Women artists in all ages and countries

by E. F. Ellet

But the cloud was brooding over the happy home which was to burst in a fatal storm. An evil-minded woman, young and beautiful, entered the house of Aniella as a servant. She was in love with Agostino; and, finding all her charms and artifices ineffectual to move him from his fidelity to his noble wife, or even to win his attention, she set herself to work to accomplish the ruin of this domestic happiness.

She contrived to insinuate herself into the confidence of the man she could not tempt; and then, drop by drop, with the perfidy and subtle cunning of Iago, she succeeded in instilling into his heart the poison of jealousy. By degrees she undermined his faith in the spotless virtue of Aniella.

The husband grew morose and irritable, and at times manifested the change that had come over him by sudden outbursts of ill-humor. Vainly Aniella strove by unremitting patience and redoubled affection to soothe his wayward moods. She soon perceived that all her happiness must be derived from her art, and from the approbation of her old master, who frequently visited her. She painted in her best manner a Holy Family, and presented it to him. “On seeing,” writes Domenici, “with what mastery of drawing and perfection of coloring Aniella had completed the painting, and because she had so toiled for him, he was overcome with feeling, and, in a transport of affection, clasped her in his arms, exclaiming that she was his best pupil, and that, had he been asked to retouch the painting, he should not know where to begin, for fear of destroying the beautiful coloring.”

The infamous servant was playing the spy throughout this scene, and had called up a servant-lad to support her testimony. On Stanzioni’s departure Agostino returned.

“Now,” cried this hearth-stone serpent, “now I have proofs to set all doubts at rest—proofs I will furnish you with in the presence of your wife.” Confronted with her mistress, the vile hireling charged her with guilty embraces, and called the servant-lad to confirm the charge. Aniella, astounded and indignant, disdained to defend herself, but stood before her husband mute and motionless, while a flush of pain and indignation mantled on her brow. Her silence confirmed Agostino’s suspicions; in his phrensy he drew his sword, and the next moment Aniella lay dead at his feet. Thus closed the career of this noble artist, in 1649, in the thirty-sixth year of her age. She was not the only victim to the taste for the horrible and for wild extremes of passion then prevailing in the works of artists, and too common in their personal experience.

Another fair Neapolitan, who also worked in Rome at portrait-painting, was Angela Beinaschi. The nun, Luisa Copomazza, a landscape-painter and poetess, and the flower-painter, Clena Ricchi, were of Naples; with the painter and modeler in wax, Catarina Juliani, called the “ornamento della patria.”

Teresa del Po—daughter of a painter, the disciple of Domenichino, and distinguished for oil and miniature painting, and copper engraving—came from a family of Palermo. She etched plates in her father’s style; some after Caracci.

Messina boasted of Anna Maria Ardoino, the daughter of the Princess de Polizzi, accomplished in every branch, including music and poetry, who won great celebrity on account of her splendid attainments in art and literature, and was admitted a member of the Academy of Arcadia in Rome. She died in 1700, at Naples, in the bloom of her life and fame, and it is said her death was occasioned by grief for the loss of a son.

The two schools of Bologna and Naples may be said to embrace the greater number of the prominent productions of the pencil in Italy during the period of which we have spoken. Other cities enjoyed their peculiar distinctions as the seats of different schools of art, but they exhibited more or less the influence of these chief ones. In Florence—the ancient home of Italian painting—artists of distinction exercised their skill; and the superior cultivation and taste diffused under the auspices of distinguished Tuscan ladies, contributed, in no small measure, to the encouragement of female enterprise. While Maria Borghini—elevated, by the judgment of her contemporaries, to a seat beside Victoria Colonna, and Mary dei Medici, who not only patronized art, but gave it her own personal efforts—won the meed of admiration, others were not backward in the race for the golden apple of renown.

Arcangela Paladini, of Pisa, born 1599, already mentioned as a painter, was also an engraver. Her portrait, by herself, is in the gallery of artists in Florence. She died at the age of twenty-three. As flower-painters, we hear of Anna Maria Vajani and Isabella Piccini; Giovanna Redi was a successful pupil of the skillful Gabbiani; and Giovanna Marmochini was no less favorably known in art than as a wit and a learned lady. She has been called, for the excellence of her miniatures, the Rosalba of the Florentine school. Niccola Grassi, of Genoa, is also called by Lanzi “the rival of Rosalba.” She painted original compositions and church pictures.