THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
School of the Academicians after Caravaggio.--Unidealized
Nature.--Rude and violent Passions delineated.--Dark and stormy
Side of Humanity.--Dark Coloring and Shadows.--The gloomy and
passionate expressed in Pictures appeared in the Lives of
Artists.--The Dagger and Poison-cup common.--Aniella di Rosa.--The
Pupil of Stanzioni.--Character of her Painting.--Romantic Love
and Marriage.--The happy Home destroyed.--The hearth-stone
Serpent.--Jealousy.--The pretended Proof.--Phrensy and Murder.--Other
fair Neapolitans.--The Paintress of Messina.--The Schools of Bologna
and Naples embrace the most prominent Italian Paintings.--Commencement
of Crayon-drawing.--Tuscan Ladies of Rank cultivating Art.--The
Rosalba of the Florentine School.--Art in the City of the Cæsars.--The
Roman Flower-painter.--Engravers.--Medallion-cutters.--A female
Architect.--A Roman Sculptress.--Women Artists of the Venetian
School.--At Pavia.--The Painter’s four Daughters.--Chiara
Varotari.--Shares her Brother’s Labors.--A skillful Nurse.--Her
Pupils.--Other female Artists of this time.--The Schools of Northern
Italy.--Their Paintresses.--Giovanna Fratellini.
In contrast to the school established as before mentioned, certain
academicians had set up one grounded on principles promulgated by
Michael Angelo da Caravaggio, wherein the old idealism and conventional
forms of beauty were neglected, and the models furnished by the works
of the early masters were entirely slighted, to make room for a simple
copying of nature, whether beautiful or repulsive, full of grace or
rugged and barren of all charms. This new school had been planted in
Naples by Caravaggio; and beneath that glowing sky arose a number
of masters who devoted themselves not only to the reproduction of
unidealized nature, but the delineation of human passions in their
sternest and most violent demonstrations; preferring, in fact, to
depict the darkest and stormiest side of humanity. For this purpose,
depth of coloring and dark shadows were employed. These masters were
not wanting in talent, nor were their creations without effect and
influence; but they had nothing of the pure and holy element which
seems like a genuine inspiration in art. The gloomy and passionate,
expressed in their pictures, too often appeared also in their
characters and actions.
The relations of these Neapolitan artists with those of the Bolognese
school were by no means friendly, and rivals settled their disputes
as frequently with the dagger and the poison-cup as with the pencil
and the palette. Such a state of things was hardly favorable to the
development of woman’s talent.
ANIELLA DI ROSA.
Yet we find one artist of surpassing merit, who, on account of her
genius and her tragical fate, was called the Sirani of the school of
Naples. This was Aniella di Rosa, niece of the painter Pacecco di Rosa,
and pupil of that Massimo Stanzioni who, in common with Caravaggio,
exercised a species of tyranny over the struggles of Neapolitan art,
and was one of the leaders of the opposition set up against the
artists from Bologna. Aniella painted in his atelier, and he directed
her studies with paternal solicitude. She succeeded in giving to her
pictures the grace, the soft and transparent coloring of Pacecco, and
united in her heads the elegance of her uncle’s style with the correct
drawing and able grouping of Stanzioni. Her master set her to color his
sketches, and she succeeded so well that he often sold their joint
productions as his own. When her education was sufficiently advanced,
she desired that her talents should be put to a public test; and her
master induced the governors of the church of the Pietà dei Turchini to
give her a commission for two paintings which were to adorn the ceiling.
Aniella produced two paintings so excellent that many declared they
were completed by Stanzioni. But Domenici says he has seen several of
her original pictures, and that they are “most beautiful productions.”
“Her master himself,” he continues, “avows in his writings that she
equals the best masters of our time.” One of the pictures represented
the Birth of the Virgin; the other, her Death. The figures are larger
than life; and the boldness of design, the effects of light and shade,
and the management of the drapery, drew praise from two eminent
artists, who said she was an honor to her country, and that many
artists might learn from her. She also did several heads of the Madonna
in red chalk, pronounced equal in drawing to the works of the most
renowned artists.
During the earliest days when Aniella frequented Stanzioni’s studio,
she became acquainted with Agostino Beltramo, a high-spirited
Neapolitan youth. He soon became enamored of the beautiful girl, and
his frank manners and noble bearing, with the promise his early efforts
gave of his becoming a good artist, were a passport to her heart.
His love was accepted, and they were betrothed. Stanzioni exerted
himself in their behalf, and through his good offices the consent of
the parents for the marriage of the young people was obtained. A rare
similarity of tastes, and their mutual labors in art, caused all to
admire and many to envy the happiness of their union. The serenity of
Aniella’s disposition tended to insure the peace of their daily life;
and during sixteen years which they passed together both acquired no
insignificant artistic fame. The husband excelled in frescoes; the lady
in oil-paintings. The superb painting of San Biagio, in the church of
the Sanità, in Naples, is the result of their mutual labors.
But the cloud was brooding over the happy home which was to burst in
a fatal storm. An evil-minded woman, young and beautiful, entered the
house of Aniella as a servant. She was in love with Agostino; and,
finding all her charms and artifices ineffectual to move him from his
fidelity to his noble wife, or even to win his attention, she set
herself to work to accomplish the ruin of this domestic happiness.
She contrived to insinuate herself into the confidence of the man she
could not tempt; and then, drop by drop, with the perfidy and subtle
cunning of Iago, she succeeded in instilling into his heart the poison
of jealousy. By degrees she undermined his faith in the spotless virtue
of Aniella.
The husband grew morose and irritable, and at times manifested the
change that had come over him by sudden outbursts of ill-humor. Vainly
Aniella strove by unremitting patience and redoubled affection to
soothe his wayward moods. She soon perceived that all her happiness
must be derived from her art, and from the approbation of her old
master, who frequently visited her. She painted in her best manner a
Holy Family, and presented it to him. “On seeing,” writes Domenici,
“with what mastery of drawing and perfection of coloring Aniella had
completed the painting, and because she had so toiled for him, he was
overcome with feeling, and, in a transport of affection, clasped her
in his arms, exclaiming that she was his best pupil, and that, had he
been asked to retouch the painting, he should not know where to begin,
for fear of destroying the beautiful coloring.”
The infamous servant was playing the spy throughout this scene, and
had called up a servant-lad to support her testimony. On Stanzioni’s
departure Agostino returned.
“Now,” cried this hearth-stone serpent, “now I have proofs to set all
doubts at rest--proofs I will furnish you with in the presence of
your wife.” Confronted with her mistress, the vile hireling charged
her with guilty embraces, and called the servant-lad to confirm the
charge. Aniella, astounded and indignant, disdained to defend herself,
but stood before her husband mute and motionless, while a flush of pain
and indignation mantled on her brow. Her silence confirmed Agostino’s
suspicions; in his phrensy he drew his sword, and the next moment
Aniella lay dead at his feet. Thus closed the career of this noble
artist, in 1649, in the thirty-sixth year of her age. She was not the
only victim to the taste for the horrible and for wild extremes of
passion then prevailing in the works of artists, and too common in
their personal experience.
Another fair Neapolitan, who also worked in Rome at portrait-painting,
was Angela Beinaschi. The nun, Luisa Copomazza, a landscape-painter and
poetess, and the flower-painter, Clena Ricchi, were of Naples; with the
painter and modeler in wax, Catarina Juliani, called the “_ornamento
della patria_.”
Teresa del Po--daughter of a painter, the disciple of Domenichino,
and distinguished for oil and miniature painting, and copper
engraving--came from a family of Palermo. She etched plates in her
father’s style; some after Caracci.
Messina boasted of Anna Maria Ardoino, the daughter of the Princess
de Polizzi, accomplished in every branch, including music and poetry,
who won great celebrity on account of her splendid attainments in art
and literature, and was admitted a member of the Academy of Arcadia in
Rome. She died in 1700, at Naples, in the bloom of her life and fame,
and it is said her death was occasioned by grief for the loss of a son.
The two schools of Bologna and Naples may be said to embrace the
greater number of the prominent productions of the pencil in Italy
during the period of which we have spoken. Other cities enjoyed their
peculiar distinctions as the seats of different schools of art, but
they exhibited more or less the influence of these chief ones. In
Florence--the ancient home of Italian painting--artists of distinction
exercised their skill; and the superior cultivation and taste diffused
under the auspices of distinguished Tuscan ladies, contributed, in no
small measure, to the encouragement of female enterprise. While Maria
Borghini--elevated, by the judgment of her contemporaries, to a seat
beside Victoria Colonna, and Mary dei Medici, who not only patronized
art, but gave it her own personal efforts--won the meed of admiration,
others were not backward in the race for the golden apple of renown.
Arcangela Paladini, of Pisa, born 1599, already mentioned as a painter,
was also an engraver. Her portrait, by herself, is in the gallery
of artists in Florence. She died at the age of twenty-three. As
flower-painters, we hear of Anna Maria Vajani and Isabella Piccini;
Giovanna Redi was a successful pupil of the skillful Gabbiani; and
Giovanna Marmochini was no less favorably known in art than as a wit
and a learned lady. She has been called, for the excellence of her
miniatures, the Rosalba of the Florentine school. Niccola Grassi, of
Genoa, is also called by Lanzi “the rival of Rosalba.” She painted
original compositions and church pictures.
Rome, meanwhile, maintained her ancient fame. The city of the Cæsars
had often been the arena where the striving masters of the Bolognese
and the opposing schools contended for the establishment of the
supremacy they coveted. Nor was she wanting in women artists of
her own, able to do credit to their birthplace. We may mention the
excellent flower-painter, Laura Bernasconi, and the engravers, Isabella
and Hieronima Parasole, whose name became so celebrated that the
husband of the first adopted it, dropping his own. Isabella executed
several cuts of plants for an herbal published under the direction of
Prince Cesi, of Aquasparta. She also published a book on the methods of
working lace and embroidery, illustrated with cuts engraved from her
own designs. Hieronima engraved on wood, among other pictures, “The
Battle of the Centaurs.”
Beatrice Hamerani worked at medallions, and in 1700 elaborated a
large medallion of Pope Innocent XII., highly praised by Goethe as
“undoubtedly one of the most skillful, expressive, and powerful
productions of art which ever came from the hands of a woman.”
Add to these the name of the only woman who was ever known to have
been a practical architect. This was Plautilla Brizio, who has left
monuments of her excellence in that species of art in a small palace
before Porta San Pancrazio, and in the chapel of St. Benedict, in San
Luigi dei Francesi. In the latter is a picture painted by her hand.
The villa Giraldi, near Rome, is the joint work of this lady and her
brother.
The female sculptor Maria Domenici, who pursued her profession in Rome,
was a native of Naples.
Passing over many of the Italian cities, and attempting no sketch of
the peculiarities of the school of Venice, we find there several not
insignificant women artists. Paolina Grandi, Elisabetta Lazzarini, and
Damina Damini were known as painters, and Domenia Luisa Rialto as an
engraver on copper. The sisters Carlotta and Gabriella Patin enjoyed
celebrity for both learning and artistic skill. They lived at Pavia,
and were members of the Academy dei Ricovrati.
The four daughters of the Venetian painter Niccolo Renieri, who
practiced the same art, should be mentioned. Anna, the eldest, became
the wife of Antoine Vandyck.
Chiara Varotari was so highly esteemed by those who knew her, that a
niche was assigned her by contemporaries equal to that of Maria Robusti
in the sixteenth century. She was daughter and pupil of Dario Varotari,
and the sister of that Alessandro Varotari who became so noted as a
painter, under the name Padovanino. Chiara frequently shared in the
execution of his works. She was not less praised for her beauty,
and her skill as a tender nurse of the sick. Her triumphs over the
discomfort of disease were signal, in that field where female prowess
so often achieves its deeds of heroism. Such conquests are seldom
recorded by the historian’s pen; but it is pleasant for once to rescue
them from oblivion. Honors were conferred on her by the Grand-Duke
of Tuscany, who placed her portrait in his collection. This artist
numbered among her pupils Lucia Scaligeri and Caterina Taraboti.
Boschini thinks she gave public instruction, like Sirani. She died,
full of years, in 1660, ten years after the brother whose labors she
had aided.
Anna Maria Vajani, who engraved in Rome in the middle of this century,
executed a part of the plates for the Justinian Gallery.
Laura Bernasconi imitated the famous flower-painter Mario Mizzi, called
“Mario dai fiori.” With his coloring she had also his defects.
Maria Vittoria Cassana was the sister of two painters, and painted
chiefly devotional pieces, in little. She died 1711. Lucia Casalina, a
disciple of Giuseppe dal Sole, turned her attention to portraits.
Angelica Veronica Airola, a Genoese, studied painting under Domenico
Fiasella. She painted religious pictures for the convents and churches
of Genoa, and became a nun of the order of St. Bartholomew della
Fiavella. Soprani and others mention her.
Giovanna Garzoni painted flowers and miniature portraits about 1630. At
Florence she painted some of the Medici and the nobles. Dying at Rome
in 1673, she bequeathed her property to the academy of St. Luke, in
which there is a marble monument to her memory.
Two daughters of Caccia--called “the Fontane of Monferrato”--painted
altar and cabinet pieces. One, Francesca, adopted for her symbol
a small bird; Ursula, a flower. Ursula founded the convent of the
Ursulines, in Moncalvo. Some of her landscapes are decorated with
flowers.
Lanzi and Tiraboschi mention Margerita Gabassi as admirable in
humorous pieces. She died in 1734, aged seventy-one.
In the Nuova Guida di Torino, Isabella dal Pozzo is mentioned as the
painter of a picture in the church of San Francesco, at Turin, dated
1666, and representing the Virgin and Babe surrounded with saints.
Lanzi bestows high praise on her. In 1676 she became court painter to
the Electress Adelaide of Bavaria.
The schools of Northern Italy recorded the names, too, of Chiara
Salmeggia, the painter of Bergamo, and of Maria la Caffa, of Cremona,
who worked at the Court of Tyrol; of Camilla Triumfi; and Maria
Domenici, a native of Naples, who worked at sculpture in Rome, and died
a nun in 1703.
Lucia Scaligeri, a pupil of Chiara Varotari, had a daughter Agnes,
also a painter, spoken of by Boschini. Caterina Rusca was a native of
Ferrara, and known as an engraver and poetess.
Crayon-drawing seems to have been much in vogue at this time. Giovanna
Fratellini, called by Lanzi “an illustrious female artist, from the
school of Gabbiani,” painted in crayons as well as in oil, miniature
and enamel. So famous did she become that, after executing the
portraits of Cosmo III. and family--a drawing consisting of fourteen
figures in a superb apartment, of the richest architecture, remarkable
for its judicious disposition and lovely coloring--her patron sent her
throughout Italy to paint the other princes. “Her pencil is light,
delicate, and free,” writes Pilkington; “her carnations are natural,
and full of warmth and life, and as she understood perspective and
architecture thoroughly, she made an elegant use of that knowledge,
enriching her pictures with magnificent ornaments. Her draperies are
generally well chosen, full of variety, and remarkable for a noble
simplicity. Her works rendered her famous, not only in Italy, but
in Europe.” Her portrait is in the gallery at Florence; she painted
herself in the act of drawing her son and pupil, Lorenzo, in whom were
centred all her hopes. Under her tuition he made rapid progress in art,
but died suddenly, at an early age. His mother never recovered from
the blow; life and art had alike lost their charms for her, and she
speedily followed him to the grave.