their labor.

It has been claimed that everything of importance that originated in
Italy from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century bore the distinctive
mark of Fine Art. So high an authority as John Addington Symonds is in
accord with this view, and the study of these four centuries is of
absorbing interest.

Although the thirteenth century long preceded the practice of art by
women, its influence was a factor in the artistic life into which they
later came. In this century Andrea Tan, Guido da Siena, and other devoted
souls were involved in the final struggles of Mediaeval Art, and at its
close Cimabue and Duccio da Siena--the two masters whose Madonnas were
borne in solemn procession through the streets of Florence and Siena, mid
music and the pealing of bells--had given the new impulse to painting
which brought them immortal fame. They were the heralds of the time when
poetry of sentiment, beauty of color, animation and individuality of form
should replace Mediaeval formality and ugliness; a time when the spirit of
art should be revived with an impulse prophetic of its coming glory.

But neither this portentous period nor the fourteenth century is
memorable in the annals of women artists. Not until the fifteenth, the
century of the full Renaissance, have we a record of their share in the
great rebirth.

It is important to remember that the art of the Renaissance had, in the
beginning, a distinct office to fill in the service of the Church. Later,
in historical and decorative painting, it served the State, and at
length, in portrait and landscape painting, in pictures of genre subjects
and still-life, abundant opportunity was afforded for all orders of