Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/246

238 while the daughters of Thespios received universal applause for their attainments in all the sciences.

But, it is certain that at no period of the world’s history, has the truth of the assertion which we have made above been rendered more clearly manifest than in the present, wherein the highest fame has been acquired by women, not only in the study of letters, as in the instance of the Signora Vittoria del Vasto, the Signora Veronica Gambara, the Signora Catarina Anguisciola, Schioppa, Nugarola, Madonna Laura Battiferra, and a hundred others, who are most learned; not in the vulgar tongue only, and in Latin and Greek, but in every other walk of science. Nay, there are who have not disdained to contend, as it were, with us for the vaunt and palm of superiority in a different arena, and have set themselves, with their white and delicate hands, to mechanical, or speaking more exactly, to manual labours, forcing from the rigidity of marble, and from the sharp asperity of iron, that fame which was the desire of their hearts, and succeeding in the attainment of its highest eminence, as did our Properzia de’ Rossi of Bologna, a maiden of rich gifts, who was equally excellent with others in the disposition of all household matters, while she gained a point of distinction in many sciences well calculated to awaken the envy, not of women only, but of men also.

Properzia was distinguished by remarkable beauty of person. She sang and played on musical instruments better than any woman of her day, in the city of Bologna: being endowed with much fancy and admirable facility in the realization of her ideas, she set herself to carve peach stones, a labour wherein she displayed such extraordinary skill and patience, that the results thereof were marvellous to behold; and that, not for the subtlety of the work only, but for the graceful elegance of the minute figures thus represented, and for the able manner in which they were grouped. .