Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/39

xxxii tury, were professors in universities, lectured to large audiences, and were respectfully consulted by men of science and learning in the various branches of scholarship to which they were devoted. Unusual honors were paid them, as in the case of Maria Portia Vignoli, to whom a statue was erected in the public square of Viterbo to commemorate her great learning in natural science.

An artist, Matilda Festa, held a professorship in the Academy of St. Luke in Rome, and Maria Maratti, daughter of the Roman painter Carlo Maratti, made a good reputation both' as an artist and a poetess.

In Northern Italy many women were famous in sculpture, painting, and engraving. At least forty could be named, artists of good repute, whose lives were lacking in any unusual interest, and whose works are in private collections. One of these was a princess of Parma, who married the Archduke Joseph of Austria, and was elected to the Academy of Vienna in 1789.

In France, in the beginning of this century Watteau, 1684-1721, painted his interesting pictures of La Belle Société, reproducing the court life, costumes, and manners of the reign of Louis XIV. with fidelity, grace, and vivacity. Later in the century, Greuze, 1725-1805, with his attractive, refined, and somewhat mannered style, had a certain influence. Claude Vernet, 1714-1789, and David, 1748-1825, each great in his way, influenced the nineteenth as well as the eighteenth century. Though Vien, 1716-1809, made a great effort to revive classic art, he found little sympathy with his aim until the works of his