Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/73

14 self better pleased that she had given him a daughter, and made the declaration good by devotion to this child so long as he lived.

Isabella, in a letter to her mother, wrote: "But for the happiness I have of seeing the King every day I should find this court the dullest in the world. I assure you, however, madame, that I have so kind a husband that even did I deem this place a hundredfold more wearisome I should not complain."

While Sofonisba was overwhelmed with commissions in Spain, her sisters were far from idle in Cremona. Europa sent pictures to Madrid which were purchased for private collections, and a picture by Lucia is now in the Gallery of the Queen at Madrid.

When the time for Sofonisba's marriage came she was sorry to leave her " second home," as she called Madrid, and as Don Fabrizio lived but a short time, the King urged her return to Spain; but her desire to be once more with her family impelled her to return to Italy.

The ship on which she sailed from Sicily was commanded by one of the Lomellini, a noble family of Genoa, with whom Sofonisba fell so desperately in love that she offered him her hand — which, says her biographer, "he accepted like a generous man." Does this mean that she had been ungenerous in depriving him of the privilege of asking for what she so freely bestowed?

In Genoa she devotedly pursued her art and won new honors, while she was not forgotten in Madrid. Presents were sent her on her second marriage, and later the Infanta Clara Eugenia and other Spaniards of exalted rank