None of the numerous schools of Italian art were without female disciples. The Bolognese rose above all others, and at this period gave laws to art. Here we find PROPERZIA, THE SCULPTRESS. The first woman who gained reputation as a sculptor in Italy was Properzia di Rossi. She was born in Bologna in 1490, and possessed not only remarkable beauty of person, with all the graces a finished education could graft upon a refined nature, but various feminine accomplishments, excelling particularly, Vasari tells us, in her orderly disposal of household matters. She sang and played on several instruments “better than any woman of her day in Bologna,” while in many scientific studies she gained a distinction “well calculated,” says the Italian historian, “to awaken the envy not of women only, but also of men.” This maiden of rich gifts was endowed with a peculiar facility in realizing the creations of fancy, and took at first a strange way of doing so. She undertook the minute carving of peach-stones, and succeeded so well as to render credible what had been recorded of two sculptors of antiquity. Mirmecide is said to have carved a chariot drawn by four horses, with the charioteer, so small that a fly with his wings spread covered the whole. Callicrate sculptured ants with the minutest exactness. Properzia carved on a peach-stone the crucifixion of our Saviour; a work comprising a number of figures--executioners, disciples, women, and soldiers--wonderful for the delicate execution of the minutest figures, and the admirable distribution of all. A series of her intaglios is in the possession of Count Grassi of Bologna. In a double-headed eagle, in silver filagree (the Grassi coat of arms), are imbedded eleven peach-stones, and on each is carved, on one side, one of the eleven apostles, each with an article of the creed underneath; on the other, eleven holy virgins with the name of the saint on each, and a motto explanatory of her special virtue. In the cabinet of gems in the gallery of Florence is preserved a cherry-stone on which is carved a chorus of saints in which seventy heads may be counted. It was not long before Properzia began to think, with those who witnessed her success, that it was a pity to throw away so much labor on a nut! At that time the façade of San Petronio, in Bologna, was being ornamented with sculpture and bas-relief. The young girl had studied drawing under Antonio Raimondi, and when the three doors of the principal façade were to be decorated with marble figures she made application to the superintendents for a share in the works. She was required to furnish a specimen of her talent. The young sculptress executed a bust from life, in the finest marble, of Count Alessandro de’ Pepoli; this pleased the family and the whole city, and procured immediate orders from the superintendents.