Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D.Waters, Clara Erskine Clement
History
Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D.
Waters, Clara Erskine Clement
Women artists -- Biography
Mme. Le Brun's works numbered six hundred and sixty portraits--fifteen
genre or figure pictures and about two hundred landscapes painted from
sketches made on her journeys. Her portraits included those of the
sovereigns and royal families of all Europe, as well as the most famous
authors, artists, singers, and the learned men in Church and State.
As an artist M. Charles Blanc thus esteems her: "In short, Mme. Le Brun
belonged entirely to the eighteenth century--I wish to say to that period
of our time which rested itself suddenly at David. While she followed the
counsels of Vernet, her pencil had a certain suppleness, and her brush a
force; but she too often attempted to imitate Greuze in her later works
and she weakened the resemblance to her subjects by abusing the _regard
noyé_ (cloudy or indistinct effect). She was too early in vogue to make
all the necessary studies, and she too often contented herself with an
ingenuity a little too manifest. Without judging her as complacently as
the Academy formerly judged her, we owe her an honorable place, because
in spite of revolutions and reforms she continued to her last day the
light, spiritual, and French Art of Watteau, Nattier, and Fragonard."
<b>VIGRI, CATERINA DE.</b> Lippo Dalmasii was much admired by Malvasia, who
not only extols his pictures, but his spirit as well, and represents him
as following his art as a religion, beginning and ending his daily work
with prayer. Lippo is believed to have been the master of Caterina de
Vigri, and the story of her life is in harmony with the influence of such
a teacher.
She is the only woman artist who has been canonized; and in the Convent
of the Corpus Domini, in Bologna, which she founded, she is known as "La
Santa," and as a special patron of the Fine Arts.
Caterina was of a noble family of Ferrara, where she was born in 1413.
She died when fifty years old; and so great was the reverence for her
memory that her remains were preserved, and may still be seen in a chapel
of her convent. There are few places in that ever wonderful Italy of such
peculiar interest as this chapel, where sits, clothed in a silken robe,
with a crown of gold on the head, the incorrupt body of a woman who died
four hundred and forty years ago. The body is quite black, while the
nails are still pink. She holds a book and a sceptre. Around her, in the
well-lighted chapel, are several memorials of her life: the viola on
which she played, and a manuscript in her exquisite chirography, also a
service book illuminated by Caterina, and, still more important, one of
her pictures, a "Madonna and Child," inserted in the wall on the left of
the chapel, which is admirable for the beauty of expression in the face
of the Holy Mother.
We cannot trace Caterina's artist life step by step, but she doubtless
worked with the same spirit of consecration and prayer as did that Beato
whom we call Angelico, in his Florentine convent, a century earlier.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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