"Women have risen to high excellence "A breathless awe, like the swift change "The power, whether of painter or poet, to describe rightly what he calls an ideal thing, depends upon its being to him not an ideal but a real thing. No man ever did or ever will work well, but either from actual sight or sight of faith."-John Ruskin. 262 WOMAN IN THE WORLD OF ART. "There she stands as all souls bow before her. . . . Oh! long and sweet recompense of toil! Where is on earth the rapture like that which is known to genius when at last it bursts from its hidden cavern into light and fame!"-Bulwer Lytton. "Since I can do no good because a woman, Reach constantly at something that is near it." "We thought her half-possessed, She struck such warbling fury through the words.” "When o'er the chords thy fingers steal, And now a soul set free! -Tennyson. Sweet sovereign! ruling over death and life- As with a thousand strings-the Sorcery! AVE women attained to the same height of excellence in the arts as in literature? We fancy the question must be answered in the negative. There are no female names in sculpture, painting, or music invested with such a lustre of renown as in fiction and poetry. Yet no reason can be adduced why, in the world of art, women should not conquer for themselves a foremost position. Those very qualities which the bitterest misogynist allows to them, the tendency to idealise, the fervid fancy, the intuitive sense of beauty, the fine aptitude for form and colour, are the qualities which properly belong to the artist, and, in the fulness of their presence, characterise his best work. If, then, their inferiority in this province of intellectual labour must be conceded, may we not attribute it to the unfavourable conditions under which they have hitherto entered upon it? That there were female painters in the mediæval period we admit. They were not numerous, however, and did not attain to the first or even the second rank; for, in truth, an obstinate prejudice prevailed against the development of the artistic capabilities of women. the first place, their existence was denied; in the second, their cultivation was prohibited, directly or indirectly. Women were refused the freedom of movement and independence of action which are as necessary to a great artist as light or air. They were debarred from an intimate and continual communion with nature, from studying the achievements of the famous masters, from gaining a knowledge of the human organisation. The unreality and the narrowness of In 264 DAME ANGELA AIROLA. their moral and intellectual culture effectually prevented their progress. Their love of art flickered and died out like a lamp for which no oil is provided. Think of the education of women in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and consider whether it was adapted to produce a great artist! Mr. Ruskin, in enumerating the qualities by which great artists are distinguished from the small, places first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination; third, their industry. No one will refuse to women the gifts of sensibility, tenderness, imagination; but who will affirm that, until recently, they were taught to make an artistic use of them? And as for industry, what could it avail, when they had access neither to models nor to nature? "During such investigation," says Ruskin, "as I have been able to give to the lives of the artists whose works are in all points noblest, no fact ever looms so large upon me-no law remains so steadfast in the universality of its application, as the fact and the law that they are all great workers." But how loud would have been the outcry if a woman had proposed to dedicate herself to the service of art! She would have been warned that her purpose was indecorous; next, that she was physically unfitted to carry it out; and, lastly, that she could not hope to compete with men. As soon as her fetters were wholly or partly removed, as soon as a large measure of liberty was granted to women, we find that a Rosa Bonheur can paint animals like a Cuyp or a Landseer, and a Mrs. Butler war-pictures like a Mantegna or a Wouvermans. One of the earliest of modern female painters seems to have been Dame Angela Airola, a Genoese nun, who was taught drawing and colouring by Sarezava, and executed scriptural objects and pictures of saints for her own monastery, as well as for several churches. Her work was not of the kind which teaches noble truths or appeals to noble emotions; nor was it of the kind which is inspired by a keen sympathy with the beautiful or with the glory of the human form. But it was the best she could do with the faculties she possessed and the means at her disposal; and she gave her life to it, praising God. Another nun, belonging to the convent of St. Catherine of Sienna, in Florence, one Badissa Plautilla, also devoted herself to art. She taught herself to design, beginning with the feeblest efforts, and proceeding to loving and faithful PROPERZIA DE ROSSI. 265 imitations of the canvas of the great masters, until she acquired facility as a miniature painter. Thence she passed on to bolder enterprises, executing altar-pieces and other religious pictures, many of which are still preserved in the churches and mansions of Florence. Of greater ability was Properzia de Rossi, born at Bologna towards the close of the fifteenth century. She was not only a painter but a sculptor, while as a musician she rose far above the commonplace level. According to Dallaway, her earliest attempts were carvings in wood and on peach-stones, eleven of which (formerly in the museum of the Marquis Grassi at Bologna) represented each on one side an apostle, and on the other a group of saints. By this minute and delicate workmanship having asserted her taste and skill, she ventured on a bolder flight of genius, and executed a couple of angels in marble for the façade of the Church of San Petronio. It would appear that she understood the rules of perspective and architecture, but we have been unable to meet with any detailed account of her drawings. Vasari mentions only her sculptures. A romantic love story of which she was the heroine has been introduced by Mrs. Hemans into her "Records of Women." She died in 1530 of a broken heart, bequeathing a bas-relief which she had undertaken to the one who had rejected her affections; and Mrs. Hemans represents her as exclaiming— "Tell me no more, no more, Of my soul's lofty gifts! Are they not vain Among the Italian artists of the later age, one of the worthiest and most conspicuous was Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665), and doubtless she would have risen almost to a level with the masters of her art but for her early death : "The fair guerdon when we think to find, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, Lanzi speaks of it as, indeed, a wonderful thing that a young girl, who lived only six-and-twenty years, should have painted the vast number of pictures recorded by Malvasia. Still greater the wonder that she should have perfected them with a care and finish of the highest order; and, greatest |