A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 2 (of 2)

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

The story of Elisabetta Sirani's untimely death has added a sort of melodramatic interest to her name, which was not needed to make her life a noticeable one. Every one who has heard her mentioned has heard that she died by poison. Her contemporaries suspected that she might have been poisoned; the following generation said and wrote, that she probably had been thus destroyed; and Lanzi, and after him the manuals, and other common sources of information, content themselves with simply stating that she was poisoned, without expressing any doubt on the subject. The reader of the following pages will see that there is every reason to think that she died from natural causes. The circumstances of her death, however, and the judicial investigations to which they gave rise, will furnish some of those little traits of the artist–family's home and mode of life, which, far too trifling ever to have been recorded as such by contemporaries, are yet in every case more precious in their suggestiveness than facts of greater importance to those who, at a distance of a couple of centuries, seek to catch a glimpse of any life as it passed amid its ordinary every–day environment.

THE FAMILY.

The records of the judicial proceedings to which Elisabetta's death gave rise, were for many years sought for in vain by various writers on subjects connected with Bolognese art–history. The name of the person accused of the crime was unknown. And for want of this indication it was, it seems, impossible, without searching the entire mass of the archives in question, to find the required papers. At last, however, in 1833, Signor Mazzoni Toselli had the good fortune to light on them, and published the result of his discovery in a small pamphlet printed at Bologna in that year. Since that time another fortunate discovery has brought to light the "conclusions" submitted to the court by the advocate employed for the prosecution, as we should say. This document was not found in company with the records discovered by Signor Toselli; but was put before the world by Signor Ulisse Guidi, in a pamphlet printed at Bologna in 1854. So that, besides obtaining from the evidence of the witnesses examined, those little hints above alluded to of the manner of life led in the "Casa Sirani," we have now the means of forming a tolerably well–grounded opinion as to the real cause of the young artist's death.

The house of Giovanni Andrea Sirani in the Via Urbana at Bologna, was the home of a family of artists. The father was himself at the head of a considerable school, in which Guido's second manner was the standard of excellence aimed at, and by the master himself and some of his scholars attained with very respectable success. He had a son who became a physician. But he was the only deserter from the family profession. The three daughters, Elisabetta, Barbara, and Anna Maria were all artists. The name of the elder has cast that of her sisters and even of her father, into the shade. But his works are still well esteemed in his own city; and there are pictures by Barbara and Anna Maria Sirani in the churches of Bologna.

Giovanni's wife Margherita, and his sister, who cooked for the family, together with a female servant, were the other members of his household. We are told also, that Bartolommeo Zanichelli, Antonio Donzelli, and Giulio Banzi, his pupils, lived with him upon the footing of members of his family. The first had "frequented his school" for fifteen years.

The house in the Via Urbana, which accommodated this numerous family, and gave the seven painters, out of the ten persons who occupied it, room to work in, must have been a good sized one. It consisted, we hear, of two stories, with some large rooms above "for the school."

The sort of industry that prevailed in this hive of workers may be estimated from the list of Elisabetta's works extant in her own handwriting. Her rapidity, it is true, was marvellous, and the sureness of her hand was only equalled by the overflowing abundance of her thought. We must not, therefore, imagine that all the members of this busy art–factory contributed to the general production in a similar degree. Making due allowance for this, however, and remembering that Elisabetta's works were always highly finished, her methodical and business–like list will give us some idea of the family produce.

HER WORKS.

In the year 1655, which is the first that figures on her catalogue,—and she was then only seventeen,—she painted two pictures, one for the Marchese Spada, and one for the Municipality of Trassano. In the year 1656, five pictures. In 1657, seven pictures. In 1658, twelve pictures. In 1659, ten pictures. In 1660, fourteen pictures. In 1661, fourteen pictures, of which one ordered by the nuns of St. Catherine contained half figures of the size of life of the twelve Apostles. In 1662, forty–nine pictures! Either by an error of the pen these forty–nine works were the product of two years' labour, which is probable, or the year 1663 from some unexplained cause, produced nothing. In the year 1664, we find twenty–eight pictures registered. And in the first half of 1665, the year of her death, she had completed nine works. In the nine years and a half, from the seventeenth to the twenty–sixth of her age, she had thus produced a hundred and fifty pictures,[230] many of them of large size, and all of them carefully finished! Besides this, she etched occasionally; and many works of this class from her hand are known to, and much sought by collectors. A record of work honestly and conscientiously done, as Lanzi may well say, truly wonderful!

Her rapidity of execution, and especially of throwing with a sure unerring hand her first ideas upon the canvas, was so remarkable, that to see Elisabetta paint was considered one of the sights at Bologna most worthy of the attention of strangers. And we find that few personages of distinction passed through the city without paying a visit to the artist family in the Via Urbana.