Women artists in all ages and countries

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.