Women artists in all ages and countries

by E. F. Ellet

A glance at the women artists of the romantic South will close this general survey of the eighteenth century. In Spain we find few worthy of mention. Since the commencement of the Bourbon dynasty interest in art had ceased to be the essential element in the national life that it had been under the sway of the house of Hapsburg throughout the seventeenth century. And in the Peninsula the truth was made apparent that the participation of women is a test and measure of the general interest in the studies and products of art prevailing among any people.

The most important schools, however, were not entirely without female representatives. Linked with that of Seville, we hear the name of the portrait-painter, Maria de Valdes Leal; her father and tutor, Don Juan de Valdes, after the death of Murillo, was regarded as the first living master of this school.

That of Madrid had among its disciples Clara and Anna Menendez, the latter being remembered as the painter of a series of scenes from Don Quixote. To the same school belong Donna Barbara Maria de Hueva, and Donna Maria de Silva, Duchess of Arcos, both celebrated for their skill in drawing, and members of the Academy of San Fernando, as were also Anna Menendez, and the painter Anna Perez of Navarre. Maria Felice Tibaldi, born in 1707, painted in oil, and also miniatures and pastels. She possessed great skill in drawing from life and copying historical pieces. A work of her husband, Pierre Subleyras, “The Apostolic Supper,” was copied by her in miniature. Pope Benedict XIV. sent her for it a thousand scudi, and placed it in his collection at the Capitol. After the death of her husband Maria supported herself and her children by her talents.

To these may be added Maria Prieto, the daughter of a distinguished médailleur; she practiced both painting and engraving, but died in her twentieth year at Madrid, in 1772.

Portugal, at this period, was justly proud of two women whose poetical talents had won no small celebrity, Magdalena da Gloria and the Countess de Vimiero. Beside them we may note two artists of eminence, Doña Isabel Maria Rite of Oporto, and Catarina Vieira of Lisbon; the former of high repute as a miniature-painter, the latter noted for several church pictures which she painted after the designs of her brother, Don Francisco Vieira de Mattos.

In Italy the harvest of names was greater, but fewer women attained to eminence during this century than in either of the two that had preceded it. Of women of poetical genius there was no lack at this period; and more than ever—though such are not wanting in the early annals of the principal Italian cities—learned ladies abounded. Female doctors and professors were far more in plenty than they promise to be in America in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Such phenomena were not rare in the classic Italian clime as women occupying the chair, not only of music, drawing, and modern tongues, but of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, mathematics, and astronomy. They took degrees as doctors in jurisprudence and philosophy; for example, Maria Victoria Delfini, Christina Roccati, and Laura Bassi, in the University of Bologna, and Maria Pellegrina Amoretti, in that of Pavia. Anna Manzolini, in 1758, was Professor of Anatomy in Bologna; and Maria Agnesi—who, when only nine years of age, had delivered at Milan a Latin address on the “Studies of the Female Sex”—was appointed by the Pope to the professorship of mathematics in the same university at Bologna.

It was not then esteemed unfeminine for women to give lectures in public to crowded and admiring audiences. They were freely admitted members of learned societies, and were consulted by men of pre-eminent scientific attainments as their equals in scholarship; yet, a British reviewer remarks, “It is doubtful whether the far-famed Novella was a better Greek scholar than Mrs. Browning; or Maria Porcia Vignoli, whose statue long adorned the market-place of Viterbo, more learned in natural sciences than Mrs. Somerville.”

Among the more brilliant devotees of the lyre may be mentioned, in passing, Emilia Ballati and Giulia Baitelli, who emulated the fame of Petrarch, and Laura Vanetti, in whose poems Metastasio discerned the very soul of the bard of Love.

But we must not linger over names, even of the artists who belong to our special field of observation. None of the important early schools failed in the eighteenth century, to be able to boast the ornament of female talent. In Florence, Violanta Beatrice Siries, after a prolonged course of study in Paris under Boucher and Rigaud, was noted as a portrait-painter. In the same branch of the profession, Anna Boccherini and Anna Galeotti were highly esteemed.

In copper-engraving, Catarina Zucchi and Laura Piranesi acquired some celebrity. As engravers, we hear of Livia Pisani, Violanta Vanni, and Teresa Mogalli, the last also skilled in painting.