In encaustic painting, Anna Parenti-Duclos was well known toward the close of the century. Maria Felicia Tibaldi was distinguished in Rome for her talents as a painter no less than for her virtues as a woman; and her sister, Teresa, belongs to the same category, with Rosalba Maria Salviani and Caterina Cherubini. In miniature-painting, Bianca and Matilda Festa excelled; the latter holding the professor’s chair in the Academy of San Luca.
The wreaths of poetry and painting were intertwined around the brow of Maria Maratti, the daughter and pupil of the celebrated Carlo Maratti, and the wife of the poet Zappi. The like was true of Anna Victoria Dolora, who died at a great age in 1827, in a Dominican convent.
Naples boasted at this period a famous mathematician in Maria Angela Ardinghelli. Three gifted sisters, Maria Angiola, Felice, and Emmanuela Matteis, were also noted here; with the distinguished Angelica Siscara and Colomba Garri, who practiced flower and genre painting, and produced a series of kitchen-pieces, in which they sought to idealize by artistic adornment the ordinary occupations of the frugal and industrious housewife.
The cities of northern Italy had their share of energetic women. Turin, Milan, Bergamo, Roveredo, Carpi, and Parma produced artists whose fame was limited to a narrower circle than those of Bologna and Venice, where, especially in the former city, the shadow of past glories seemed to linger.
Professor Anna Manzolini modeled excellent portraits in wax, and Clarice Vasini obtained no small celebrity as a sculptor, being a member of the Academy.
Lucia Casalini, Bianca Giovannini, Barbara Burini, Eleonora Monti, Anna Teresia Messieri, Rosa Alboni, and Teresa Tesi, belonged to Bologna, and elevated the renown of its women for painting. They aspired to imitate the example of Elizabetta Sirani.
Carlotta Melania Alfieri is mentioned as accomplished in literature, music, and painting.
Laura Vanetti, praised as a linguist, musician, and philosopher, also excelled in painting. In the beginning of this century the Princess Elizabeth of Parma, afterward married to the King of Spain, was a famous dilettante. Another Princess Elizabeth, the wife of the Archduke Joseph of Austria, was, in 1789, on account of her pastels, admitted to membership of the Academy in Vienna.
In Venice, on the other hand, the fair students of art zealously emulated the fame of Maria Robusti. This “city of the sea” had many daughters who did well in painting, though even their names are now forgotten. She gave birth to one, however, whose fame was destined to spread into a wider circle, and to renew even in foreign lands the ancient lustre of the Italian name in art. This gifted being stands almost alone in the century as one who will be remembered by posterity with admiration.