Arcangela Palladini excelled in painting, poetry, music, and embroidery. A piece of her needle-work hung in the ducal gallery at Pisa, where none but great works were preserved. Beatrice Pappafava, a paintress, was also a learned lady, and is said to have celebrated her own hundredth birthday in an original sonnet of much merit. Caterina Rusca obtained some repute as an engraver on copper; and Augusta Tarabotti, who studied painting under the direction of Clara Varotari, was also a poet and the author of “An Apology for the Female Sex,” which was received with considerable attention. Fede Galizia, the daughter of a celebrated miniaturist, lived in Milan. In figures and landscapes she evinced taste, accuracy, and finish. She was devoted to the ideal, and this tendency appeared in her design and coloring. LAVINIA FONTANA. One among the female artists who adopted the style of the Caracci and helped to introduce a change in art was Lavinia Fontana, one of the most celebrated women of the century. She was the daughter of that Prospero Fontana who gave lessons in painting to Ludovico Caracci, and was wont much to disparage him. He once remarked that his scholar would do better at mixing colors than as a painter! But Caracci had his revenge in after years, when Fontana was heard to lament that he was too old to become the pupil of the great artist who had once been his own despised scholar! The instruction he could not receive was the privilege of his daughter Lavinia, who was born in Bologna in 1552. She adopted her father’s manner, and gained great celebrity in portrait painting; but, in later years, became the disciple of Caracci, after which she succeeded in giving her pictures so much softness, sweetness, and tenderness, that some of them have even been compared to those of Guido Reni. To delicacy of touch she united rare skill in taking likenesses. Her talents met with appreciation and honors not often accorded to female merit. The first ladies in Rome sought to become her sitters, and the greatest cardinals deemed themselves fortunate in having their portraits executed by her skillful hand. Her portraits were so highly esteemed that they commanded enormous prices, and were displayed with pride in the galleries of the nobility and the most cultivated persons in the land. Her services were engaged by Pope Gregory XIII. as his painter in ordinary; and she worked for the Buoncompagni family. Other crowned heads sought her society, and the most wondrous grace of all was that these honors did not create in her vanity or self-conceit. To her accomplishments she added such personal attractions that her hand was sought by many distinguished and titled suitors; but she preferred to them all a young man unknown to fame, Giovanni Paolo Zappi, of Imola. Some authorities speak of him as a wealthy nobleman. He had painted in her father’s studio for love of the charming daughter, and had been accustomed to paint the clothes