Perhaps the best criterion of the thoroughness of the education given women at this time is the influence exerted by the women of the period on art and artists and literary men of the time, and above all the cultivated taste displayed in their homes. A typical example is afforded by Isabelle D'Este whose _camerini_, her private apartments, are reproduced at South Kensington and described in one of their manuals on Interior Decoration in Italy in the fifteenth century and the sixteenth century. As these decorations for the dowager Duchess D'Este were made just about the middle of Columbus' Century, the authoritative description of them will be the best document. The Museum of South Kensington has had one side of her painting room reconstructed, and it shows, as no mere description could, the beauty of the apartment and the taste of its owner. A quotation from the description of the three rooms as given in the South Kensington Art Handbook "Italian Wall Decorations of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries" will {323} serve better than any praise to give an idea of the charming retreat that Isabella made for herself when her position as Dowager Duchess gave her the leisure as well as the opportunity to devote herself to the construction of a retreat which should reflect her personality. "The 'Grotta,' on the ground floor of the old Palazzo Bonnacolsi, remained set apart for her collections of art and for receptions; princes on their travels, ambassadors on their missions, travellers of distinction and artists came to visit her. She accumulated in it statues and rare objects, and even added a 'Cortile,' with fountains playing during the summer. But the three new rooms at the top of the 'Paradiso' became the object of her predilection, and it is amidst such surroundings, the real 'paradise' of Isabella D'Este, that historians must place her portrait. "The first room was dedicated to music, the favorite pursuit of Isabella. The cupboards were filled with beautiful instruments: mandolines, lutes, clavichords inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and made specially for her by Lorenzo of Pavia; and here stood the famous organ by the same master, the description of which is to be found in the princess's correspondence. Round the walls of this first room were reproduced views of towns in 'intarsia' of rare woods, and on one of the panels figured a few bars of a 'Strambotto,' composed by Okenghem to words dictated by Isabella, and signed by that famous singing master. On the ceiling was the 'Stave,' which exists in the coat-of-arms of the House of Este, and along the cornices friezes were formed of musical instruments carved in the wood. "In the second room, devoted to painting and also to study, six masterpieces by the greatest painters of the time adorned the walls above the panelling.