Her devoted filial affection, her feminine grace, and the artless benignity of her manners, completed a character regarded by her friends as an ideal of perfection. Malvasia mentions the rapidity with which she worked, often throwing off sketches and executing oil pictures in the presence of strange spectators. The envious artists of her time took occasion, from the number of her paintings, to insinuate that her father gave out his own works for his daughter’s to obtain a higher price for them; but the stupid calumny soon fell to the ground, for every one had free access to the studio of Elisabetta, and one day, in the presence of the Duchess of Brunswick, the Duchess of Mirandola, Cosimo, Duke of Tuscany, and others, she drew and shaded subjects chosen by each with such promptitude that the incredulous were confounded. She had hardly received the commission of her large picture--“The Baptism of Jesus”--before she had sketched on the canvas the entire conception of that memorable incident, including many and various figures; and the work was completed with equal rapidity. She was then only twenty years of age. Her method has been compared to that of Guido Reni, whose versatility she combined with rare force and decision, and peculiar delicacy and tenderness; the most opposite qualities being harmonized in her productions. This fascinating artist, in the height of her fame, in the flush of early womanhood, was snatched from her friends by a cruel and mysterious doom. Her fate is involved in a darkness which has not been penetrated to this day. Some do not hesitate to aver that her sudden death was a base and cruel murder; that she was poisoned by the same hands that administered the deadly draught to Domenichino--those of Ribiera or his disciples, jealous of her rising fame. The general impression is that she was the victim of professional envy. Some averred that her death was caused by the revenge of a princely lover, whose dishonorable advances were repelled, or some great personage who was incensed at her refusal to engage in his service, or of a distinguished individual who felt aggrieved by a caricature, and secretly employed a servant to put poison in her food. Each story was believed among her contemporaries, and the record of the examination is yet extant; but it was conducted without regularity, and throws no light upon the mysterious assassination. Great was the excitement on the 14th November, 1665, in Bologna, on the day of her funeral, when the whole population crowded, weeping, to see the once beautiful features distorted by the hateful poison. The victim of revenge or jealousy was honored with solemn and splendid funeral ceremonies in the church of St. Domenico. Shortly after her death a work was published, in which was included a number of poetical eulogies and tributes, from the most eminent poets of the day, to the memory and virtues of the deceased. One line runs thus: “I was a woman, yet I knew not love.”