(1638–1665.)
CHAPTER I.
HER LIFE.
In the vast and magnificent church of the Dominicans at Bologna, in the handsome chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary, there is a modest sepulchre belonging to the ancient Guidotti family, which attracts as large a share of the art–loving pilgrim's notice, as even the world–famous shrine of the founder of the order with its statues and bas–reliefs by Niccolò di Pisa, Afonso Lombardo, and Michael Angelo. For there beneath the same stone were laid the bodies of Guido Reni and Elisabetta Sirani; he full of years and honours, at the ripe age of sixty–seven; she cut off untimely in the morning of her working day at twenty–six. She was no "favourite pupil" of his, as has been written,[227] for Guido died, when Sirani was four years old; but her works are interesting to the art–student, as far more accurate embodiments of the traditions of his school, than the pictures of most of those who were his immediate pupils; and her short career is especially worthy of the notice of such as are interested in observing female capabilities for winning a right to a place on the roll of the world's worthies.
HER VOCATION.
The art–critics assure us that her works are stamped with a vigour, and bold free precision of outline, which have been rarely attained by female artists. "It is indeed a wonderful thing," writes Lanzi,[228] "that a young girl, who lived only six–and–twenty years, should have painted the vast number of pictures recorded by Malvasia[229]; still more so, that she should have perfected them with a care and finish of the highest order; and most wonderful of all, that she should have reached this perfection in historical pieces of large size, in a style free from that timidity, which La Fontana, and other painters of her sex, never got rid of."
It would be easy to multiply citations from the best authorities on art, to prove the high degree of excellence in her vocation attained by this girl, at an age when most of her competitors of the stronger sex were climbing the first steps of the ladder. But taking this for granted, and leaving the critical appreciation of her works to those whose studies lead them specially in that direction, it will be more interesting for us to endeavour to make out for ourselves some tolerably life–like representation of the young worker as she lived and laboured a couple of hundred years ago in her home at Bologna.
The picture ought to be, if presented aright, a singularly pleasing one, healthy in its tone, invigorating in its suggestions, and addressing itself vividly to the sympathies of every admirer of honest energetic labour. Of all the types of female character and life gathered in these volumes from various social conditions, differing every one of them so widely from our own, this artist figure seems to claim the closest kin to some living phases of the life around us, and to be the most readily and advantageously transplantable into our own social system.