These were not the only gifted and gracious nuns in the early history of Italian art. There was Plautilla Nelli, who formed her style on that of Fra Bartolommeo; she became prioress of a convent in Florence, the convent of St. Catherine, and died in 1588, aged sixty-five. Barbara Longhi of Ravenna, another painter of the same period, was not a nun, but I mention her now in order that attention may be drawn to a painter having a genuine sympathy and style (see page [41]).
We pass on to a little bevy of emigrants, women painters who visited foreign courts where they met with great successes. Sophonisba Anguisciola, born of a noble family in Cremona, was enriched by Philip II. of Spain; Artemesia Gentileschi came to London with her father and found a patron in Charles I.; Maria La Caffa (17th century), a flower painter, came upon her Mæcenas in the Court of Tyrol; it was in German Courts that Isabella del Pozzo (17th century), like Felicita Sartori (18th century), plucked bay leaves and laurels; and Violanta Beatrice Siries, after making for herself a name in Paris, returned home to Florence and painted many famous persons of the 18th century. Then we have Rosalba Carriera, whose career ended in blindness and loss of reason, and whose whole life is a touching story. As a child she made Point of Venice lace; at the age of fourteen or fifteen she painted snuff boxes with flowers and pretty faces; then miniatures of well-known persons kept her brushes busy; but this minute art tried her eyes so seriously that Rosalba adopted pastels instead, and soon became the most famous pastellist of her period. She journeyed pretty well all over the Continent, winning an extraordinary success wherever she went, as well as a place in all the Academies of note, from the Clementina at Bologna to the Royal Academy at Paris. Rosalba Carriera arrived in Paris in April 1720; she kept a diary of her experiences, and students of French history should read it in the edition annotated by Alfred Sensier. But here we are concerned with the art alone of Rosalba Carriera, an art rich in colour, swift and nervous in drawing, full of character, and modelled always with vigour and with ease.
Returning now to an earlier traveller, Sophonisba Anguisciola, we meet with another portraitist of real merit, more self-contained than Rosalba, less impetuous, but fresh, witty, sincere and charming. It is probable that she was born in 1533. After studying for some time at Cremona, under Bernardino Campi, Sophonisba Anguisciola began to make fun of the little girls of the period. Vasari set the greatest store by one of these satirical sketches, representing a boy with a lobster clawed to his finger, and a small girl laughing at his nimbleness. The subject of another skit was an old woman studying the Alphabet, much to the amusement of a baby girl.
School of Cremona, XVI Century
THREE SISTERS OF SOPHONISBA ANGUISCIOLA PLAYING AT CHESS.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY HANFSTAENGL
AFTER THE PAINTING IN THE RACZYNSKI COLLECTION.
VASARI SAW THIS PICTURE AND SAID THAT "THE FIGURES WANTED ONLY VOICE TO BE ALIVE."
Sophonisba Anguisciola or Angussola, Painter
1533(?)-1626
That Sophonisba Anguisciola was very young when she first attracted notice from the great, is proved by the fact that she sent a likeness of herself—a likeness now at Vienna—to Pope Julius III., who died in 1555. It was in her twenty-seventh year that she made her way, with ten attendants, to the Spanish Court, there to paint a history in admired portraits of the great age of the auto-da-fé: a history which tempus edax has devoured, leaving us only those works which Sophonisba turned out in her native country, far away from the dark tragedies of the Escorial. Philip the Second married his protegée to a wealthy Sicilian noble, Don Fabrizio de Monçada, giving her a huge dowry of 12,000 ducats, a pension of 1,400 scudi, and a dress loaded with pearls, besides other presents.
Sophonisba retired with her husband to Palermo, where she soon became a widow. Then Philip and his Queen wished her to return to Madrid; but the artist pleaded an excuse, the excuse of homesickness, and set sail for Italy. The captain of the galley of war, Orazio Lomellini, was a handsome man of good family, a native of Genoa; his gallantry had suffered a sea-change, was altogether breezy, sailor-like, delightful; and Sophonisba not only fell in love with him, she took him at a leap-year advantage, and soon changed her "weeds" for a bridal dress.
When Van Dyck met her at Genoa (1622), and painted several members of her husband's family, Sophonisba was upwards of eighty-seven years old, and quite blind; but the blithe old lady still went on painting so well in her familiar conversations that Van Dyck said he had learnt more from her talk than from his other teachers. Had Steele an inkling of this magnificent compliment when he said that to love the Lady Elizabeth Hastings was a liberal education? Addison may have heard of it in Italy, and in turning over his thoughts before Master Richard, may have dropped it generously. But, however this may be, Stirling gives too much point to Van Dyck's words; for he says boldly, in The Annals of the Artists of Spain, that my painter's portraits are little inferior to those by Titian. "Of this evidence is afforded," says he, "by that beautiful portrait of her, which is now no mean gem of the galleries and libraries of Althorp."