It was not then esteemed unfeminine for women to give lectures in public to crowded and admiring audiences. They were freely admitted members of learned societies, and were consulted by men of pre-eminent scientific attainments as their equals in scholarship; yet, a British reviewer remarks, “It is doubtful whether the far-famed Novella was a better Greek scholar than Mrs. Browning; or Maria Porcia Vignoli, whose statue long adorned the market-place of Viterbo, more learned in natural sciences than Mrs. Somerville.” Among the more brilliant devotees of the lyre may be mentioned, in passing, Emilia Ballati and Giulia Baitelli, who emulated the fame of Petrarch, and Laura Vanetti, in whose poems Metastasio discerned the very soul of the bard of Love. But we must not linger over names, even of the artists who belong to our special field of observation. None of the important early schools failed in the eighteenth century, to be able to boast the ornament of female talent. In Florence, Violanta Beatrice Siries, after a prolonged course of study in Paris under Boucher and Rigaud, was noted as a portrait-painter. In the same branch of the profession, Anna Boccherini and Anna Galeotti were highly esteemed. In copper-engraving, Catarina Zucchi and Laura Piranesi acquired some celebrity. As engravers, we hear of Livia Pisani, Violanta Vanni, and Teresa Mogalli, the last also skilled in painting. In encaustic painting, Anna Parenti-Duclos was well known toward the close of the century. Maria Felicia Tibaldi was distinguished in Rome for her talents as a painter no less than for her virtues as a woman; and her sister, Teresa, belongs to the same category, with Rosalba Maria Salviani and Caterina Cherubini. In miniature-painting, Bianca and Matilda Festa excelled; the latter holding the professor’s chair in the Academy of San Luca. The wreaths of poetry and painting were intertwined around the brow of Maria Maratti, the daughter and pupil of the celebrated Carlo Maratti, and the wife of the poet Zappi. The like was true of Anna Victoria Dolora, who died at a great age in 1827, in a Dominican convent. Naples boasted at this period a famous mathematician in Maria Angela Ardinghelli. Three gifted sisters, Maria Angiola, Felice, and Emmanuela Matteis, were also noted here; with the distinguished Angelica Siscara and Colomba Garri, who practiced flower and genre painting, and produced a series of kitchen-pieces, in which they sought to idealize by artistic adornment the ordinary occupations of the frugal and industrious housewife. The cities of northern Italy had their share of energetic women. Turin, Milan, Bergamo, Roveredo, Carpi, and Parma produced artists whose fame was limited to a narrower circle than those of Bologna and Venice, where, especially in the former city, the shadow of past glories seemed to linger.