We now find her living at Genoa, where she pursued her art with indefatigable zeal. Her house became the resort of all the polished and intellectual society of the republic. Nor was she forgotten by her royal friends of the house of Austria. On hearing of her second nuptials, their Catholic majesties added four hundred crowns to her pension. The Empress of Germany paid her a visit on her way to Spain, and accepted a little picture, one of the most finished and beautiful of Sofonisba’s works. She also received the honor of a visit from her former charge, the Infanta, now married or about to be married to the Archduke Albert, and joint sovereign with him over Flanders. This princess spent several hours talking with her friend of old times and family affairs; and sat for her portrait, for which, when it was finished, she gave Sofonisba a gold chain enriched with jewels. This pretty memorial of friendship was greatly prized by the artist. Thus caressed by royalty, and courted in Genoese society, she lived to an extreme old age. A medallion was struck at Bologna in honor of her; the most distinguished artists listened reverentially to her opinions, and poets sang the praises of “La bella e saggia dipintrice, La nobil Sofonisba da Cremona.” In the latter years of her life Sofonisba was deprived of her sight; but retained her intellectual faculties, her love of art, and her relish for the society of its professors. The conferences she held in her own palace were attended to the last by distinguished painters from every quarter. Vandyck was frequently her guest, and was accustomed to say he had received more enlightenment from this blind old woman than from all his studies of the greatest masters. This was no mean praise from the favorite scholar of Rubens; and who shall say it was not deserved? By precept and by example she helped to raise art in Genoa from the decay into which it had fallen in the middle of the sixteenth century. Her pictures have something of the grace and cheerfulness of Raphael, in whose style her first master painted, and something of the relief of the followers of Correggio. “More than any other woman of her time,” writes Vasari, “with more study and greater grace, she has labored on every thing connected with drawing; not only has she drawn, colored, and painted from life, and made excellent copies, but she has also drawn many beautiful original pictures.”