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. "On the 13th of May, 1664," she records in the list of works, which seems also to have served as a sort of journal, "His Serene Highness Cosmo, crown prince of Tuscany, came to our house to see me paint, and I worked at a picture of the Prince Leopold his uncle in his presence. Alluding to the three special virtues of that great family"—(Poor Elisabetta!)—"of Justice, Charity, and Prudence, I introduced figures of them into the picture, sketching in the infant whom Charity is nursing, very quickly, while the prince stood by. On leaving me, he ordered a Holy Virgin for himself, which I executed in time for him to take with him, when he returned to Florence. It is in an oval, with the child in the mother's lap, who with his left hand is caressing her, while the right, with an olive–branch in it, rests on the world; my intention being to allude to the peace, which, by the negotiations of his Most Serene father, is preserved to Italy!"