Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/736

 the court of the electress, at Dusseldrop, where she was received with marks of respect and honour. She married the celebrated painter, Eglon Vander Neer.

SPILIMBERGO, IRINE DI, of a noble family at Venice, and is said to hare been instructed by Titian, whose style she certainly followed. She painted merely for amusement; and flourished about 1560. Titian, who lived on terms of friendship with her family, drew her portrait.

STAAL, MADAME DE, maiden name was De Launai, was born, in 1693, at Paris, and was the daughter of an artist. She received an excellent education in the convent of St. Sauveur, in Normandy, and displayed precocious talents. For many years she was waiting-woman to the Duchess of Maine; and having been privy to some of the duchess's political intrigues, which she refused to betray to the government, she was, for two years, imprisoned in the Bastile; for which honourable fidelity she was but ill rewarded. She married the Baron de Staal, and died in 1750. She wrote her own memoirs, letters, and two comedies.

STAEL, ANNE LOUISE GERMAIN, MADAME DE, born, April 22nd., 1766, at Paris. She was the daughter of the well-known French financier, Necker. Her parents being protestants, instead of receiving her education, like most young ladles of the period, in the seclusion of a convent, she was reared at home, and allowed to mingle freely with the talented guests who assembled in her mother's drawing-room. Already a precocious child, this produced in her a premature development of intellect. Some of the gravest men who visited Madame Necker, when her daughter had scarcely emerged from childhood, discerned her intellectual power, and found pleasure in conversing with her; the acuteness of her judgment already revealing what she would one day become. From her mother she imbibed a strong religious feeling, which never abandoned her; Necker imparted to her his ambitious love of political popularity; and the society in which she was brought up strengthened her passion for literature, and fed the burning flame of her genius. Her life and writings bear deep traces of these three powerful principles. As a talker she has never perhaps been surpassed. Clear, comprehensive, and vigorous, like that of man, her language was also full of womanly passion and tenderness. Her affection for her father was enthusiastic, and her respect for him bordered upon veneration. The closest and most unreserved friendship marked their intercourse through life. Mademoiselle Necker was heir to immense wealth; and at the age of twenty, through the interposition of Marie Antoinette, a marriage was brought about between her and the Baron de Staël Holstein, then Swedish ambassador at the court of France. M. de Staël was young, handsome, and cultivated; he had no fortune, but he was a Lutheran; and as M. Necker had no inclination to see his fortune pass into the hands of a catholic, his consent was easily obtained.

Neither the disposition or situation of Madame de Staël would allow her to remain indifferent to the general agitation which pre-