Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/137

76 may be written of this celebrated and highly gifted woman, whose spirit, in the midst of her triumphs and the brightest visions of happiness, was weighed down by the anticipation of a heavy calamity. On one occasion she painted a portrait of herself, the brow wreathed with leaves which symbolized death. She explained this as an image of the sadness in which her life would end." Alas, this was but too prophetic! Before she was fifty years old she lost her sight, and gradually the light of reason also, and her darkness was complete.

An Italian writer tells the following story: "Nature had endowed Rosalba with lofty aspirations and a passionate soul; her heart yearned for the admiration which her lack of personal attraction forbade her receiving. She fully realized her plainness before the Emperor Charles XI. rudely brought it home to her. When presented to him by the artist Sertoli, the Emperor exclaimed: "She may be clever, Bertolimio, this painter of thine, but she is remarkably ugly." From which it, would appear that Charles had not believed his mirror, since his ugliness far exceeded that of Rosalba! Her dark eyes, fine brow, good expression, and graceful pose of the head, as shown in her portrait, impress one more favorably than would be anticipated from this story.

Many of Rosalba's works have been reproduced by engravings; a collection of one hundred and fifty-seven of these are in the Dresden Gallery, together with several of her pictures. Cassatt, Mary. Born in Pittsburg. Studied in Pennsylvania schools, and under Soyer and Bellay in Paris. She