic Law. Besides many other groups are four bas-reliefs representing the glorification of the Virgin; her death and burial on one side, and on the other her entrance into heaven and triumphant coronation.

It may well be said that in these works are embodied the ideal and supernatural elements that pervade the sculpture of the Middle Ages; and it seemed most appropriate that the taste and skill of woman should develop in such elements the purity and depth of feeling which impart a charm to these sculptures acknowledged by every beholder.

On one of the scrolls, held by the Apostle John, the following lines are inscribed in Latin:

“The grace of God be with thee, O Sabina,
Whose hands from this hard stone have formed my image.”

An old painting at Strasburg represents this youthful sculptress kneeling at the feet of the archbishop, to receive his blessing and a wreath of laurel, which he is placing on her brow. This painting attests the popular belief in a tradition that Sabina, after seeing her statues deposited in their niches, was met by a procession of priests who came, with the prelate at their head, for the purpose of conferring this honor upon her.

CHAPTER II.
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

Commencement of the History of modern Art.—Causes of the Barrenness of this Century in female Artists.—The Decline of Chivalry unfavorable to their mental Development.—Passing away of the Ideal and Supernatural Element in Art.—New Feeling for Nature.—New Life and Action in Painting.—Portrayal of Feelings of the Heart.—Release of Painting from her Trammels.—Severer Studies necessary for Artists.—Woman excluded from the Pursuit.—Patronage sought.—One female Artist representing each prominent School.—Margaretta von Eyck.—Her Miniatures.—Extensive Fame.—Her Decoration of Manuscripts.—Work in Aid of her Brothers.—“The gifted Minerva.”—Single Blessedness.—Another Margaretta.—Copies and illuminates MSS. in the Carthusian Convent.—Eight folio Volumes filled.—Caterina Vigri.—Her Miniature Paintings.—Founds a Convent.—“The Saint of Bologna.”—Miraculous Painting.—The warrior Maiden Onorata.—Decorates the Palace at Cremona.—Insult offered her.—She kills the Insulter.—Flight in male Attire.—Soldier Life.—Delivers Castelleone.—The mortal Wound.

The fifteenth century, with which the history of modern art may be properly commenced, is barren in female artists. This is, doubtless, owing in part to a change in the social condition of woman, consequent on the decline of chivalry, that “poetical lie,” as Rahel terms it. During the two centuries preceding this period, the fair sex had been regarded with a kind of adoration. Beauty was the minstrel’s theme and the soldier’s inspiration, and the courts of love, by giving power to the intellectual among women, stimulated them to the cultivation of their minds as well as the adornment of their persons. The descent from their poetic elevation was unfavorable to mental development; and it was not till the opening of the sixteenth century that there appeared symptoms of recovery from the reaction.

Moreover, art in the fifteenth century had assumed a character unsuited to the peculiar gifts of woman. It had parted with the ideal and supernatural element which formed at once the charm and the weakness of the Middle Ages, and which, as in the case of Sabina von Steinbach, had fostered and developed female talent. A new feeling for nature was born; a new world of life and action was waiting to be added to the domain of art; while severe study and restless energy were in requisition for more extended conquests. More correct exhibitions of human individuality, action, and passion began to take the place of forms that had before been merely conventional or architectural; and the portrayal of feeling, in which the human heart could sympathize, superseded the calm religious creations of an earlier age. Painting finally threw off the rigid trammels she had worn.

The difficulties in the way of elaborating these new conceptions, and the studies of anatomy necessary for the attainment of excellence in delineating the form, excluded women in a great measure from the pursuit. Gervinus remarks that women are fond of realizing new ideas; but they are those, for the most part, which are readily brought into use in common life, and which require no persevering study to reduce them to practice. Even the triumphs of literary talent in that toilsome age owed much to the patronage of the great. We find many ladies of high rank seeking the muses’ favor by the royal road to eminence.

Notwithstanding the paucity of women artists, we discover at least one representing each prominent school of painting—Flemish, Italian, and German.

MARGARETTA VON EYCK.

First among these, Margaretta von Eyck deserves mention. She was the sister of Hubert and John von Eyck, who were distinguished not only for enlarged apprehensions of art, but for the discovery and introduction of oil-painting.

While these men were, by their works, preparing the way for an important revolution in the method of painting, Margaretta occupied herself chiefly in painting miniatures. She worked under the patronage of the magnificent and liberal court of Burgundy, and her fame extended even to the countries of the romantic south. It is an interesting sight, this modest woman-work beside the more important enterprises of the gifted brothers, making itself appreciated so as to furnish an example for all time. Sometimes the sister worked with the brother in the decoration of costly manuscripts. One of the finest monuments of their united skill was the breviary—now in the imperial library at Paris—of that Duke of Bedford who, in 1423, married the sister of Philip the Good. Margaretta’s miniatures were preserved also in manuscript romances of the period. One of the earliest historians of Flemish art, Carl von Mander, calls her a “gifted Minerva,” and informs us that she spurned the acquaintance of “Hymen and Lucina,” and lived out her days in single blessedness.

ANOTHER MARGARETTA.

As in Margaretta von Eyck the grand efforts of Flemish art found expression modified by a feminine nature, so had those of the school in Nuremberg through the labors of another Margaretta—a nun from 1459 to 1470 in the Carthusian Convent, where she copied and illuminated religious works. Eight folio volumes were filled by her indefatigable hands with Gothic letters and pictures in miniature, presenting a curious specimen of the blending of the art of the scribe with that of the painter, so common in the Middle Ages.

CATERINA VIGRI.

A third female artist of this period belonged to Italy. Caterina Vigri, a pupil of the Bolognese school, combined with a high degree of talent a quiet gentleness and dignified manner that gained her general esteem. She was born of a noble family in Ferrara in 1413, and exercised her skill chiefly in miniature painting, though several large works are recognized as hers. One of St. Ursula, infolding in her robe her kneeling companions, is exhibited among other fair martyrs in the Pinacothek of Bologna, and, with the pure, calm expression, peculiar to the productions of a preceding age, combines a delicacy, grace, correctness of drawing, and freedom with firmness of touch, not often found at that time. One of her pictures is preserved in the Sala Palladiana of the Venetian Academy. Educated in the most exalted mysticism, she was the founder of the convent of “Corpo di Cristo,” which is yet in existence, and shelters the grave of Caterina as well as many of her works. She poured into these all her religious enthusiasm. Her master was Maestro Vitale. She died in the odor of sanctity, and was spoken of as “the Saint of Bologna.” In 1712 the Catholic Church inscribed her name in the second category of saints, with the title of “Beata,” in virtue of which she is honored to this day as the patron saint of the fine arts. Tradition relates a story of one of her paintings on wood—an infant Jesus—having the power to heal diseases in those who touched the lips of the picture.

THE WARRIOR MAIDEN.

Beside this saintly personage stands one who joined the prowess of the soldier to the genius of the painter. Onorata Rodiana was born at Castelleone in Cremona, in the early part of the fifteenth century, and, while yet young, obtained so high a reputation as a painter, that the Marquis Gabrino Fondolo, the tyrant of Cremona, appointed her to the task of decorating his palace.

The maiden, in the prime of her youth and beauty, was engaged in this work when an accidental occurrence changed the whole course of her life. A courtier of libertine character, who chanced to see her occupied in painting the walls of a room in the palace, entered, and dared to offer an insulting freedom. The young artist repulsed him; but, unable to escape his violence without a desperate struggle, the spirited girl at length drew a dagger and stabbed him to the heart. She then rushed from the palace, disguised herself in man’s clothes, and quitted the city, declaring that she would rather die in obscure exile than accept a luxurious home as the price of dishonor.

The Marquis Gabrino was at first furious at her escape, and commanded a hot pursuit by his soldiers; but soon afterward relenting, he proclaimed her full pardon, and summoned her to return and complete her labors, which no one else could finish. Onorata, however, had, in the mean while, learned the warrior’s business in Oldrado Lampugnano’s band of Condottieri, and her spirit and courage soon elevated her to a post of command. She loved the soldier’s life, and continued in it, painting the while, for thirty years.

When her native town, Castelleone, was besieged by the Venetians, she hastened with her company to its relief. Victory crowned her in the contest, but she fell mortally wounded. She died in 1472, perhaps the only example the world’s history affords of a woman who wielded at the same time the pencil and the sword.

CHAPTER III.
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

This Century rich in great Painters.—Not poor in female Artists.—Memorable Period both in Poetry and Painting.—Fruits of the Labor of preceding Century now discernible.—Female Disciples in all the Schools of Italian Art.—Superiority of the Bolognese School.—Properzia Rossi.—Her Beauty and finished Education.—Carving on Peach-stones.—Her Sculptures.—The famous Bas-relief of Potiphar’s Wife.—Properzia’s unhappy Love.—Slander and Persecution.—Her Works and Fame.—Visit of the Pope.—Properzia’s Death.—Traditional Story.—Isabella Mazzoni a Sculptor.—A female Fresco Painter.—Sister Plautilla.—Her Works for her Convent Church.—Other Works.—Women Painters of the Roman School.—Teodora Danti.—Female Engravers.—Diana Ghisi.—Irene di Spilimberg.—Her Education in Venice.—Titian’s Portrait of her.—Tasso’s Sonnet in her Praise.—Poetical Tributes on her Death.—Her Works and Merits.—Vincenza Armani.—Marietta Tintoretto.—Her Beauty and musical Accomplishments.—Excursions in Boy’s Attire with her Father.—Her Portraits.—They become “the Rage.”—Invitation from the Emperor.—From Philip of Spain.—The Father’s Refusal.—Her Marriage and Death.—Portrait of her.—Women Artists of Northern Italy.—Barbara Longhi and others.—The Nuns of Genoa.

The sixteenth century, rich beyond precedent in great men, was not poor in female artists whose works are worthy of notice. Both in poetry and painting the period was memorable and glorious. The labors of the preceding age had promoted civilization and education in moral and mental acquirements, the fruits of which were discernible even in Germany, while in Italy the harvest was most abundant. The period produced Victoria Colonna, Veronica Gambara, Gaspara Stampa, and other women of literary eminence; while the works in art of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, etc., became monuments for the admiration of succeeding generations. Dr. Guhl aptly remarks, “The fifteenth century was the time of work; the sixteenth the season of harvest.”

None of the numerous schools of Italian art were without female disciples. The Bolognese rose above all others, and at this period gave laws to art. Here we find

PROPERZIA, THE SCULPTRESS.

The first woman who gained reputation as a sculptor in Italy was Properzia di Rossi. She was born in Bologna in 1490, and possessed not only remarkable beauty of person, with all the graces a finished education could graft upon a refined nature, but various feminine accomplishments, excelling particularly, Vasari tells us, in her orderly disposal of household matters. She sang and played on several instruments “better than any woman of her day in Bologna,” while in many scientific studies she gained a distinction “well calculated,” says the Italian historian, “to awaken the envy not of women only, but also of men.” This maiden of rich gifts was endowed with a peculiar facility in realizing the creations of fancy, and took at first a strange way of doing so. She undertook the minute carving of peach-stones, and succeeded so well as to render credible what had been recorded of two sculptors of antiquity. Mirmecide is said to have carved a chariot drawn by four horses, with the charioteer, so small that a fly with his wings spread covered the whole. Callicrate sculptured ants with the minutest exactness. Properzia carved on a peach-stone the crucifixion of our Saviour; a work comprising a number of figures—executioners, disciples, women, and soldiers—wonderful for the delicate execution of the minutest figures, and the admirable distribution of all. A series of her intaglios is in the possession of Count Grassi of Bologna. In a double-headed eagle, in silver filagree (the Grassi coat of arms), are imbedded eleven peach-stones, and on each is carved, on one side, one of the eleven apostles, each with an article of the creed underneath; on the other, eleven holy virgins with the name of the saint on each, and a motto explanatory of her special virtue. In the cabinet of gems in the gallery of Florence is preserved a cherry-stone on which is carved a chorus of saints in which seventy heads may be counted.

It was not long before Properzia began to think, with those who witnessed her success, that it was a pity to throw away so much labor on a nut! At that time the façade of San Petronio, in Bologna, was being ornamented with sculpture and bas-relief. The young girl had studied drawing under Antonio Raimondi, and when the three doors of the principal façade were to be decorated with marble figures she made application to the superintendents for a share in the works. She was required to furnish a specimen of her talent. The young sculptress executed a bust from life, in the finest marble, of Count Alessandro de’ Pepoli; this pleased the family and the whole city, and procured immediate orders from the superintendents.

The one of her productions which has become most celebrated is a bas-relief, in white marble, of Potiphar’s wife seeking to detain Joseph by holding his garment. The perfection of the drawing, the grace of the action, and the emotion that breathes from the whole face and form, obtained high praise for this performance. Vasari calls it “a lovely picture, sculptured with womanly grace, and more than admirable.” But envy took occasion to make this monument of Properzia’s genius a reproach to her memory. It was reported that she was profoundly in love with a young nobleman, Anton Galeazzo Malvasia, who cared little for her; and that she depicted her own unhappy passion in the beautiful creation of her chisel. It was probably true that her life was imbittered by this unreturned love. One of her countrymen says the proud patrician disdained to own as his wife one who bore a less ancient name; and that he failed in his attempt to persuade her to become his on less honorable terms. Professional jealousy aided in the attempt to depress the pining artist. Amico Albertini, with several men artists, commenced a crusade against her, and slandered her to the superintendents with such effect that the wardens refused to pay the proper price for her labors on the façade. Even her alto-relief was not allowed to have its appointed place. Properzia had no heart to contend against this unmanly persecution; she never attempted any other work for the building, and the grief to which she was abandoned gradually sapped the springs of life.

There are two angels in bas-relief, exquisitely sculptured by her, in the church of San Petronio; and another work by her hand, representing the Queen of Sheba in the presence of Solomon, is preserved in what is called “the revered chamber.” Other works of hers have been pronounced to be in the highest taste. She is said to have furnished some admirable plans in architecture. In copper-plate engraving she succeeded to admiration, and many of her pen-and-ink etchings from Raphael’s works obtained the highest praise. “With this poor loving girl,” Vasari says, “every thing succeeded save her unhappy passion.”

The fame of her noble genius spread throughout Italy; and Pope Clement VII., having come to Bologna to officiate at the coronation of the Emperor Charles V., inquired for the fair sculptress of whom he had heard such marvelous things. Alas! she had died that very week—on the 14th of February, 1530—and her remains had been buried, according to her last request, in the Hospital della Morte. She was lamented by her fellow-citizens, who held her to have been one of the greatest miracles of nature. But what availed posthumous praises to the victim of injustice and calumny?

A story has been told of an interview between Properzia and the Pope; that, declining his offer to settle her in Rome, she knelt to take leave, when her veil falling disclosed a face of unearthly beauty, sad enough to move the pontiff’s sympathy. But it is more probable that she died before his coming.

SISTER PLAUTILLA AND OTHERS.

Isabella Mazzoni was also known at this period as a sculptor. We hear, too, of Maria Calavrese, who painted in fresco; and Plautilla Nelli—Suor Plautilla, as she is usually called—deserves more than a passing mention. Lanzi tells us she was of a noble Florentine family, and born in 1523. She had no assistance in developing her remarkable talent but her study of the designs of Fra Bartolomeo, one of the best masters of the Florentine school. She became a nun of the Dominican convent of St. Catherine of Sienna in Florence, and having acquired considerable reputation by her skill in painting, finished for the church a Descent from the Cross, said to be from a design by Andrea del Sarto; and a picture of her own composition, the Adoration of the Magi—a work that won great praise. In the first may be noticed the same purity of contour, the same harmony of light and shade, grace of drapery, and confident repose that characterize the works of Andrea. In the choir of the Convent of Santa Lucia, at Pistoja, was her large picture of the Madonna holding the child, surrounded by saints; and in the convent at Florence a large painting of the Last Supper. We do not attempt to enumerate the works credited to her, including her copies of the best masters, particularly Fra Bartolomeo, whom it was not easy to imitate, since he was superior to Raphael in color, and rivaled Vinci in chiaro-oscuro. Some pictures in Berlin, attributed to her, are marked by his purity and careful execution, with his depth and earnestness. She was also a miniature painter. She was prioress of the convent, and lived to the age of sixty-five. One of her successful pupils was Agatha Traballesi.

There were no noted women painters of the Roman school, but we may mention Teodora Danti, who painted several pictures of interiors after the style of Perugino. The heads of her figures were remarkable for grace, and she had much ease of action and freshness of coloring, but there was a certain dryness in the forms and poverty in the drapery.

The wife of the famous engraver, Mare Antonio Raimondi, also engraved on copper; and Diana Ghisi copied in her engravings works both of Raphael and Giulio Romano. Vasari says of her: “She engraves so admirably, the thing is a perfect miracle. For my own part, who have seen herself—and a very pleasing and graceful maiden she is—as well as her works, which are most exquisite, I have been utterly astonished thereby.”

IRENE DI SPILIMBERG.

A bright example, and the pride of the Venetian school in her day, was Irene di Spilimberg, born at Udina in 1540, of a noble and illustrious family, originally of German origin. She exercised her art at its most flourishing period. She was educated in Venice, surrounded by all the luxury of external and intellectual life, and she had Titian for her master. Her fame, however, rests rather on the testimony of her contemporaries than on her own works. Titian, ever alive to female loveliness and artistic merit, has immortalized her by a beautiful portrait; and Tasso has celebrated her charms in one of his sonnets. She died in the opening of her blossom of fame, in the flush of youth and beauty, having scarcely attained the age of nineteen. Her death was deplored in poems and orations, a collection of which was published in Venice twenty years after the event, to set forth the splendid promise which the destroyer had thus untimely nipped.

Among her works still extant are the Bacchanals in Monte Albedo, and small pictures from religious subjects said to be in the possession of the Maniago family. Lanzi remarks: “The drawing is careless, but the coloring is worthy of the best age of art. We see the reflected rays of her great master’s glory, the soft yet rapid gradations of tint, the clear touches, the repeated applications of color, which give a veiled transparency to the tints; the judicious grouping, the combined majesty and grace in the figures, which constitute some of the merits of Titian.” Irene is said to have been a woman of the highest mental culture. Rudolphi includes her among the few women artists he mentions.

The sixteenth century was not only remarkable for the production of talent, but for its recognition. Another artist belonging to the Venetian school was Vincenza Armani, who was accomplished in engraving and modeling in wax, and was also celebrated as a poet and musician.

MARIETTA TINTORETTO.

Marietta Robusti, the daughter and pupil of the great painter Tintoretto—him who was called “the thunder of art,” and excelled in the powerful and terrible—was born in 1560. She had a lively disposition and great enthusiasm; she was very beautiful in person, had a fine voice, and was an accomplished performer on the lute and other instruments. It is no wonder that she was the object of her father’s pride and affections. She accompanied him every where, dressed as a boy; and he developed her genius for art less by precept than by the living example of his own labor. His pictures nourished and fertilized her imagination, and, step by step, she followed him faithfully. Whether he labored at his models or studied the antique statues, or casts from Michael Angelo, the coloring of Titian or the nude figure, she was by his side. She noted his first sketch in the feverish moment of creation, and watched the progress of its execution. His marvelous freedom in handling the brush, his strength and precision in drawing and richness of coloring became hers. She learned his secret of giving proportion and unity to many figures, and the difficult art of foreshortening; then, after copying his pictures, she could say, “I, too, am an artist.” She chose the kind of painting suited to her sex. Historical pieces demanded too much study and application, and it was wearying to design nude figures in imitation of the antique. Portrait painting was easier, and promised more immediate results.

Her first portrait was that of Marco dei Vescovi. It was greatly admired, particularly the beard, and some ventured to say she had equaled her father. Ere long she became famous, and it was all the rage among the Venetian aristocracy to be painted by Marietta. Her father was in raptures at her astonishing progress and success.

Jacopo Strada, antiquarian to the Emperor Maximilian, had his portrait taken by her, and gave it as a curiosity to his imperial master. This, and one she painted of herself, gained her a great reputation. The emperor placed them in his chamber, and invited her to be the artist of his court. The same proposition was made to her by Philip II. of Spain and the Archduke Ferdinand. She was a dutiful daughter and obeyed the wishes of Tintoretto, who refused to part with her, even that she might grace a court. To secure her against the acceptance of such alluring offers, he bestowed her hand on Mario Augusti, a wealthy German jeweler, on the condition that she should remain under the paternal roof. She completed several original designs and painted many portraits. Her exquisite taste, her soft and gentle touch, and her skill in coloring were remarkable, both in works of her own invention and those due to her father’s genius.

Tintoretto was not destined long to rejoice in the progress of his lovely daughter. In the flower of her age, in 1590, she departed this life, leaving her husband and father mourners for the rest of their days. She was buried in the church of Santa Maria dell’ Orto. Another artist made a picture of Tintoretto transferring to the canvas the features of his child, still beautiful in death. Several of her works are in Venice. One, at the Palais Royale, represents a man in black, sitting, his hand on an open book lying on a table, where is also an escritoir with papers, a watch, and crucifix.

Decampes has published an engraving of Marietta’s portrait. The expression is very soft and meek; a braid of hair encircles the top of her head, and a rouleau is put back from the forehead. A handkerchief is crossed on the bosom, and around her neck is a string of large beads.

Some fair artists of the schools of northern Italy deserve mention. Vasari speaks of Barbara, daughter of the painter Lucas Longhi, of Ravenna, as possessing great talent. In Genoa, Tommasa Fiesca was known as a painter and engraver, as well as a writer of mystical tracts. She and her sister Helen were Dominican nuns, and died in 1534.

CHAPTER IV.
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

The six wonderful Sisters.—Sofonisba Anguisciola.—Her early Sketches.—Painting of three Sisters.—Her Success in Milan.—Invitation to the Court of Madrid.—Pomp of her Journey and Reception.—The Diamond.—Paints the Royal Family and the Flower of the Nobility.—Her Present to Pope Pius.—His Letter.—Her Style.—Lucia’s Picture.—Sofonisba Governess to the Infanta. Marriage to the Lord of Sicily.—His Death at Palermo.—The Widow’s Voyage.—The gallant Captain.—Second Love and Marriage.—Her Residence at Genoa.—Royal Visitors.—Loss of Sight.—Vandyck her Guest.—Her Influence on Art in Genoa.—Her Portrait and Works.—Sofonisba Gentilesca.—Her Miniatures of the Spanish Royal Family.—Caterina Cantoni.—Ludovica Pellegrini.—Angela Criscuolo.—Cecilia Brusasorci.—Caterina dei Pazzi.—Her Style shows the Infusion of a new Element of religious Enthusiasm into Art.—Tradition of her painting with eyes closed.—Her Canonization.—Women in France at this period.—Isabella Quatrepomme.—Women in Spain.—A female Doctor of Theology.—Change wrought by Protestantism in the Condition of Woman.—Its Influence on Art.—An English Paintress.—Lavinia Benic.—Catherine Schwartz in Germany.—Eva von Iberg in Switzerland.—Women Painters in the Netherlands.—Female Talent in Antwerp.—Albert Durer’s Mention of Susannah Gerard.—Catherine Hämsen.—Anna Seghers.—Clara de Keyzer.—Liewina Bennings’ and Susannah Hurembout’s Visits to England.—The Engraver Barbara.—The Dutch Engraver.—Constantia, the Flower Painter.

We come now to the six wonderful sisters Anguisciola: Helena, Sofonisba, Minerva, Europa, Lucia, and Anna Maria, all gifted in music and painting. Vasari describes his visit “to the house of Amilcare Anguisciola, the happy father of an honorable and distinguished family; the very home of painting, as well as of all other accomplishments.” In Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, we read:

“Le Donne son venute in eccellenza
Di ciascun’ arte, ov’ hanno posto cura.”

The best known of these amiable and distinguished sisters was the second; though Lucia, who died young, acquired celebrity, and produced beautiful and valuable works.

SOFONISBA ANGUISCIOLA

was born in Cremona, some time between 1530 and 1540, being descended from a family of high rank. At ten years of age she knew how to draw, and she soon became the best pupil of Bernadino Campi, an excellent Cremonese painter. One of her early sketches, representing a boy with his hand caught in a lobster’s claw, and a little girl laughing at his plight, was in the possession of Vasari, and esteemed by him worthy of a place in a volume which he had filled with drawings by the most famous masters of that great age. Portraits became her favorite study. Vasari commends a picture he saw at her father’s, representing three of the sisters and an ancient housekeeper, chess-playing, as a work “painted with so much skill and care that the figures wanted only voice to be alive.” He also praises a portrait of herself, which she presented to Pope Julius III.

Sofonisba instructed her four younger sisters in painting. While yet in her girlhood she attracted the notice of princes. She accompanied her father to Milan, at that time subject to Spanish rule. There she was received at court with welcome, and painted the portrait of the Duke of Sessa, the viceroy, who rewarded her with four pieces of brocade, and other rich gifts. By 1559 her name had become famous throughout Italy. The haughty monarch of Spain, Philip II., who aspired to the title of patron of the fine arts, heard the echo of her renown, and sent instructions to the Duke of Alba, then at Rome, to invite her to the Court of Madrid. The invitation was accepted. Sofonisba was conducted to the Spanish court with regal pomp, having a train of two patrician ladies as maids of honor, two chamberlains, and six livery servants. Philip and his queen came out to meet her, and she was sumptuously entertained in the palace. After a time given to repose, she painted the king’s portrait, which so pleased him that he rewarded her with a diamond worth fifteen hundred crowns, and a pension of two hundred. Her next sitters were the young queen, Elizabeth of Valois—known as Isabel of the Peace—then in the bloom of her bridal loveliness; and the unhappy boy Don Carlos, who was taken dressed in a lynx-skin and other costly raiment. One after another she painted the flower of the Spanish nobility. Meanwhile she received high honors and profitable appointments from her royal patrons.

Her extended fame induced Pope Pius IV. to ask her for a portrait of the queen. She executed the commission with alacrity; and, having bestowed her best care on a second portrait of her majesty, she dispatched it to Rome, with a letter, to be presented to His Holiness. “If it were possible,” she says, “to represent to your Holiness the beauty of this queen’s soul, you could behold nothing more wonderful.” The Pope responded with precious stones and relics set in gems; gifts worthy of the great abilities of the artist. His letter may interest the reader:

“We have received the portrait of the most illustrious Queen of Spain, our dear daughter, which you have sent us, and which has been most acceptable, as well on account of the person represented, whom we love paternally for her piety and the many pure qualities of her mind, to say nothing of other considerations, as because the work has by your hand been very well and diligently accomplished.

“We thank you for it, assuring you that we shall hold it among our most valued possessions, commended through your skill, which, albeit very wonderful, is nevertheless, as we hear, the very least among the many gifts with which you are endowed.

“And with this conclusion, we send you again our benediction. May our Lord have you in His keeping!

“Dat. Romæ: die 15 Ottobris, 1561.”

Sofonisba’s paintings were noted for boldness and freedom; and in some pieces her figures almost seemed to breathe. Some are comic; and this branch of art, in painting as in literature, demands boldness of conception, spontaneity of movement, and delicacy of touch. One of these works represents a wrinkled old woman learning the alphabet, and a little child making fun of her behind her back.

During her residence in Spain Sofonisba received from Cremona the portrait of her mother, Bianca, painted by her sister Europa. It was highly praised by Castilian critics, and the sister prized it as a faithful likeness of a beloved one whom she might never again behold. About this time Lucia may have sent her admirable portrait of Pietro Maria, a Cremonese physician—a grave and elderly personage in a furred robe—which now adorns the queen’s gallery in Madrid, the sole specimen of the powers of the gifted sisters.

Sofonisba had for some time been lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Spain: she was now appointed by Philip, with other ladies, to undertake the education of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. This proves her to have been in Spain after 1566, the year in which that princess was born. Her royal patrons wished her to marry a Spanish nobleman and take up her permanent abode near their court; but her hand was already pledged to the feudal lord of Sicily, Don Fabrizio de Monçada, and he bore her away to his island home. The king and queen gave her a dowry of twelve thousand crowns and a pension of one thousand; which she had power to bequeath to her son; besides rich presents in tapestry and jewels, and a dress loaded with pearls.

The newly-wedded pair went to Palermo, where after a few years the husband died. Sofonisba was immediately invited back to the court of Madrid, but expressed a desire to see Cremona and her kindred before her return to Spain. She embarked on board a Genoese galley, commanded by a patrician called Orazio Lomellini. He entertained the fair widow with gallant courtesy during the voyage, and she appears to have been not inconsolable for the loss of her husband. She loved the Genoese, it is said, out of sheer gratitude; although her biographer, Soprani, does not hesitate to say that she made him an offer of her hand, which he—“quel generoso signor”—very promptly accepted. The Lomellini family still preserve her portrait, painted by herself after the manner of Raphael.

We now find her living at Genoa, where she pursued her art with indefatigable zeal. Her house became the resort of all the polished and intellectual society of the republic. Nor was she forgotten by her royal friends of the house of Austria. On hearing of her second nuptials, their Catholic majesties added four hundred crowns to her pension. The Empress of Germany paid her a visit on her way to Spain, and accepted a little picture, one of the most finished and beautiful of Sofonisba’s works. She also received the honor of a visit from her former charge, the Infanta, now married or about to be married to the Archduke Albert, and joint sovereign with him over Flanders. This princess spent several hours talking with her friend of old times and family affairs; and sat for her portrait, for which, when it was finished, she gave Sofonisba a gold chain enriched with jewels. This pretty memorial of friendship was greatly prized by the artist. Thus caressed by royalty, and courted in Genoese society, she lived to an extreme old age. A medallion was struck at Bologna in honor of her; the most distinguished artists listened reverentially to her opinions, and poets sang the praises of

“La bella e saggia dipintrice,
La nobil Sofonisba da Cremona.”

In the latter years of her life Sofonisba was deprived of her sight; but retained her intellectual faculties, her love of art, and her relish for the society of its professors. The conferences she held in her own palace were attended to the last by distinguished painters from every quarter. Vandyck was frequently her guest, and was accustomed to say he had received more enlightenment from this blind old woman than from all his studies of the greatest masters. This was no mean praise from the favorite scholar of Rubens; and who shall say it was not deserved? By precept and by example she helped to raise art in Genoa from the decay into which it had fallen in the middle of the sixteenth century. Her pictures have something of the grace and cheerfulness of Raphael, in whose style her first master painted, and something of the relief of the followers of Correggio. “More than any other woman of her time,” writes Vasari, “with more study and greater grace, she has labored on every thing connected with drawing; not only has she drawn, colored, and painted from life, and made excellent copies, but she has also drawn many beautiful original pictures.”

One of Sofonisba’s works, seen at Cremona in 1824, was a beautiful picture of the Virgin giving suck to the Divine infant. In portraits her skill is said to have been little inferior to Titian. Her charming portrait of herself is no mean gem among the treasures of the galleries and libraries at Althorp. She has drawn herself in what the Germans term a “knee-piece;” rather under life-size. The small and finely-formed head is well set on a graceful neck; the dark hair is smoothly and simply dressed; the features are Italian and regular; the complexion is a clear olive; and the eyes are large, black, and liquid. The dark, close-fitting dress is relieved by white frills at the throat and wrists, and two white tassels hanging over the breast. Her delicate and exquisitely painted hands are seen over the chords of a spinet. On the right, in deep shadow, stands an old woman, wearing a kerchief twisted turbanwise around her head, and resembling a St. Elizabeth or a St. Anne in a religious composition of the Caracci. The whole is painted in the clear, firm manner of the best pencils of Florence. Sofonisba died in 1620.

Palomino mentions Sofonisba Gentilesca among the foreign painters of the reign of Philip II.: “a lady illustrious in the art,” who came from France to Spain in the train of Isabel of the Peace. She painted miniatures with great skill, and had for sitters their majesties, the Infant Don Carlos, and many ladies of the court. She died at Madrid in 1587.

Another noble lady, Caterina Cantoni, known as an excellent engraver, was invited into Spain with Sofonisba, to pursue there the calling she seems to have practiced with success in Italy. Ludovica Pellegrini was complimented with the title of the “second Minerva” for her excellence in this branch of art. She also devoted herself to needle-work, and embroidered sacred furniture, and the great pallium (vestment), exhibited to strangers as a curious specimen of art and learning. Boschini mentions “the unrivaled Dorothea Aromatari” as having produced with her needle those beauties the finest artists executed with the pencil. Other women were celebrated embroiderers. Naples boasted of one who surpassed her contemporaries both in painting and music—Maria Angela Criscuolo. Cecilia Brusasorci, the daughter of the great fresco painter, became celebrated for her portraits toward the close of this century.

Passing over a number of minor names, we may close the review of this period by a notice of Caterina de’ Pazzi. She was born in 1566, and retired early to a convent, where she assumed the name of Maria Maddalena. The energy with which she cultivated art, and the peculiar character of her works and those of others produced at this time, show the infusion of a new element of religious enthusiasm into art. Tradition preserves the story of this nun painting sacred pictures with her eyes closed. In the cloisters of the Carmelites at Parma, and in the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, at Rome, works of hers may be found. Dying in 1607, she was canonized by Clement IX. in 1669; and at this day a picture in one of the richest churches of Florence bears the name of the saintly artist, whose body reposes in a magnificent chapel under the same roof.

No other nation, during the sixteenth century, can compete with Italy in female artists. In France women enjoyed great influence in public affairs, and several ladies of the highest rank were distinguished for their literary productions and accomplishments. Isabella Quatrepomme is mentioned by Papillon as an excellent engraver on wood. She was born in Rouen, and flourished about 1521. A frontispiece in an old calendar, executed in neat style, representing a figure of Janus, is supposed to be by her, as it is marked with an apple on which there is a figure 4.

In Spain the flowers of art began to bloom at a later period; although in the liberal studies women were not behindhand. Isabella Losa, of Cordova, was appointed a doctor of theology, and there were ladies in Valencia, who, familiar with the works of Italian masters of art, made it their study to imitate them.

In the north the advance of Protestantism wrought a change in the condition of women, which had its influence on art. Domestic employments, and the domestic virtues, became more universally the delight and study of the fair sex. While the light of religious truth was penetrating their homes with its softened radiance, the growth of a deep moral feeling was preparing the way for farther triumphs in the imitative arts. England, where flourished many poetesses, had one female painter—Lewina Tirlinks—during the reign of Elizabeth. Germany boasted of Catherine Schwartz, the wife, probably, of that Christopher Schwartz whom his contemporaries called the German Raphael; while in Switzerland Eva von Iberg transferred to canvas the beauties of her country’s scenery.

In the Netherlands, on the other hand, the number of women painters at this period was large, and many were the diligent successors of Margaretta von Eyck in her native place. Her brothers, at the head of the old Flemish school, showed the combination of traditional types and ancient habits with the results of the struggles of the human mind for emancipation in this century. Antwerp seems to have been a rich soil for the production of female talent. Here, in 1521, Albrecht Durer became acquainted with the fair painter so honorably mentioned in his journal. “Master Gerard, illuminist,” he says, “has a daughter eighteen years of age, named Susannah, who illuminated a little book which I purchased for a few guilders. It is wonderful that a woman can do so much!” Among noted miniature painters we hear of Catherine Hämsen, who went into Spain, and entered the service of the Queen of Hungary on a good salary; also of Anna Seghers; Anna Smyters, and Margaret de Heere. Clara de Keyzer, or Clara Skeysers, of Ghent, died unmarried at the age of eighty. She enjoyed a celebrity that extended to Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, all which countries were visited by her.

Susannah Hurembout and Liewina Bennings, or Benic, should not be passed over. The latter, the daughter of “Maestro Simon,” was born in Bruges; was invited to London by Henry VIII., and was treated with great favor by both queens Mary and Elizabeth. King Henry gave her in marriage to an English nobleman. It has been thought she is the same person with Lewina Tirlinks. Susannah also received an invitation from “bluff King Harry” to visit his court, and lived in England, where she was treated with great distinction, for the remainder of her life. Both these women were miniature painters. Barbara Van den Broeck, the daughter of Crispin, was born in Antwerp, 1560, and engraved from her father’s designs. She handled the graver with consummate skill. In some pieces, she imitated successfully the style of Martin Rota.

In Holland, Magdalen de Passe was known as an engraver in copper, and Constantia von Utrecht as a flower-painter; one who first acquired distinction in this delicate and feminine branch of study, and directed to it the attention of her country-women. In later times the city where she lived and wrought became the capital of the world in this species of painting.

CHAPTER V.
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

New Ground presented for Progress.—Greater Diversity of Style.—Naturalism.—The Caracci instrumental in giving to Painting the Impetus of Reform.—Their Academy.—One opened by a Milanese Lady.—The learned Poetess and her hundredth Birthday.—Female Painters and Engravers.—Lavinia Fontana.—The hasty Judgment.—Lavinia a Pupil of Caracci.—Character of her Pictures.—Honors paid to her.—Courted by Royalty.—Her Beauty and Suitors.—A romantic Lover.—Lavinia’s Paintings.—Close of the Period of the Christian Ideal in Art.—Lavinia’s Chef-d’Œuvre.—Her Children.—Professional Honors.—Her Death.—Female Disciples of the Caracci School.—Pupils of Domenichino, Lanfranco, and Guido Reni.—The churlish Guercino a Despiser of Women.—The Cardinal’s Niece and Heiress.—Her great Paintings.—Founds a Cloister.—Artemisia Gentileschi, a Pupil of Guido.—Her Portraits.—Visit to England.—Favor with Charles I.—Luxurious Abode in Naples.—Her Correspondence.—Judgment of her Pictures.—Elisabetta Sirani.—Her artistic Character.—Her household Life.—Industry and Modesty.—Her Virtues and Graces.—Envious Artists.—Defeat of Calumny.—Her mysterious Fate.—Conjectures respecting it.—Funeral Obsequies.—Her principal Works.—Her Influence on female Artists.—Her Pupils.—Other Women Artists of Bologna.

In the seventeenth century the elements of disturbance had in part subsided, and new ground was presented for the progress of human intellect. A certain uniformity in art, which was the consequence of a close academical imitation of the old masters, gave place to a greater diversity of style, and, in some instances, to a vigorous and somewhat rude naturalism. The Naturalisti were so called on account of their predilection for the direct imitation of the common forms and aspects of nature. Passion was their inspiration, and their imitation was too often carried to excess, presenting what might be termed the poetry of the repulsive.

A new spirit of inquiry and a feeling of self-reliance had entered the popular mind that did not fail to influence the progress both of literature and art. The masters who were most strikingly instrumental in giving to painting the impetus of reform were Ludovico, Augustin, and Annibal Caracci. Amid many difficulties they opened an academy in their native city, Bologna, where art was taught on the principles then esteemed essential. In its theoretical and practical departments a goodly number of students were there permitted to profit by the works of the early masters. The good example was soon followed, and we hear of a Milanese lady opening her house for an academy.

Arcangela Palladini excelled in painting, poetry, music, and embroidery. A piece of her needle-work hung in the ducal gallery at Pisa, where none but great works were preserved. Beatrice Pappafava, a paintress, was also a learned lady, and is said to have celebrated her own hundredth birthday in an original sonnet of much merit. Caterina Rusca obtained some repute as an engraver on copper; and Augusta Tarabotti, who studied painting under the direction of Clara Varotari, was also a poet and the author of “An Apology for the Female Sex,” which was received with considerable attention. Fede Galizia, the daughter of a celebrated miniaturist, lived in Milan. In figures and landscapes she evinced taste, accuracy, and finish. She was devoted to the ideal, and this tendency appeared in her design and coloring.

LAVINIA FONTANA.

One among the female artists who adopted the style of the Caracci and helped to introduce a change in art was Lavinia Fontana, one of the most celebrated women of the century. She was the daughter of that Prospero Fontana who gave lessons in painting to Ludovico Caracci, and was wont much to disparage him. He once remarked that his scholar would do better at mixing colors than as a painter! But Caracci had his revenge in after years, when Fontana was heard to lament that he was too old to become the pupil of the great artist who had once been his own despised scholar! The instruction he could not receive was the privilege of his daughter Lavinia, who was born in Bologna in 1552. She adopted her father’s manner, and gained great celebrity in portrait painting; but, in later years, became the disciple of Caracci, after which she succeeded in giving her pictures so much softness, sweetness, and tenderness, that some of them have even been compared to those of Guido Reni. To delicacy of touch she united rare skill in taking likenesses. Her talents met with appreciation and honors not often accorded to female merit. The first ladies in Rome sought to become her sitters, and the greatest cardinals deemed themselves fortunate in having their portraits executed by her skillful hand. Her portraits were so highly esteemed that they commanded enormous prices, and were displayed with pride in the galleries of the nobility and the most cultivated persons in the land. Her services were engaged by Pope Gregory XIII. as his painter in ordinary; and she worked for the Buoncompagni family. Other crowned heads sought her society, and the most wondrous grace of all was that these honors did not create in her vanity or self-conceit. To her accomplishments she added such personal attractions that her hand was sought by many distinguished and titled suitors; but she preferred to them all a young man unknown to fame, Giovanni Paolo Zappi, of Imola. Some authorities speak of him as a wealthy nobleman. He had painted in her father’s studio for love of the charming daughter, and had been accustomed to paint the clothes in her portraits so well that she had made concerning him the not very flattering observation, that “he was worth more as a tailor than a painter.” He was rewarded by marrying her, the condition being exacted that Lavinia should remain free to follow her professional career.

Besides portraits, she produced several compositions on sacred subjects; some church pictures now in Bologna, and some on worldly themes, as the picture of Venus in the Berlin Museum. In her later works, after her lessons with Caracci, she acquired a softness and warmth of coloring that remind one of the masters of the Venetian school. One of her productions—Saint Francis de Paula raising a dead person—preserved in the Pinacothek of Bologna—has been noticed for this. Of her pictures besides are the Crucifixion, the Miracle of the Loaves, and the Annunciation. These were for churches of Bologna.

Lavinia lived at the close of what was peculiarly the period of Christian art, and it seems just to place her among the artists who labored while the Christian ideal, in all its splendor, was yet above the horizon. On this period Raphael and Michael Angelo had set their seal, and the Christian ideal was exhausted in the Transfiguration, and the frescoes of the Sistine chapel; they could not be surpassed. One of Lavinia’s works—the Nativity of the Virgin, at nighttime—is still exhibited in her native city. The infant Mary is surrounded by a cloud of angels, and a saint is pointing to two children below. A figure in magnificent bishop’s robes, on the other side, is in the act of sprinkling holy water on two beautiful kneeling girls. This picture, Bolognini asserts, alone justifies the artist’s fame. In the Escurial at Madrid is a piece by her, representing a Madonna uplifting a veil to view her sleeping child, who reposes on richly-embroidered cushions; St. Joseph and St. John stand near. “A picture,” says Mazzolari, “so vivid, so gay and graceful, and of such glorious coloring, so full of beauty, that one is never weary of admiring it.” A picture which has especially contributed to her artistic fame represents the Queen of Sheba in the presence of Solomon; but it has also an allegorical reference to the Duke and Duchess of Mantua, and various personages of their court. Lanzi considers this production worthy of the Venetian school. Another represents a royal infant, playing on a bed, wrapped in blankets, and adorned with a splendid necklace. A “Judith, seen by torch-light,” is in the possession of the Della Casa family. A Virgin and Child, which she painted for Cardinal Ascoli, and sent to Rome, has been thought her best production, and brought her so much fame, that, a large painting being required for a church, the commission was intrusted to Lavinia, in preference to many first-class artists, who sought it. She painted a stoning of Stephen, with a number of figures, and a halo above representing heaven opening. The figures were larger than life, and the work was not as successful as Lavinia had hoped. But after she confined herself to portrait painting, she had no reason to be dissatisfied with her success. Her chef d’œuvre is said to be her own portrait, taken when she was young and surpassingly beautiful. It is now in the possession of Count Zappi, at Imola, and has been engraved by Rossini, for his history of Italian painting. The portrait is painted in an oval; in the background, ranged on a shelf, are models in clay of busts, heads, trunks, hands, and feet. The artist is seated at a table, on which are two casts of Greek statues; she is in the act of commencing a drawing, and is dressed with elegant simplicity, her mantle flowing in clear and ample folds. Under the ruff encircling her neck hangs a pearl necklace, to which is attached a golden crucifix. She wears a Mary Stuart headdress, and the head is colored with wonderful delicacy and transparency. The work unites correctness of drawing with incomparable grace. England possesses three paintings by Lavinia Fontana.

This famous artist had three children, and was unhappy in them. Her only daughter lost the sight of one eye, by running a pin into it; and one of her boys was half-witted, and served to amuse loungers in the Pope’s antechamber. Malvasia remarks, “The story ran that he inherited his simplicity from his father; assuredly it came not from his mother, who was as full of talent and sagacity as she was good and virtuous.”

Lavinia was elected a member of the Roman Academy. Her merits were celebrated by contemporaries; Marini, among other poets, wrote in her praise; and in such estimation was she held, that, when she passed near the seat of the Lord of Sora and Vignola, the proud patrician came out to meet her at the head of his retainers, according to the fashion then in vogue for the reception of royal personages.

Among the Lettere Pittoriche is a letter dated 1609, signed Lavinia Fontana Zappi. This proves her to have been living then. One authority states that she died at Rome, in 1614, aged sixty-two.

While Lavinia Fontana availed herself of the system of Caracci, another, who enjoyed in early life the advantage of being Ludovico’s pupil, emulated his excellences so successfully that she produced a fine picture, full of figures, from one of his compositions, in 1614, for the church of the Annunziata, in Bologna. This was Antonia Pinelli. For skill in drawing and purity of tone she was held in high estimation.

Numerous were the young women who learned painting in the atelier of the Caracci; while other masters had their share of fair students. Domenichino is said to have been the teacher of Flavia Durand, Teresa del Po, and Artemisia Gentileschi; Lanfranco brought to light the talent of Caterina Ginnassi; Guido Reni gave instruction to Madalena Natali, and formed the genius of Elisabetta Sirani, the pride of the Bolognese school. Albano, however, was an exception, and, with the churlish Guercino, who despised every thing like female talent, had no pupils of the fair sex. A sister of one of his pupils, nevertheless—Flaminia Triva, of Reggio—became a painter much esteemed by the connoisseurs of her time.

Of these artists, only the three most distinguished need be noticed here. Caterina Ginnassi, of noble family and the niece of a cardinal, was born in Rome, 1590. She was well instructed from early youth in all feminine employments, useful as well as brilliant. She often said, afterward, “The needle and distaff are sad enemies to the brush and the pencil.” Her first master was Clelio, and after his death she threw herself into the bold and brilliant manner of Lanfranco. She produced the great paintings that adorned the church founded by her uncle, of St. Lucia, in Rome. Becoming the inheritor of the cardinal’s large possessions, she founded, according to his directions, a cloister, with a seminary attached for students from Romagna; as abbess of which, she continued to practice her favorite art, dying in 1680, in the enjoyment of the fame and popularity her industry and piety had deservedly won.

ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI.

The life of Artemisia Gentileschi was more in the world and more brilliant. She was the daughter of the painter Orazio Gentileschi, was married to Pier Antonio Schiattesi, and lived long in Naples. Receiving her earliest lessons from Guido Reni, at a later period she studied the works of Domenichino, one of the best masters of expression in the Bolognese school. Her great reputation was acquired by numerous portraits, and her skill in this species of painting obtained for her the honor of a call to the English court, whither her father accompanied her. There the art-appreciating monarch Charles I. gave her abundant employment. She was esteemed not inferior to her father in historical pieces. King Charles placed several of her works among his treasures. “David with Goliath’s head” was considered her best. Some of the royal family sat to her for their portraits, as did several of the nobility. A female figure, representing Fame, of great merit, was in the royal collection. Her own portrait is in Hampton Court, painted in the powerful and vivid style of Michael Angelo. Wägen says she excelled her father in portraits.

Having reaped a rich, reward for her labors in England, she returned to Naples, where she seems to have established herself in much splendor. She died in 1642, at the age of fifty-two. Several letters addressed to the Cavalier del Pozzo were found among her papers. In one, dated 1637, she inquires coolly after her husband. “Sia servita darmi nuova della vita o morte di mio marito.” Some of her letters contain orders for gloves; now her request to the Pope was permission for a priestly friend to bear arms; now she appealed to the Cardinal Barberini, then, all powerful in Rome, for assistance in disposing of some large picture, to furnish means to provide for the wedding of a daughter with suitable magnificence; after the granting of which favor, she would add, in the Italian fashion, that, “free from this burden,” she would return contented to her home. A fine specimen of her skill in painting is a picture of “Judith,” in the Palazzo Pitti, which shows, in its ground-work, the principles of the school of Bologna; while its finish, on the other hand, exhibits the startling effects of the Neapolitan school. Lanzi says, “It is a picture of strong coloring, of a tone and intensity that inspires awe.” Mrs. Jameson remarks, “This dreadful picture is a proof of her genius, and, let me add, of its atrocious misdirection.” But the artist should not be censured for her treatment of a subject which may not have been her own choice. “Susannah and the Elders” pleases by the scene and the drapery of the figures. The “Birth of John the Baptist,” in the Museum of Madrid, painted by this lady as a family piece, displays the same combination, but has more of the freedom of nature, and a certain boldness that betokens familiar acquaintance with life and the best models.

ELISABETTA SIRANI.

A place among the most gifted and the most illustrious women who, in any country or in any age, have devoted themselves to the fine arts, must be accorded to Elisabetta Sirani. She has been pronounced a complete artist; unrivaled by any of her sex in fertility of invention, in the power of combining parts in a noble whole, in knowledge of drawing and foreshortening, and in the minute details that contribute to the perfection of a painting. Had she lived longer, she would have equaled any painter of her time.

She was born in Bologna, about 1640, and was the daughter of a painter of no inconsiderable merit. She was enrolled among the pupils of Guido Reni, and her artistic character was formed after the model of this most gifted and most versatile master of the Bolognese school. She imbibed from him an exquisite sense of the beautiful, and a peculiar gift of reproducing it. To this she added a vigor and energy rare in a woman. She made herself acquainted early with the works of the most distinguished painters, and manifested so much talent in youth, that she became the admiration of her acquaintances, particularly as she excelled also in music; while, to the gift of genius, she added that of rare personal loveliness. Lanzi speaks of her with enthusiastic admiration. It is not often that an artist of celebrity so generally wins the affections of those who know her. This popularity perhaps added to her renown; or the tragical fate of the blooming girl may have contributed to invest her name with a halo of romantic glory. Malvasia, who tells us she was persuaded by her father to adopt the profession of a painter, calls her “the heroine among artists”—and himself “the trumpeter of her fame.” Another eulogist, in the glowing style of Picinardi, praises her unwearied industry, her moderation in eating, and simplicity in dress; and the exquisite modesty with which she was always ready for household employments. She would rise at dawn to perform those lowly domestic tasks for which her occupations during the day left her little leisure, and never permitted her passion for art to interfere with the fulfillment of homely duties. Thus she was admirable in the circle of daily life, as in her loftiest aspirations. She obtained time in this manner for her exercises in poetry and music. All praised her gracious and cheerful spirit, her prompt judgment, and deep feeling for the art she loved. Besides being a painter, she was an adept in sculpture and engraving on copper, thus meriting the praise lavished on her as “a miracle of art.”

Her devoted filial affection, her feminine grace, and the artless benignity of her manners, completed a character regarded by her friends as an ideal of perfection. Malvasia mentions the rapidity with which she worked, often throwing off sketches and executing oil pictures in the presence of strange spectators. The envious artists of her time took occasion, from the number of her paintings, to insinuate that her father gave out his own works for his daughter’s to obtain a higher price for them; but the stupid calumny soon fell to the ground, for every one had free access to the studio of Elisabetta, and one day, in the presence of the Duchess of Brunswick, the Duchess of Mirandola, Cosimo, Duke of Tuscany, and others, she drew and shaded subjects chosen by each with such promptitude that the incredulous were confounded. She had hardly received the commission of her large picture—“The Baptism of Jesus”—before she had sketched on the canvas the entire conception of that memorable incident, including many and various figures; and the work was completed with equal rapidity. She was then only twenty years of age.

Her method has been compared to that of Guido Reni, whose versatility she combined with rare force and decision, and peculiar delicacy and tenderness; the most opposite qualities being harmonized in her productions.

This fascinating artist, in the height of her fame, in the flush of early womanhood, was snatched from her friends by a cruel and mysterious doom. Her fate is involved in a darkness which has not been penetrated to this day. Some do not hesitate to aver that her sudden death was a base and cruel murder; that she was poisoned by the same hands that administered the deadly draught to Domenichino—those of Ribiera or his disciples, jealous of her rising fame. The general impression is that she was the victim of professional envy. Some averred that her death was caused by the revenge of a princely lover, whose dishonorable advances were repelled, or some great personage who was incensed at her refusal to engage in his service, or of a distinguished individual who felt aggrieved by a caricature, and secretly employed a servant to put poison in her food. Each story was believed among her contemporaries, and the record of the examination is yet extant; but it was conducted without regularity, and throws no light upon the mysterious assassination.

Great was the excitement on the 14th November, 1665, in Bologna, on the day of her funeral, when the whole population crowded, weeping, to see the once beautiful features distorted by the hateful poison. The victim of revenge or jealousy was honored with solemn and splendid funeral ceremonies in the church of St. Domenico.

Shortly after her death a work was published, in which was included a number of poetical eulogies and tributes, from the most eminent poets of the day, to the memory and virtues of the deceased. One line runs thus:

“I was a woman, yet I knew not love.”

Picinardi adds the information that the pure calm of her soul was never disturbed by the grand passion. On the other hand, Gualandi intimates that the highly gifted maiden cherished for a young artist of her acquaintance an ardent affection, but that her father would not consent to the marriage. The romantic may please themselves with the supposition that the seed of genius sown in the nature of this richly endowed girl was quickened in the glow of an unhappy passion into the gorgeous bloom that attracted the eye of the world.

Elisabetta lies at rest in the chapel of the Madonna del Rosario in the church of St. Domenico, which also incloses the dust of her great master, Guido Reni. The works enumerated as hers by Malvasia, from her own register, were one hundred and fifty pictures and portraits, some of them large and carefully finished. Her first public work was executed in 1655. Her composition was elegant and tasteful; her designing correct and firm; and the freshness and suavity of her color, especially in demi-tints, reminded one of Guido. The air of her heads was graceful and noble, and she was peculiarly successful in the expressive character of her Madonnas and Magdalens. Among her finest pictures are mentioned a Francesco di Padoua kneeling before the infant Christ, a Virgin and St. Anna contemplating the sleeping Saviour, and others, preserved in several palaces in Bologna. Her portrait of herself was taken in the act of painting her father. Another portrait of her is in the person of a saint looking up to heaven. Among her paintings on copper, which are exquisitely delicate, is a Lot with his children, now in the possession of a family in Bologna. She produced etchings of the Beheading of John the Baptist, the Death of Lucretia, and several master-pieces; all distinguished by delicacy of touch and by ease and spirit in the execution. Her painting, “Amor Divino,” represents a lovely child, nude, seated on a red cloth, holding in its left hand a laurel crown and sceptre, while with the right it points to a quiver and some books lying at its feet. Bolognini says: “It is impossible to conceive any thing more beautiful in form or more exquisite in finish than this lovely child.”

Like Guido’s, the influence of Elisabetta Sirani on the progress of art in Bologna was exhibited in the number of scholars who sought instruction from her, or studied her paintings to ground themselves in her system. So illustrious an example as she presented must naturally have contributed greatly to the encouragement and development of female talent, and many were the women whom her success, in a greater or less degree, stimulated to exertion. One of Elisabetta Sirani’s pupils was Ginevra Cantofoli of Bologna. She painted history pieces with some reputation. In a church of Bologna is a picture by her—The Last Supper. Her best was San Tommaso di Villanuovo.

Sirani’s sisters, Anna Maria and Barbara, are also mentioned among her scholars, with Lucrezia Scarafaglia, Maria Teresa Coriolani, and Veronica Fontana, who carved excellently well in wood, and executed portraits in this manner which were highly praised. Many other names of women are recorded who derived their impressions of art, directly or indirectly, from Sirani.

Teresa Muratori was the daughter of an eminent physician, and born at Bologna in 1662. At an early age she showed a genius for painting and music. She was instructed in designing by Emilio Taruffi, and afterward took lessons from Lorenzo Parmello and Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole. She painted historical pieces, and several religious ones for churches in Bologna. She died at the age of forty-six.

Orlandi speaks highly of Maria Helena Panzacchi. She was born at Bologna in 1668, was taught designing by Taruffi, and became a reputable painter of landscapes, which she embellished with figures. Her works were correct in design, and the disposition was marked by elegance and taste. Several of them are in private collections at Bologna.

Bologna boasted also of Ersilia Creti, a pupil of her father Donato, and of Maria Viani, of whose workmanship a reclining Venus, in the Dresden gallery, exquisitely done, remains to her praise.

Among others of the school of Bologna, we may mention Maria Dolce, the daughter and pupil of Carlo Dolce, so noted and so admired for the calm dignity of his productions. She copied several of her father’s pictures. The name of another painter, Agnes Dolce, may be added; but we must pass over a host, observing only that the Bolognese was throughout the seventeenth century the richest in female talent of all the schools of Italy.

CHAPTER VI.
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

School of the Academicians after Caravaggio.—Unidealized Nature.—Rude and violent Passions delineated.—Dark and stormy Side of Humanity.—Dark Coloring and Shadows.—The gloomy and passionate expressed in Pictures appeared in the Lives of Artists.—The Dagger and Poison-cup common.—Aniella di Rosa.—The Pupil of Stanzioni.—Character of her Painting.—Romantic Love and Marriage.—The happy Home destroyed.—The hearth-stone Serpent.—Jealousy.—The pretended Proof.—Phrensy and Murder.—Other fair Neapolitans.—The Paintress of Messina.—The Schools of Bologna and Naples embrace the most prominent Italian Paintings.—Commencement of Crayon-drawing.—Tuscan Ladies of Rank cultivating Art.—The Rosalba of the Florentine School.—Art in the City of the Cæsars.—The Roman Flower-painter.—Engravers.—Medallion-cutters.—A female Architect.—A Roman Sculptress.—Women Artists of the Venetian School.—At Pavia.—The Painter’s four Daughters.—Chiara Varotari.—Shares her Brother’s Labors.—A skillful Nurse.—Her Pupils.—Other female Artists of this time.—The Schools of Northern Italy.—Their Paintresses.—Giovanna Fratellini.

In contrast to the school established as before mentioned, certain academicians had set up one grounded on principles promulgated by Michael Angelo da Caravaggio, wherein the old idealism and conventional forms of beauty were neglected, and the models furnished by the works of the early masters were entirely slighted, to make room for a simple copying of nature, whether beautiful or repulsive, full of grace or rugged and barren of all charms. This new school had been planted in Naples by Caravaggio; and beneath that glowing sky arose a number of masters who devoted themselves not only to the reproduction of unidealized nature, but the delineation of human passions in their sternest and most violent demonstrations; preferring, in fact, to depict the darkest and stormiest side of humanity. For this purpose, depth of coloring and dark shadows were employed. These masters were not wanting in talent, nor were their creations without effect and influence; but they had nothing of the pure and holy element which seems like a genuine inspiration in art. The gloomy and passionate, expressed in their pictures, too often appeared also in their characters and actions.

The relations of these Neapolitan artists with those of the Bolognese school were by no means friendly, and rivals settled their disputes as frequently with the dagger and the poison-cup as with the pencil and the palette. Such a state of things was hardly favorable to the development of woman’s talent.

ANIELLA DI ROSA.

Yet we find one artist of surpassing merit, who, on account of her genius and her tragical fate, was called the Sirani of the school of Naples. This was Aniella di Rosa, niece of the painter Pacecco di Rosa, and pupil of that Massimo Stanzioni who, in common with Caravaggio, exercised a species of tyranny over the struggles of Neapolitan art, and was one of the leaders of the opposition set up against the artists from Bologna. Aniella painted in his atelier, and he directed her studies with paternal solicitude. She succeeded in giving to her pictures the grace, the soft and transparent coloring of Pacecco, and united in her heads the elegance of her uncle’s style with the correct drawing and able grouping of Stanzioni. Her master set her to color his sketches, and she succeeded so well that he often sold their joint productions as his own. When her education was sufficiently advanced, she desired that her talents should be put to a public test; and her master induced the governors of the church of the Pietà dei Turchini to give her a commission for two paintings which were to adorn the ceiling.

Aniella produced two paintings so excellent that many declared they were completed by Stanzioni. But Domenici says he has seen several of her original pictures, and that they are “most beautiful productions.” “Her master himself,” he continues, “avows in his writings that she equals the best masters of our time.” One of the pictures represented the Birth of the Virgin; the other, her Death. The figures are larger than life; and the boldness of design, the effects of light and shade, and the management of the drapery, drew praise from two eminent artists, who said she was an honor to her country, and that many artists might learn from her. She also did several heads of the Madonna in red chalk, pronounced equal in drawing to the works of the most renowned artists.

During the earliest days when Aniella frequented Stanzioni’s studio, she became acquainted with Agostino Beltramo, a high-spirited Neapolitan youth. He soon became enamored of the beautiful girl, and his frank manners and noble bearing, with the promise his early efforts gave of his becoming a good artist, were a passport to her heart. His love was accepted, and they were betrothed. Stanzioni exerted himself in their behalf, and through his good offices the consent of the parents for the marriage of the young people was obtained. A rare similarity of tastes, and their mutual labors in art, caused all to admire and many to envy the happiness of their union. The serenity of Aniella’s disposition tended to insure the peace of their daily life; and during sixteen years which they passed together both acquired no insignificant artistic fame. The husband excelled in frescoes; the lady in oil-paintings. The superb painting of San Biagio, in the church of the Sanità, in Naples, is the result of their mutual labors.

But the cloud was brooding over the happy home which was to burst in a fatal storm. An evil-minded woman, young and beautiful, entered the house of Aniella as a servant. She was in love with Agostino; and, finding all her charms and artifices ineffectual to move him from his fidelity to his noble wife, or even to win his attention, she set herself to work to accomplish the ruin of this domestic happiness.

She contrived to insinuate herself into the confidence of the man she could not tempt; and then, drop by drop, with the perfidy and subtle cunning of Iago, she succeeded in instilling into his heart the poison of jealousy. By degrees she undermined his faith in the spotless virtue of Aniella.

The husband grew morose and irritable, and at times manifested the change that had come over him by sudden outbursts of ill-humor. Vainly Aniella strove by unremitting patience and redoubled affection to soothe his wayward moods. She soon perceived that all her happiness must be derived from her art, and from the approbation of her old master, who frequently visited her. She painted in her best manner a Holy Family, and presented it to him. “On seeing,” writes Domenici, “with what mastery of drawing and perfection of coloring Aniella had completed the painting, and because she had so toiled for him, he was overcome with feeling, and, in a transport of affection, clasped her in his arms, exclaiming that she was his best pupil, and that, had he been asked to retouch the painting, he should not know where to begin, for fear of destroying the beautiful coloring.”

The infamous servant was playing the spy throughout this scene, and had called up a servant-lad to support her testimony. On Stanzioni’s departure Agostino returned.

“Now,” cried this hearth-stone serpent, “now I have proofs to set all doubts at rest—proofs I will furnish you with in the presence of your wife.” Confronted with her mistress, the vile hireling charged her with guilty embraces, and called the servant-lad to confirm the charge. Aniella, astounded and indignant, disdained to defend herself, but stood before her husband mute and motionless, while a flush of pain and indignation mantled on her brow. Her silence confirmed Agostino’s suspicions; in his phrensy he drew his sword, and the next moment Aniella lay dead at his feet. Thus closed the career of this noble artist, in 1649, in the thirty-sixth year of her age. She was not the only victim to the taste for the horrible and for wild extremes of passion then prevailing in the works of artists, and too common in their personal experience.

Another fair Neapolitan, who also worked in Rome at portrait-painting, was Angela Beinaschi. The nun, Luisa Copomazza, a landscape-painter and poetess, and the flower-painter, Clena Ricchi, were of Naples; with the painter and modeler in wax, Catarina Juliani, called the “ornamento della patria.”

Teresa del Po—daughter of a painter, the disciple of Domenichino, and distinguished for oil and miniature painting, and copper engraving—came from a family of Palermo. She etched plates in her father’s style; some after Caracci.

Messina boasted of Anna Maria Ardoino, the daughter of the Princess de Polizzi, accomplished in every branch, including music and poetry, who won great celebrity on account of her splendid attainments in art and literature, and was admitted a member of the Academy of Arcadia in Rome. She died in 1700, at Naples, in the bloom of her life and fame, and it is said her death was occasioned by grief for the loss of a son.

The two schools of Bologna and Naples may be said to embrace the greater number of the prominent productions of the pencil in Italy during the period of which we have spoken. Other cities enjoyed their peculiar distinctions as the seats of different schools of art, but they exhibited more or less the influence of these chief ones. In Florence—the ancient home of Italian painting—artists of distinction exercised their skill; and the superior cultivation and taste diffused under the auspices of distinguished Tuscan ladies, contributed, in no small measure, to the encouragement of female enterprise. While Maria Borghini—elevated, by the judgment of her contemporaries, to a seat beside Victoria Colonna, and Mary dei Medici, who not only patronized art, but gave it her own personal efforts—won the meed of admiration, others were not backward in the race for the golden apple of renown.

Arcangela Paladini, of Pisa, born 1599, already mentioned as a painter, was also an engraver. Her portrait, by herself, is in the gallery of artists in Florence. She died at the age of twenty-three. As flower-painters, we hear of Anna Maria Vajani and Isabella Piccini; Giovanna Redi was a successful pupil of the skillful Gabbiani; and Giovanna Marmochini was no less favorably known in art than as a wit and a learned lady. She has been called, for the excellence of her miniatures, the Rosalba of the Florentine school. Niccola Grassi, of Genoa, is also called by Lanzi “the rival of Rosalba.” She painted original compositions and church pictures.

Rome, meanwhile, maintained her ancient fame. The city of the Cæsars had often been the arena where the striving masters of the Bolognese and the opposing schools contended for the establishment of the supremacy they coveted. Nor was she wanting in women artists of her own, able to do credit to their birthplace. We may mention the excellent flower-painter, Laura Bernasconi, and the engravers, Isabella and Hieronima Parasole, whose name became so celebrated that the husband of the first adopted it, dropping his own. Isabella executed several cuts of plants for an herbal published under the direction of Prince Cesi, of Aquasparta. She also published a book on the methods of working lace and embroidery, illustrated with cuts engraved from her own designs. Hieronima engraved on wood, among other pictures, “The Battle of the Centaurs.”

Beatrice Hamerani worked at medallions, and in 1700 elaborated a large medallion of Pope Innocent XII., highly praised by Goethe as “undoubtedly one of the most skillful, expressive, and powerful productions of art which ever came from the hands of a woman.”

Add to these the name of the only woman who was ever known to have been a practical architect. This was Plautilla Brizio, who has left monuments of her excellence in that species of art in a small palace before Porta San Pancrazio, and in the chapel of St. Benedict, in San Luigi dei Francesi. In the latter is a picture painted by her hand. The villa Giraldi, near Rome, is the joint work of this lady and her brother.

The female sculptor Maria Domenici, who pursued her profession in Rome, was a native of Naples.

Passing over many of the Italian cities, and attempting no sketch of the peculiarities of the school of Venice, we find there several not insignificant women artists. Paolina Grandi, Elisabetta Lazzarini, and Damina Damini were known as painters, and Domenia Luisa Rialto as an engraver on copper. The sisters Carlotta and Gabriella Patin enjoyed celebrity for both learning and artistic skill. They lived at Pavia, and were members of the Academy dei Ricovrati.

The four daughters of the Venetian painter Niccolo Renieri, who practiced the same art, should be mentioned. Anna, the eldest, became the wife of Antoine Vandyck.

Chiara Varotari was so highly esteemed by those who knew her, that a niche was assigned her by contemporaries equal to that of Maria Robusti in the sixteenth century. She was daughter and pupil of Dario Varotari, and the sister of that Alessandro Varotari who became so noted as a painter, under the name Padovanino. Chiara frequently shared in the execution of his works. She was not less praised for her beauty, and her skill as a tender nurse of the sick. Her triumphs over the discomfort of disease were signal, in that field where female prowess so often achieves its deeds of heroism. Such conquests are seldom recorded by the historian’s pen; but it is pleasant for once to rescue them from oblivion. Honors were conferred on her by the Grand-Duke of Tuscany, who placed her portrait in his collection. This artist numbered among her pupils Lucia Scaligeri and Caterina Taraboti. Boschini thinks she gave public instruction, like Sirani. She died, full of years, in 1660, ten years after the brother whose labors she had aided.

Anna Maria Vajani, who engraved in Rome in the middle of this century, executed a part of the plates for the Justinian Gallery.

Laura Bernasconi imitated the famous flower-painter Mario Mizzi, called “Mario dai fiori.” With his coloring she had also his defects.

Maria Vittoria Cassana was the sister of two painters, and painted chiefly devotional pieces, in little. She died 1711. Lucia Casalina, a disciple of Giuseppe dal Sole, turned her attention to portraits.

Angelica Veronica Airola, a Genoese, studied painting under Domenico Fiasella. She painted religious pictures for the convents and churches of Genoa, and became a nun of the order of St. Bartholomew della Fiavella. Soprani and others mention her.

Giovanna Garzoni painted flowers and miniature portraits about 1630. At Florence she painted some of the Medici and the nobles. Dying at Rome in 1673, she bequeathed her property to the academy of St. Luke, in which there is a marble monument to her memory.

Two daughters of Caccia—called “the Fontane of Monferrato”—painted altar and cabinet pieces. One, Francesca, adopted for her symbol a small bird; Ursula, a flower. Ursula founded the convent of the Ursulines, in Moncalvo. Some of her landscapes are decorated with flowers.

Lanzi and Tiraboschi mention Margerita Gabassi as admirable in humorous pieces. She died in 1734, aged seventy-one.

In the Nuova Guida di Torino, Isabella dal Pozzo is mentioned as the painter of a picture in the church of San Francesco, at Turin, dated 1666, and representing the Virgin and Babe surrounded with saints. Lanzi bestows high praise on her. In 1676 she became court painter to the Electress Adelaide of Bavaria.

The schools of Northern Italy recorded the names, too, of Chiara Salmeggia, the painter of Bergamo, and of Maria la Caffa, of Cremona, who worked at the Court of Tyrol; of Camilla Triumfi; and Maria Domenici, a native of Naples, who worked at sculpture in Rome, and died a nun in 1703.

Lucia Scaligeri, a pupil of Chiara Varotari, had a daughter Agnes, also a painter, spoken of by Boschini. Caterina Rusca was a native of Ferrara, and known as an engraver and poetess.

Crayon-drawing seems to have been much in vogue at this time. Giovanna Fratellini, called by Lanzi “an illustrious female artist, from the school of Gabbiani,” painted in crayons as well as in oil, miniature and enamel. So famous did she become that, after executing the portraits of Cosmo III. and family—a drawing consisting of fourteen figures in a superb apartment, of the richest architecture, remarkable for its judicious disposition and lovely coloring—her patron sent her throughout Italy to paint the other princes. “Her pencil is light, delicate, and free,” writes Pilkington; “her carnations are natural, and full of warmth and life, and as she understood perspective and architecture thoroughly, she made an elegant use of that knowledge, enriching her pictures with magnificent ornaments. Her draperies are generally well chosen, full of variety, and remarkable for a noble simplicity. Her works rendered her famous, not only in Italy, but in Europe.” Her portrait is in the gallery at Florence; she painted herself in the act of drawing her son and pupil, Lorenzo, in whom were centred all her hopes. Under her tuition he made rapid progress in art, but died suddenly, at an early age. His mother never recovered from the blow; life and art had alike lost their charms for her, and she speedily followed him to the grave.

CHAPTER VII.
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

Contrast between the Academicians and Naturalists, and between the French and Spanish Schools of Painting.—Peculiarities of each.—Ladies of Rank in Madrid Pupils of Velasquez.—Instruction of the royal Children in Art.—The Engraver of Madrid.—Every City in the South of Spain boasts a female Artist.—Isabella Coello.—Others in Granada.—In Cordova.—The Sculptress of Seville.—Luisa Roldan; her Carvings in Wood.—The Canons “sold.”—Invitation to Madrid.—Sculptress to the King.—Other Women Artists in Spain.—In France Woman’s Position more prominent than in preceding Age.—Corruption of court Manners.—Unworthy Women in Power.—Women in every Department of Literature.—Mademoiselle de Scudery.—Madame de la Fayette.—Madame Dacier.—Women in theological Pursuits.—Their Ascendency in Art not so great.—Miniature and Flower Painters.—Engravers.—Elizabeth Sophie Chéron.—A Leader in Enamel-painting.—Her Portraits and History-pieces.—Her Merits and Success.—Her Translations of the Psalms.—Musical and Poetical Talents.—Honors lavished on her.—Love and Marriage at three-score.—Her Generosity to the needy.—Verses in her Praise.—Historical Tableaux.—Madelaine Masson.—The Marchioness de Pompadour.

Striking contrasts belong to the history of art in the seventeenth century. A moral, religious, and artistic contrast existed between the academicians and the naturalists; and one as remarkable may be noticed between the French and Spanish schools of painting, corresponding, in fact, to the civil struggle between the two nations for European supremacy. In Spain the enthusiasm for art harmonized with the passionate character of the people; in France, discretion and intellectual taste predominated. The sensuous and rudely natural in Spanish art was combined with the warmest glow of religious feeling.

Velasquez, a son of Andalusia, had a number of scholars in Madrid among ladies of high rank. Donna Maria de Abarca and the Countess of Vill’ Ambrosa were celebrated for their skill in taking likenesses, and were highly praised by the poets. The Duchess of Bejar, Teresa Sarmiento, and Maria de Guadalupe, Duchess of Aveiro—also an accomplished linguist and lover of letters—had considerable celebrity as painters. The admiration of Philip IV. for art rendered the instruction therein of the royal children and those of the nobility a necessary branch of education. The Duchess of Alba, celebrated for her beauty and intrigues, gave one of Raphael’s master-pieces as a fee to the family physician, who had cured her of a dangerous illness.

Maria Eugenia de Beer was an engraver in Madrid, and we may find in the choir-books of the cathedral at Tarragona creditable specimens of the talent of the painter Angelica, who painted the illuminations with great neatness and skill.

Every city in the south of Spain seemed to be able to boast of a female artist. In Valencia lived Doña Isabella Sanchez Coello, the daughter and pupil of “the Spanish Prothogenes”—Alonzo Sanchez Coello—the first of the great Spanish portrait painters, and the Velasquez of the court of Philip II. Born in 1564, she was the playmate of Infants and Infantas, and she acquired distinction both in music and painting. She married Don Francisco de Herrera, Knight of Santiago. Dying in Madrid in 1612, she was buried with her husband’s family in the church of San Juan.

Magdalena Gilarte was a noted painter, and worked in her father’s style with spirit and skill. Jesualda Sanchez carried on her husband’s business after his death, and painted small pictures of the saints for sale.

In Granada we find Doña Maria Cueva Benavides y Barrados an admired painter, and Anna Heylan an engraver in copper. In Cordova, Doña Francisca Palomino y Velasco, the sister of the painter and art historian of the same name. She flourished about the close of the century.

THE SCULPTRESS OF SEVILLE.

To the school of Seville, in which Spanish art reached its highest development, belongs a fair artist of repute. Luisa Roldan was known as an excellent sculptor in wood. She was born in 1656, and profited by her father’s instructions in art, acquiring great skill. After her mother’s death, she kept both her household and the studio in orderly operation, attending with successful management to the affairs of both, and keeping busy at work both her servants and her father’s pupils.

Roldan was indebted to her for valuable hints. He had carved a statue of St. Ferdinand for the Cathedral, which the canons rejected. Luisa suggested certain anatomical operations with the saw, which were perfectly successful. The canons took the work for a new one, and were satisfied; and the saint was peacefully installed in his chapel. Her chief productions were small figures of the Virgin, or groups of the Adoration of the shepherds, etc., and all were designed and executed with delicacy and grace. She sculptured a Magdalen supported by an angel, the statue giving an exquisite idea of an angel’s sweetness and protecting love. It is placed in the hospital at Cadiz. Her small pieces are full of expression.

She married Don Luis de los Arcos, and was invited to Madrid in 1692, through Don Cristobal Ontañon, who had presented several of her works to Charles II. The king was pleased, and ordered a statue of St. Michael, life size, for the church of the Escurial. This Luisa executed with great success, and to the admiration of the connoisseurs. The work elicited complimentary verses from a distinguished poet, and the artist was rewarded by the post of sculptress in ordinary to the king, with a salary of a hundred ducats, paid from the day she arrived at court.

When Charles II. died she had just completed a statue of our Saviour which he had ordered for a convent; its destination was then changed to a nunnery at Sisanto. She died at Madrid in 1704, leaving in the palace treasure a small group, modeled in clay, representing St. Anna teaching the Virgin to read, and attended by angels. Some of her works were placed in the Recolete Convent, and some in the Chartreuse of Paulan.

Doña Isabella Carasquilla was a painter, and married a miniaturist, Juan de Valdes Leal of Cordova. Their daughters Luisa and Maria were highly educated, and painted miniatures. The latter died in 1730, a nun in the Sistercian Convent at Seville.

Rosalba Salvioni, a painter of celebrity, was the pupil of Mesquida. Doña Inez Zarcillo evinced no small taste in drawing and modeling. She was the sister of a sculptor.

Maria de Loreto Prieto, an artist’s daughter, possessed extraordinary talent for painting and engraving. Her father was highly esteemed by Charles III., and had the oversight of all the coins for the purpose of improving the stamps.

Caterina Querubini, the wife of Preciado, a miniature-painter, enjoyed a pension from the Spanish court, and an honored place in the Academy de San Fernando.

Doña Isabella Farnese, the wife of Philip V., and Angela Perez Caballero, drew exceedingly well, and were members of the Academy in Madrid.

WOMEN ARTISTS IN FRANCE.

In France women had taken a position more prominent than in the preceding century. Even the gallantry prevailing in society, and the corruption of court manners, were promoted by feminine influence. Unworthy women were raised to power, and the history of court favorites from the reign of the knightly Henry IV. to that of the great monarch Louis XIV. forms the most important part of the annals of the empire.

Women took eminent places in every department of literature; in the drama Catherine Bernard was the disciple of Racine, and Mademoiselle de Scudery had many imitators in her poetical romances; while Madame de la Fayette took the lead in a more modern style of fiction. Madame Dacier became celebrated as “the most learned and eloquent of women,” and her example helped to spread a love of knowledge and classical attainment among the French ladies. Even theological pursuits had a Jeanne de la Mothe-Guyon to represent mysticism in conflict with the orthodoxy of the court and the state.

In art the ascendency of woman was by no means so great. We may, however, name, as prominent in portrait and miniature painting, Antoinette and Madelaine Herault; the latter, in 1660, married Noel Coypel. She joined noble virtues to her extraordinary talents. Henriette Stresor and Catherine Perrot may also be mentioned. Catherine Duchemin, a flower-painter, married the famous sculptor Girardon.

Several women were noted as engravers on copper; among them Claudine Bonzonnet Stella has been called the first in France, and practiced the art with her two sisters. Jane Frances and Mary Ann Ozanne, the sisters of a French engraver, worked chiefly in engraving sea-side scenes.

ELIZABETH SOPHIE CHÉRON.

But she who occupies the highest place among all the artists of this period is Elizabeth Sophie Chéron. Born in Paris in 1648, she received instruction from her father in miniature and enamel painting, in which she attained such perfection that she may be regarded as the leader of the host of French artists who devoted themselves especially to this branch. At the age of twenty-six she was admitted a member of the Academy, at the proposal of Charles Le Brun. She was received with distinction; his portrait by her being her reception picture.

Her merits were a fine tone, exquisite taste and harmony in design, and finely-disposed draperies. She often made portraits from memory. Her portraits were so frequently treated in an allegorical manner they might be called historical; and her history-pieces were much admired. She designed much after the antique.

Her father had educated Elizabeth in the strictest principles of Calvinism; but her mother, Marie Lefevre, a Catholic, persuaded her to become a member of that church, after a year’s seclusion in the community of Madame de Miramion. The difference in faith did not impair her affection to her family. She supported her brother Louis for some time in Italy, whither he went to study painting.

This accomplished artist passed the maturity of life without any of the experiences, with which almost every young girl is familiar, of the tender passion. Her emotions seem to have been altogether spiritual. She translated many of the Psalms into French verse; and they were published with illustrations by Louis. She played admirably on the lute, and was accustomed to practice in the parlor with her nieces and pupils, who performed on different instruments. Louis XIV. gave her a pension of five hundred livres.

The most eminent scholars of the day were her friends and visitors; and in conversation she evinced the highest mental cultivation. Her portraits were chiefly painted as presents to her friends, or as ornaments to her own cabinet. “I have the pleasure,” she would say, “of seeing them in their absence.”

In spiritual lyrics she was the precursor of J. B. Rousseau, with whom in warmth of feeling she may be compared; and in narrative poetry she acquired much reputation. The Academy dei Ricovrati, in Padua, received her as a member in 1699, under the name of Erato. She possessed beauty and engaging manners, and to all the honors lavished on her she joined the crowning grace of modesty.

The attractions of this gifted being did not depart with the beauty of fleeting youth. At the age of sixty she fascinated the affections of the Sieur Le Hay, a gentleman about her own age, on whom she bestowed her hand, simply with the generous motive, it was said, of promoting his good fortune. Tradition reports that, when they came out of the church after the ceremony had been performed, the bride made a speech to her husband, implying that esteem, not romantic love, had influenced her choice. She is said to have alluded to him, under the name of Damon, in one of her poems.

As of Madame Dacier, it might be said of this artist—the traits of a great and manly nature might be discerned in her face. Her features wore an expression of decision and firmness. Her hair, in her portrait, curls from the top and floats in ringlets. She was remarkable for the modesty and simplicity of her dress. Her large and sympathizing heart made her the protector and benefactor of needy artists, while her social qualities drew around her the brilliant circles that habitually were found at her house, including many of the most gifted and illustrious of that day. Her death took place in 1711, at the age of sixty-three, and she was buried at St. Sulpice. She was lamented by Fermelhuis in a canto of praise. The Abbé Bosquillon wrote the following lines to be inscribed under her portrait:

“De deux talens exquis l’assemblage nouveau
Rendra toujours Chéron l’ornement de la France;
Rien ne peut de sa plume égaler l’excellence
Que les graces de son pinceau.”
For different gifts renowned, fair Chéron see,
Ever of France the ornament and pride;
Equaled by none her pen’s great works shall be,
Save when her pencil triumphs at their side.

Mademoiselle Chéron made many studies from Raphael and the Caracci. Among her historical tableaux are enumerated, “The Flight into Egypt”—the Virgin represented in a wearied sleep, with angels guarding the babe; “Cassandra inquiring of a god the doom of Troy;” “The Annunciation;” “Christ at the Sepulchre”—after Zumbo; with “The Demoiselles de la Croix”—her nieces and pupils; and a grand portrait of the Archbishop of Paris, placed in the Jacobin school of the Rue St. Jacques.

Madelaine Masson was the daughter of Anthony Masson, a celebrated engraver, and was born in Paris, 1660. She received instruction from her father, and engraved portraits in his fine style. Among these is the picture of Maria Teresa, Queen of France, and of the Infanta of Spain.

The Marchioness de Pompadour engraved and executed small plates after Boucher and others. She engraved one set of sixty-three prints, after gems by Gay.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

Two different Systems of Painting in the North.—The Flemish School represented by Rubens.—The Dutch by Rembrandt.—Characteristics of Rubens’ Style.—No female Disciples.—Unsuited to feminine Study.—Some Women Artists of the first Part of the Century.—Features of the Dutch School.—A wide Field for female Energy and Industry.—Painting de genre.—Its Peculiarities.—State of Things favorable to female Enterprise.—Early Efforts in Genre-painting.—Few Women among Rembrandt’s immediate Disciples.—Genre-painting becomes adapted to female Talent.—“The Dutch Muses.”—Another Woman Architect.—Dutch Women Painters and Engravers.—Maria Schalken and others.—“The second Schurmann.”—Margaretta Godewyck.—The Painter-poet.—Anna Maria Schurmann.—Wonderful Genius for Languages.—Early Acquirements.—Her Scholarship and Position among the learned.—A Painter, Sculptor, and Engraver.—Called “the Wonder of Creation.”—Royal and princely Visitors.—Journey to Germany.—Embraces the religious Tenets of Labadie.—His Doctrines.—Joins his Band.—Collects his Followers, and leads them into Friesland.—Poverty and Death.—Visit of William Penn to her.—Her Portrait.—Her female Contemporaries in Art.—Flower-painting in the Netherlands.—Its Pioneers.—Maria Van Oosterwyck.—Her Birth and Education.—Early Productions.—Celebrated at foreign Courts.—Presents from imperial Friends.—Enormous Prices for her Pictures.—Royal Purchasers.—The quiet Artist at work.—The Lover’s Visit.—The Lover’s Trial and Failure.—Style of her Painting.—Rachel Ruysch.—The greatest Flower-painter.—Early Instruction.—Spread of her Fame.—Domestic Cares.—Professional Honors.—Invitations to Courts.—Her Patron, the Elector.—Her Works in old Age.—Her Character.—Rarity of her Paintings.—Personal Appearance.

While the academicians and naturalists of the Italian schools contended through the seventeenth century, and while in France and Spain the works of art exhibited as great contrasts, modified in each country by national peculiarities, two different systems in the North came into notice. These, as in the time of Von Eyck, had great influence upon the development of art in other lands besides that where they originated. One was the Flemish school, represented by Rubens; the other the Dutch, in which Rembrandt was regarded as the mighty master.

The style of Rubens, brilliant, luxuriant, and full of vigorous life, it may be thought would commend itself peculiarly to the attention of women. This school, however, in which the healthy and florid naturalism of Flemish art reached its highest development, seems to have been without any female disciples of note. The passionate and often intensely dramatic character of the works of Rubens and his scholars, and the physical development of his nude figures, were, indeed, scarcely suited to feminine study, though their fullness of life and warmth of coloring afterward won to imitation an artist like Madame O’Connell. We may also mention Micheline Wontiers, a portrait painter in the first half of the seventeenth century. An engraving was made from one of her productions by Pontius, who busied himself with the works of Rubens. The name of Catherine Pepyn, too, is found inscribed as a portrait painter in the St. Luke’s Society of Artists at Antwerp, about 1655.

In Holland, on the other hand, the new school of painting owed its marked features to the political and religious revolution that had been the fruit of the reformed doctrines. This change offered a wide field for the exercise of female energy and genius. With the progress of the new faith kept pace the rapid advance of literature; the great questions at issue and the more earnest domestic life of the Hollanders furnishing ample materials for thought and description. Painting came under the same influence, and this was evident when the depth and power of feeling in his works marked Rembrandt as one of the greatest masters of all time.

A novel species of the art was called painting de genre. Herein life was represented in all its rich and varied forms, and the world and real humanity became objects of attention where hitherto only idealized representations had been tolerated. A new arena was thus opened, in which there was promise of noble achievement, and the rudest and meanest aspects of common life soon appeared capable of being invested with an ideal fascination. The painter de genre, armed with the wand of humor, often succeeded in such attempts, and success led to the adoption of that wonderfully poetical chiar’ oscuro in coloring, which, till this period, had never attained the same degree of favor either in the North or the South.

This state of things was eminently favorable to female enterprise, and we find, accordingly, in a number of fair artists, evidences of the energetic industry and careful minuteness for which the women of Holland have been particularly noted. However, in the earliest efforts at painting de genre, wherein the Flemish artists stood opposed to the schools of Italy, women took no share. These trial specimens usually consisted of some rough piece after nature, such as the drunken boors and rustic women of the elder Breughel, and for a long time the prevailing taste ran on the low, coarse, and fantastic in the models selected. There was more to disgust than to attract cultivated women in such a fashion, and, notwithstanding their alleged fancy to run into extremes, this will account for the fact that they did not choose to be numbered among those who delighted in such a copying of nature. One we hear of, Anna Breughel, seems to have been a kinswoman of a younger painter of that name.

The earnestness, depth, and intensity given to this species of art by Rembrandt seemed to lie as little within the compass of female fancy, which rather delighted in pleasing delineations of more superficial emotion, than in the concentration of the deepest feelings of nature. Thus few women were found among the immediate disciples of Rembrandt.

But as painting de genre accommodated itself more pleasingly to representations of ordinary life and circumstances, and the delicacy of detail that formed the peculiar charm of this species of art was lavished on attractive phases of character, the school became more and more the nursery of female talent.

Literature, at this period, experienced a similar change; and it is interesting to see the same persons pursuing both branches of study. This was the case with the two painters, Tesselschade-Visscher—called the “Dutch Muses,” on account of their poetry—with Elizabeth Hoffmann, and the dramatic poet, Catharina Lescaille; also with one of whom we shall presently speak, whose fame traveled far beyond the boundaries of her native land.

Among the older artists of the Dutch school we may mention, in passing, the fruit and flower painter, Angelica Agnes Pakman; Madame Steenwyk, a designer in architecture; and the portrait-painter, Anna de Bruyn. Anna Tessala was eminent as a skillful carver in wood. Concerning Maria Grebber, a pupil of Savary, Van Mander remarks that she was well skilled both in perspective and in building plans. Maria and Gezina Terburg were sisters of Gerard, and, like him, skillful in genre-painting.

Gottfried Schalken, who introduced a simpler method, and surprising effects of light, was not more celebrated than his sister and pupil, Maria, for productions remarkable for delicacy of execution and tender expression. Eglon van der Neer shared his fame with his wife, Adriana Spilberg. She was born in Amsterdam, in 1646, and was taught by her father, an eminent painter. She excelled in crayons or pastels, though she often painted in oil. Her portraits were said to be accurate likenesses. They were delicately colored, and executed with neatness and care. She was much patronized at the court of Düsseldorf.

Caspar Netscher, one of the best and most pleasing masters in this peculiar style, had a disciple in Margaretta Wulfraat, whose historical paintings—a Cleopatra and a Semiramis—are to be seen in Amsterdam, and who died at a great age early in the eighteenth century.

A still greater interest attaches to artists who also took an active part in the elevation of Dutch literature. Anna and Maria Tesselschade—the daughters of Visscher, already mentioned—belonged to this class; they were also celebrated for their fine etchings on glass. Their literary culture brought them into association with the most eminent scholars of that day.

With them may be ranked Margaretta Godewyck—born at Dort, in 1627, and a pupil of Maas—who attained celebrity both in painting and in her knowledge of the ancient and modern languages. She was called “the second Schurmann,” and many praised her as “the lovely flower of art and literature of the Merwestrom;” that is, of Dortrecht. She painted landscapes and flowers, and embroidered them with great skill. She died at fifty.

Catharina Questier, who resided at Amsterdam, was distinguished for painting, copper-engraving, and modeling in wax, besides having no small consideration accorded to her poetry. Two of her comedies, that appeared in 1655, evince her skill in at least three branches; for the drawings and engravings that illustrated the dramas were entirely her own design and execution.

ANNA MARIA SCHURMANN.

A higher and more enduring fame than all these could command must be accorded to Anna Maria Schurmann, called by the Dutch poets their Sappho and their Corneille. She was born in November, 1607, in Cologne (Descampes says, at Utrecht), of Flemish parents. Her family, like that of Rubens, was Protestant, and her parents fled to Cologne from the persecutions of Alba, remaining till 1615, when they removed to Utrecht.

Even in early childhood the genius of the young girl displayed its bent. At three years of age she began to read, and at seven could speak Latin. Her mother tried to keep her at the needle, but she loved to amuse herself by cutting out paper pictures; she also painted flowers and birds—untaught. A few years later, her taste for poetry and learning languages developed itself. Learning was her passion; the arts her recreation. Being allowed to be present at her brothers’ Latin lessons, she soon gained surprising proficiency in that tongue. When she was ten years old, she translated passages from Seneca into French and Flemish. Her love of study soon led to the acquisition of the Greek. To the classics she added, before long, a knowledge of the Oriental languages. She spoke and wrote the Hebrew, Samaritan, Arabic, Chaldaic, Syriac, Ethiopian, Turkish, and Persian; besides being perfectly well acquainted with the Italian, Spanish, French, English, and German, and speaking every European tongue with elegance.

At the age of eleven this Flemish lassie had read the Bible, Seneca, Virgil, Homer, and Æschylus in the original tongues; at fourteen she composed a Latin ode to the famous Dutch poet Jacob Cats, who became afterward an unsuccessful suitor for her hand. She wrote verses, indeed, in many languages. The knowledge of different tongues greatly aided her theological studies, in which she took the deepest interest from early life. It is said that it was by reading the History of the Martyrs she became imbued with the tendency to religious enthusiasm that so strongly influenced her through life, and led to so strange a career in her latter years.

The astonishing learning of this remarkable woman and her mastery in the languages, caused her opinions to be often consulted by the most erudite scholars of her time. Her judgment was always received with respect; an honorable place was reserved for her in the lecture-rooms of the University at Utrecht; and not unfrequently she took part openly in the learned discussions there carried on. The professors of the University of Leyden had a tribune made, where she could hear without mixing with the audience. With this wonderful erudition Anna Maria combined a rare degree of cultivation in art. The genius that had shown itself in paper-cutting still gave evidence of strong and resolute activity. She was skilled both in drawing and painting, had a “happy taste in sculpture,” and exercised her talents in carving in wood and ivory, as well as in modeling in wax. She carved the busts of her mother and brothers in wood. The painter Honthorst valued a single portrait executed by her, at a thousand Dutch florins. In addition, she has left evidence of her no slight accomplishments in copper-engraving; and she engraved with the diamond on crystal. Taste in music, and skill in playing on several instruments, fill up the list of the amazing variety of endowments bestowed on one of the most gifted of her sex.

We can not marvel that she was called by her contemporaries “the wonder of creation.” Not only was she, on account of such varied gifts, regarded with admiration, but she was idolized by her acquaintance for personal qualities. She was in the most intimate literary association with men of distinguished learning like Salmatius, Heinsius, Vossius—who is said to have taught her Hebrew—and others. Princes and princesses came to visit and converse with her, and entered into correspondence with her.

Gonzagues, Queen of Poland, taking a journey to Utrecht in 1645, went to visit Anna Maria, having heard such wonderful things of her. After a long conversation she gave her flattering tokens of her esteem.

The Queen of Bohemia, and the Princess Louise, her daughter, often wrote to her. With a modesty that was as rare as her singular endowments, Anna Maria declined all proffered honors, and it was long before she could be persuaded to publish her literary productions. When the distinguished physician, Johann van Beverwyk wished to dedicate to her his treatise on the “Advantages of the Female Sex,” she sought to withdraw from the intended compliment. In 1636 she was induced to publish a Latin poem, celebrating the foundation of the University of Utrecht. Her “Apology for the Female Sex,” and other works followed this.

Anna Maria Schurmann resided many years in her native city of Cologne. According to one authority, part of her time was passed in a country house, where she lived in the utmost simplicity, shunning the attentions of the persons of celebrity who wished to visit her, and dividing her time between her art and her pen. In 1664 she made a journey to Germany in company with her brother; and there first became acquainted with Labadie, the celebrated French enthusiast and preacher of new doctrines. He believed that the Supreme Being would deceive man for the purpose of doing good. He taught that new revelations were continually made by the Holy Spirit to the human soul; that the Bible was not a necessary guide; that observance of the Sabbath was not imperative; that a contemplative life tended to perfection in the character; and that such a state could be attained by self-denial, self-mortification, and prayer. This man was possessed of singular intellectual powers, and fascinating eloquence. He succeeded in gaining many followers, and the mind of Anna Maria, deep and serious to melancholy, and now clouded by grief for the loss of her father and brothers, too readily gave credence to his pretensions.

Abandoning both pen and pencil, she joined the disciples of Labadie, devoting herself to the studies that favored his theological doctrines. To promote his success, she published her last work, entitled “Eucleria,” in 1673, the year before the death of the fanatic. She attended him, and it is said he died in her arms.

In this book she deplores her early devotion to literature and art. Other accounts add that she collected the followers of Labadie—called Labadists—and, continuing to disseminate his tenets, assumed the leadership of the band, and conducted them to Vivert in Friesland. She brought over Elizabeth—Princess Palatine—to these doctrines, and together they opened an asylum for the wandering disciples. True to the doctrines she professed, Anna Maria bestowed all her goods to feed the poor, and sank to the grave in poverty, dying in May, 1678, at the age of seventy-one.

William Penn mentions, in his “Journey in Germany,” a conversation he had at Vivert with this wonderful woman in 1677, noticing especially the gravity and solemnity of her tones in discourse.

Anna Maria Schurmann has left behind her not only the renown of her great learning and artistic culture, truly remarkable in one of either sex, but also a reputation for purity of heart and fervor of religious feeling, which can not be disturbed by her mistaken though sincere belief, and the fanatical enthusiasm with which she clung to absurd dogmas. In her portrait her hair is combed back from her forehead, with flowing side locks. The back knot is wreathed with ornaments. A large pointed collar closely encircles her throat. Her features are marked; her eyes keen and expressive; her Roman nose is large.

Among the contemporaries of Anna Maria Schurmann were the painters Clara Peters, Alida Withoos, Susanna von Steen, and Catharine Oostfries; with the copper-engravers Susanna Verbruggen, Anna de Koher, and Maria de Wilde, who etched a series of fifty pieces—gems in her father’s collection—and published them in 1700 at Amsterdam.

It was in the seventeenth century that flower-painting was carried to such perfection among the women of the Netherlands. Constantia of Utrecht and Angelica Pakman may be classed with the pioneers of this beautiful art—this truly feminine accomplishment.

MARIA VAN OOSTERWYCK

was the first eminent artist in this branch, and the precursor of one superior to her—Rachel Ruysch—who, esteemed in her day as the pride and honor of the Dutch school, was, indeed, worthy of being reckoned among those of whom the whole world is proud. Though not so great, Maria is justly numbered among the illustrious women of Holland. She was born at Nootdorp, near Delft, about 1630. She received her early instruction from the distinguished flower-painter, David Heem. Her father was a preacher of the Reformed religion, and took pains in cultivating his daughter’s intellectual powers. He did not fail to notice her remarkable inclination to painting, and her dissatisfaction, and even disgust, at the trifles that served to amuse other girls of her age. She always had the crayon in her hand.

Her early productions gained much praise, and it was not long before she obtained such exceeding skill as to become the rival of her teacher. Admiring connoisseurs carried her fame abroad, and she became celebrated at foreign courts. Her works were eagerly sought by the first princes of the time, after Louis XIV. of France had placed one of them in his magnificent collection. The Emperor Leopold and the empress sent for specimens of her powers, for which she received the portraits of their imperial majesties, set in diamonds, in token of their esteem. Her pieces commanded enormous prices. William III. of England paid her nine hundred florins for a picture, and the sovereigns of Europe seemed to vie with one another in heaping honors and fame on this gifted woman. The King of Poland purchased three of her pictures for two thousand four hundred florins. These sums were paid her with every mark of respect, as presents from her friends rather than professional remuneration.

In the midst of all these honors Maria led a quiet and peaceful life, undisturbed by excitement or change. She was surrounded by a pleasant circle of friends; she worked indefatigably, and was always found in her cabinet. To obtain more time to herself, she went to pay a visit to her grandfather at Delft. One day she received a visit from a young man, who announced himself as William van Aelst, and appeared anxious to see some of her works. His admiration of them, was blended with an ardent love for the artist. He at last summoned courage to declare his passion, but Maria replied that she was firmly resolved against matrimony. Her lively suitor, she thought, too, was unsuited to her grave and quiet nature.

Unwilling, however, to crush his hopes too suddenly and treat him with unkindness, she annexed a condition to her acceptance of her wooer, which she imagined would effectually deter him from prosecuting his suit, or at least wear out his constancy. She required that he should work ten hours of every day for a year. The young man promised readily; but, as she supposed, he had not perseverance enough to keep his word. His studio was opposite Maria’s; she watched him from her window, and failed not to mark on the sash the days he was absent from his labors.

At the end of the year William came to claim her promise. “You have yourself absolved me from it,” was her reply; and, going to the window, she pointed out to him the record of his idle days. The lover was confounded, and retired disappointed.

Maria painted flowers with an admirable finish and accuracy, and displayed exquisite taste and art in their selection and grouping; she had also wonderful skill in copying their fresh tints, and in the harmonious adjustment of different colors. She took a long while and bestowed much labor in finishing her works, and they are consequently rare.

She died at the age of sixty-three, at the house of her nephew, Jacques von Assendelft, a preacher at Eutdam in Holland.

RACHEL RUYSCH.

Rachel Ruysch (spelled also Ruisch or Reutch) trod in the footsteps of Maria van Oosterwyck, and carried flower-painting to a perfection never before attained. Descampes says her flowers and fruit “surpassed nature herself.” It is certain that she succeeded in producing the most perfect illusion; and the tasteful selection of her subject and manner of grouping, disposition, and contrast, rendered the effect more exquisite.

This illustrious artist was the daughter of a famous anatomist, and was born in Amsterdam, 1664. She received lessons in painting from Wilhelm van Aelst, an artist who ranked with De Heem and Huysum among Dutch flower-painters. He and his rivals were soon equaled by the fair scholar, and thenceforward she took nature for her teacher.

While her fame went abroad with her pictures, Rachel sat and worked in her secluded room; but she could not hide herself from the arrows of the boy-god. She married—Descampes and others say, at the age of thirty—a portrait-painter named Julian van Pool, who fell in love, and introduced himself to her.

She became the mother of ten children. In the midst of domestic cares, and the duties of attending to her offspring, she managed not to neglect the art she loved so much; yet we are informed that her children were admirably brought up. The toil and study must have been immense which, in spite of the interruptions of household employments and the depression of a narrow income, enabled her to attain such excellence that her praises were sung by poets and poetesses, and her fame traveled to every court in Europe. In 1701 the Academical Society of Haye admitted her into membership; her reception picture was a beautiful piece of roses and other flowers. Her celebrity became so great that, in 1708, the Elector John of the Pfalz sent her a diploma, naming her painter in ordinary to his court, and inviting her to take up her residence in his capital. This prince wrote her another letter, accompanying the gift of a complete toilet set in silver, twenty-eight pieces, to which he added six flambeaux of the same metal. He promised to stand godfather to one of her children. When she took her son to Düsseldorf, the elector decorated the babe’s neck with a red ribbon, to which was attached a magnificent gold medal.

In the elector’s service she produced a number of pictures, most of them for her Mæcenas, who after paying for them always added honorable presents. In 1713, on a second visit to Düsseldorf, she was received with the distinction her great talents merited. The elector sent some of her pictures to the Grand-Duke of Tuscany, who admired and placed them among his rich collection of master-pieces. Several of her works were presented to royal personages; some were treasured in the gallery of Düsseldorf, and some excellent pictures were preserved in Munich.

After the death of her friend and patron, the elector, she returned to Holland, and prosecuted her art with unwearied industry. She mourned his loss as her friend and the generous protector of art; but her works met with as great success, and Flanders and Holland even murmured at their being taken to Germany.

The advance of old age could not obscure her rare gifts; the pictures she executed at eighty were as highly finished as at thirty. To genius of the highest order she united all the virtues that dignify and adorn the female character. Respected by the great—beloved even by her rivals—praised by all who knew her—her path in life was strewn with flowers, till at its peaceful close she laid her honors down. She died in 1750, at the age of eighty-six, having been married fifty years and five years a widow.

Her works are rarely seen, from the difficulty of inducing possessors in Holland to part with them. At Amsterdam there are four beautiful pieces. Their chief merits are surprising vigor and a delicate finish, with coloring true to nature. Flowers, fruits, and insects seem full of fresh life.

Rachel’s style combined a softness, lightness, and delicacy of touch with a certain grandeur of disposition and powerful effect, which caused the universal recognition of a manly spirit and nobility of feeling in her works. In her portrait her hair is short, with low-necked dress and beads round the throat. The features of the artist, large and strongly marked, bear the same brave, open character that spoke in the grouping and arrangement of her flowers—in the freedom that marked her compositions and was blended with their surprising lightness and grace. In the depth of coloring a delicate poetic fragrance seemed to be infused.

CHAPTER IX.
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

Unfavorable Circumstances for Painting in Germany.—Effects of the Thirty Years’ War.—The national Love of Art shown by the Signs of Life manifested.—Influence of the Reformation.—Inferiority of German Art in this Century.—Ladies of Rank in Literature.—A female Astronomer.—The Fame of Schurmann awakens Emulation.—Distinguished Women.—Commencement of poetic Orders.—Zesen, the Patron of the Sex.—Women who cultivated Art.—Paintresses of Nuremberg.—Barbara Helena Lange.—Flower-painters and Engravers.—Modeling in Wax.—Women Artists in Augsburg.—In Munich.—In Hamburg.—The Princess Hollandina.—Her Paintings.—Maria Sibylla Merian.—Early Fondness for Insects.—Maternal Opposition.—Her Marriage.—Publication of her first Work.—Joins the Labadists.—Returns to the Butterflies.—Curiosity to see American Insects.—Voyage to Surinam.—Story of the Lantern-flies.—Return to Holland.—Her Works published.—Republication in Paris afterward.—Her Daughters.—Her personal Appearance.—The Danish Women Artists.—Anna Crabbe.—King’s Daughters.—The Taste in Art in Denmark and England governed by that of foreign Nations.—Female Artists in England.—The Poetesses most prominent.—Miniaturists.—Portrait-painters.—Etchers.—Lady Connoisseurs.—The Dwarf’s Daughter.—Anna Carlisle.—Mary Beale.—Pupil of Sir Peter Lely.—Character of her Works.—Rumor of Lely’s Attachment to her.—Poems in her Praise.—Mr. Beale’s Note-books.—Anne Killegrew.—Her Portraits of the Royal Family.—History and still-life Pieces.—Her Portrait by Lely.—Her Character.—Dryden’s Ode to her Memory.—Her Poems published.—Mademoiselle Rosée.—The Artist in Silk.—Wonderful Effects.—Her Works Curiosities.—The Artist of the Scissors.—Her singular imitative Powers.—A Copyist of old Paintings.—Her Cuttings.—Views of all kinds done with the Scissors.—Royal and imperial Visitors.—Her Trophy for the Emperor Leopold.—Poems in her Praise.—The Swiss Paintress Anna Wasser.—Her Education and Works.—Commissions from Courts.—Her Father’s Avarice.—Sojourn at a Court.—Return home.—Fatal Accident.—Her literary Accomplishments.

While in the Netherlands, under the influence of the national elevation, art grew into a school of peculiar nationality, much less favorable circumstances existed in Germany. It may be said, indeed, that none less favorable could be found in any country. It was not merely that the land had been wasted by the Thirty Years’ War, for art and knowledge have been known to bud and bloom amid a severe national struggle. This contest, however, was one hostile to every generous impulse and lofty aspiration, and tended to crush the noble energies that are called forth in other conflicts. It was an internecine and sordid strife; Germans were arrayed against Germans, and hordes of foreign robbers were encouraged to plunder the country desolated by her own children. In the reign of mean and base passions, there was no soil where such flowers might bloom as then made beautiful the Netherlands.

There was wanting, also, such a central point as was afforded in France and Spain by the courts of Versailles and Madrid. All things revolved in a narrow and sordid sphere of individual interest. That Germany, in spite of this disastrous and gloomy condition, should have produced artists, and that even women, with self-sacrificing zeal should have manifested their predilection for the calling, is a proof of the deep love for art implanted in the heart of the nation, showing itself in brilliant flashes during the sixteenth century, and in the midst of troubles not entirely extinguished. The Reformation, while it had inspired Germany with the spirit of a new epoch, at first assumed a position hostile to the arts that had contributed to embellish the old faith. For three hundred years, by open force, blind fury, and cold contempt, this misapprehension of the true scope of art threatened to destroy what preceding ages had left of excellence; nor did the struggle terminate till the nineteenth century.

Signs of life in art had been first perceived in Germany toward the beginning of the thirteenth century; and there had been progressive stages of improvement. The stiffness and seriousness prescribed by tradition were replaced by softer execution and an easier flow of outline. Flowing drapery and grace marked the earliest attempts to express the artist’s own feelings in his works, and a subjective principle was allowed in paintings.

In the revival of art toward the end of the fifteenth century the sacred subjects of earlier ages had been much chosen. Afterward, the artist’s own mind and emotions came forth in self-productive energy; and, at a later period, rose into favor the accurate delineations of nature’s forms.

The inferiority of Germany in an artistic view, in the seventeenth century, is undeniable; but many were found who longed after the excellence of which other lands could boast. Women there were in abundance who cultivated ornamental literature; noble ladies and princesses patronized poets and courted the muses. Henrietta of Orange, the consort of the great Elector, was one of several royal dames yet remembered in their sacred songs. The lower orders could boast their cultivated women; and the name of Maria Cunitz deserves mention as learned in the science of astronomy.

The fame of Anna Memorata, Fulvia Morata, and Anna Maria Schurmann meanwhile filled the German women with emulative desire to inscribe their names beside those accomplished persons. Gertrude Möller was learned in the languages, and Sibylla Schwarz in poetry. Even Rist, who excluded women from his literary society, corresponded with the poetess Maria Commer.

This was the beginning of honorary poetic orders, and women were not excluded from these, especially from those established by Zesen. He was the patron and encourager of female genius and enterprise; his pen was dedicated to the service of the sex, and his praises were reciprocated by the grateful fair. In his “Lustinne” he sings of the lady poets of his day.

The female artists of that time seemed, indeed, to lack such generous appreciation; and it may be that the enthusiastic eulogies lavished by poets on each other had a selfish aim. Yet the period was not without a goodly number of women who cultivated art, and it is not improbable that the success of the poetesses had some effect in stimulating their zeal. The example of the illustrious Schurmann, who wore the double wreath of both branches of study, was before their eyes; and the Dutch school had much influence in forming tastes in Germany.

The love of exercising creative power naturally developed itself in various ways. Nuremberg, the seat of the Pegnitzschäfer order of bards; Hamburg, the residence of the chivalrous Zesen; Saxony, where flourished many fair devotees to literature—were not abandoned by the spirit of art. In the first-mentioned city we hear of two paintresses descended from families celebrated for artistic excellence: Susannah Maria von Sandrart, who also did etching in copper; and Esther Juvenel, who drew plans for architecture. To these may be added the name of Barbara Helena Lange, who earned celebrity by engraving on copper, and carving figures in ivory and alabaster. She was admitted to the Pegnitz order, on account of her poetical talent, in 1679, her poetical name being entered as Erone. In 1686 she married one Kopsch, and with him removed to Berlin, and afterward to Amsterdam.

The names of Maria Clara Eimart and Magdalena Fürst may here be mentioned as flower-painters; that of Helen Preisler as an engraver on copper; and Joanna Sabina Preu as both an engraver and modeler in wax. All these obtained no insignificant reputation.

In Nuremberg also lived, in 1684, Anna Maria Pfründt, born in Lyons. She modeled portraits in wax, some of which were those of persons of high rank, and, adorned with costly drapery and precious stones, gained a wide-spread reputation for the artist.

Augsburgh was also rich in evidences of woman’s artistic taste. Susannah Fischer and Johanna Sibylla Küsel excelled in painting, while her younger sisters, Christina and Magdalena Küsel, with Maria Wieslatin, engraved in copper. Others surpassed the Nurembergers in fine carving.

In Regensburgh lived Anna Catharina Fischer, a flower and portrait painter; in Munich, Isabella del Pozzo was appointed court painter by the Electress Adelaide, and the miniature-painter Maria Rieger was employed very frequently by princely personages. Placida Lamme distinguished herself about the same time by painting miniatures and carving pictures, with which she occupied her time in the Bavarian cloister of Hohenwart.

In Hamburg, Mariana Van der Stoop and Diana Glauber were painters by profession, and in Saxony we find a skillful portrait-painter in Margaretta Rastrum, who pursued her art in Leipzig. The above-mentioned Anna Catharina Fischer lived a long time in Halle, with her husband, a painter named Block. Toward the end of this century we hear of Madame Ravemann, who executed a beautiful medal—an exquisite specimen of cutting—for Augustus the Second.

THE PRINCESS HOLLANDINA.