Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/428

Rh she was a singularly admirable woman and a gifted artist.

She was born in Bologna about 1640, and, like Artemisia Gentileschi, was the daughter of a painter of the school of Guido Reni, whose follower Elisabetta also became. From the study of her master she seems to have acquired the power to perceive and reproduce the greatest possible beauty with which her subjects could be invested.

She worked with such rapidity that she was accused of profiting by her father's assistance, and in order to refute this accusation it was arranged that the Duchess of Brunswick, the Duchess of Mirandola, Duke Cosimo, and others should meet in her studio, on which occasion Elisabetta charmed and astonished her guests by the ease and perfection with which she sketched in and shaded drawings of the subjects which one person after another suggested to her.

Her large picture of the "Baptism of Christ" was com- pleted when the artist was but twenty years old. Malvasia gives a list of one hundred and twenty pictures executed by Elisabetta, and yet she was but twenty-five when her mysterious death occurred.

In the Pinacoteca of Bologna is the "St. Anthony Adoring the Virgin and Infant Jesus," by the Sirani, which is much admired; several other works of hers are in her native city. "The Death of Abel" is in the Gallery of Turin; the "Charity," in the Sciarra Palace in Rome; "Cupids" and a picture of "Martha and Mary," in the Vienna Gallery; an "Infant Jesus" and a picture