Perhaps one may defy critics to name a single latter-day "realist" among the fair who has attained to Artemisia Gentileschi's masterful and singular ruthlessness, as in the several pictures of Judith that she painted. One of these pictures will be found on page [45]. It is the least relentless of the series, but it shows clearly enough the grip of Artemisia's hand in tragedy. Curiously, the suave Guido was Artemisia's first teacher, but she learnt more from Domenichino, and more still from the years she passed at Naples, then known as "the sink of all iniquity." But Artemisia Gentileschi is sometimes kind in her work, and gentle; she does not always remind us of that Artemisia who fought so well at Salamis, causing Xerxes to cry: "Behold! the men behave like women, and the women like men!" In her excellent portraits, and in pictures like the "Mary Magdalene," on page [31], she blends some graciousness of thought with vigour and variety of technique.
Lavinia Fontana and Elisabetta Sirani were the ablest women painters whose travels did not extend beyond Italy. The first was a member of the old Roman Academy, and Pope Gregory XIII. made her his portraitist in ordinary. She was born of good family in Bologna, anno 1552. It was her father that shaped the laggard talents of Lodovico Carracci, and from him came the girl's first lessons in drawing. Lavinia spent most of her life in Rome, where, for close on two generations, she held society by the austere truth of her portraiture. Ladies of high rank vied with one another to become her sitters, and a long red line of cardinals sat to her. Pope Paul the Fifth was among Lavinia's models; very high prices were paid readily for her work, and not a few noblemen wished to marry her; but the artist remained true to the young Count of Imola, Giovanni Paolo Zappi, a good, kind, simple-hearted fellow, an aristocratic Barnaby Rudge. Him she married, and it was her ill-hap to see his simplicity repeat itself in one of their two sons, a lad who kept the Pope's antechamber merry.
My artist's style, though modelled to some extent on that of the Carracci, has a distinction of its own. Even the arid Kügler gives Lavinia his rare good word, reckoning her a better artist than her father, and adding: "Her work is clever and bold, and in portraiture, especially, she has left good things."
Does Elisabetta Sirani take precedence of Lady Waterford? Perhaps they may be regarded as two equal queens in the world of woman's art, each with a beautiful artistic intellect. Even at the age of nineteen, as old Bartsch admits, Elisabetta etched exquisite plates; and, before she was twenty-three, her paintings were sought after by all the patron-critics of her country. Yet her male rivals hinted that she was dishonest, that she did not paint her own pictures, but had "ghosts" to win fame and fortune for her—especially her father, a poor "ghost," afflicted with inherited gout. Elisabetta happily soon turned the sneer against her rivals. This she did by working before an audience of distinguished persons, like Cosimo, Crown Prince of Tuscany, who on May 13th, 1664, stood by whilst she painted a likeness of his uncle, the Prince Leopold.
Malvasia gives in his spirited monograph a list of 150 pictures by Elisabetta Sirani; and Lanzi deemed it marvellous that one who died so young should yet have brought to completion so many hopeful efforts of real genius. The brilliant girl painted with great rapidity. One of her finest achievements—the "Baptism of Christ"—is a very large picture, and the story of its conception is noteworthy. Elisabetta was little more than twenty at the time, and the clergy who had been sent to order the work for the Church of the Certosini at Bologna, looked on whilst she, radiant with inspiration, made her first impulsive sketch in pen-and-ink. The beholders were enchanted, and the huge picture, differing little in essentials from the sketch, was painted almost as rapidly as Dumas repeopled the distant past. In brief, Elisabetta Sirani, like all women of genius, worked under an intuitive rather than technical guidance; and in her art, consequently, as in Lady Waterford's, we find those blemishes and beauties which belong to a native habit of spontaneous workmanship.
As to her private life, it is full of heroic virtues. The noble girl kept the whole family: her mother, who was stricken with paralysis; her father, who suffered intolerably from the gout; and her two sisters, whom she educated with a large class of girl art-students. Then Cupid came, saw, and was overcome, and Elisabetta, by way of celebrating this unkind victory, painted the little god in the act of crowning his victor. But the pity of it all was this: the girl had so many taut strings to her bow that the frail bow could not but break. Elisabetta's health gave way, a painful disease of the stomach assailed her; and yet to the last day but one of her short life—i.e., August 27th, 1665—she remained true to her colours, and was one of art's truest soldiers. "The best way not to feel pain is not to think of it," said she, and then went slowly back to her studio.
The present book contains adequate examples of the work of Elisabetta Sirani, of Lavinia Fontana Zappi, of Artemisia Gentileschi, of Sophonisba Anguisciola, of Rosalba Carriera; and there is a good drawing by Diana Ghisi, the painter-engraver, an excellent copy by Maria Tibaldi Subleyras, and two characteristic pictures by Agnese Dolci, sister of Carlo Dolci and his equal in talent. These painters and the early nuns, Caterina Vigri and the three sisters of Santa Marta, Siena, are enough to represent the old Italian schools; while three characteristic pictures by Elisa Koch, Juana Romani, and Rosina Gutti, unite the present with the far-distant past, a past separated from the present day by four hundred and fifty years.
WALTER SHAW SPARROW.
Bolognese School, XVII Century