Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/28

Rh satisfied. She was proficient in Hebrew, the classics, and the usual branches of "profane letters," as well as an accomplished scholar in philosophy and theology. As an author—though her writings are somewhat voluminous and not without merit—she was comparatively unimportant; her great service to letters was the result of the sympathy and encouragement she gave to others.

Wherever she might be, she was the centre of a literary and religious circle, as well as of the society in which she moved. She was in full sympathy with her brother in making his "Collège" an institution in which greater liberty was accorded to the expression of individual opinion than had before been known in France, and by reason of her protection of liberty in thought and speech she suffered much in the esteem of the bigots of her day.

The beautiful Mlle. de Heilly—the Duch esse d'Etampes—whose influence over Francis I. was pre-eminent, while her character was totally unlike that of his sister, was described as "the fairest among the learned, and the most learned among the fair." When learning was thus in favor at Court, it naturally followed that all capacity for it was cultivated and ordinary intelligence made the most of; and the claim that the intellectual brilliancy of the women of the Court of Francis I. has rarely been equalled is generally admitted. There were, however, no artists among them—they wielded the pen rather than the brush.

In England, as in France, there was no native school of art in the sixteenth century, and Flemish, Dutch, and German artists crossed the channel when summoned to