During her stay in Paris, Rosalba painted numerous small pictures, made many drawings, and executed two pictures of Venus for M. Crozat, and an Apollo and Daphne for Claude Audran, besides nearly fifty portraits. Among her subjects were men and women of the highest character and position. Her artistic skill was recognized by the greatest compliment that could be paid her in France. She was elected a member of the Academy of Painting, "no one wishing to cast a black ball," as she wrote in her journal. She was invited there, and presented a portrait of Louis XV. in pastel, which was praised by the director, Antoine Coypel. Her "picture of reception," which was sent from Venice later, is now at the Louvre. She returned to her little house in Venice a widely celebrated woman, whose praises were sounded in prose and verse. She dwelt in the Quarter Dorsoduro, near the Church of San Vito. Here she received many distinguished visitors. She was invited to various courts of Europe; and until she reached the age of seventy her life was fruitful in work and in triumphs such as could not have failed to make her native city proud of her. Eleven {244} years before her death she became blind, and from that time she received no strangers, though many desired to see her. To her sister Angela she sent letters, written from her dictation, which spoke all too plainly of the loneliness she would fain have concealed from those who loved her. By her will she remembered all her relatives, her servants and attendants, and some of her pupils. She gave the bulk of her property to her sister Angela, who was but two years younger than herself. She died when eighty-two years old, and was buried in the little church of her parish beside her sister Giovannina, whose death she had mourned for twenty years. Pictures by Rosalba Carriera are seen in the Louvre, and in the Academy of Venice and the Church of San Gervasio e Protasio, but the largest collection is at Dresden; and to be perfectly candid, it does seem that the eighteenth-century critics have been more than kind in their praises of her works. If we were writing strictly of art, we could not give her a very exalted rank; but as a Venetian woman who made herself of note in the world in her day and generation, she is most important, and stands quite alone. {245} CHAPTER XIII. THE ARCHIVES OF VENICE.