Giovanni Battista Salvi, surnamed from his birth-place Sassoferrato, was born in 1605 and died in 1685. He followed the scholars of the Caracci, but with some independence, returning to older and greater masters. His art was distinguished by a peculiar but slightly affected gentleness of conception, pleasing and sweet--with the sweetness verging on weakness. He finished with minute care. He gave constant representations of the Madonna and Child and Holy Families in a domestic character. In one of his pictures in Naples the Madonna is engaged in sewing. His most celebrated, 'Madonna del Rosario,' is in S. Sabina, Rome. The Madonna bending in ecstatic worship over an infant Christ lying on a cushion is in the Dresden Gallery.
Giorgio Vasari was born at Arezzo in 1512 and died at Florence in 1574. He was an architect, or jeweller, and a historical painter of heavy crowded pictures. His lives of the early Italian painters and sculptors up to his own time, the sixteenth century, though full of traditional gossip, are invaluable as graphic chronicles of much interesting information which would otherwise have been lost.
Sofonisba Anguisciola, born 1535, died about 1620, was a pupil of Bernardino Campi about the close of the sixteenth century at Cremona. She is justly praised by Vasari. Though her works are rare there are a few in England and Scotland. Three of her pictures which are mentioned with high commendation by Dr. Waagen are, 'a nun in the white robes of her order, nobly conceived and delicately coloured,' in Lord Yarborough's collection; in Mr Harcourt's collection, 'her own portrait, still very youthful, delicate, charming, and clear;' and in the collection of the late Sir W. Stirling Maxwell, 'another portrait of herself at an easel painting the Virgin and Child on wood, delicately conceived, clear in colour, and very careful.'
Lavinia Fontana, born in 1552, died 1614, was a daughter of Prospero Fontana, who belonged to the fast degenerating Bolognese artists at the close of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century. She was a better artist than her fellow painters, worked cleverly and boldly, and showed truth to nature. She has left excellent portraits. In the late Sir W. Stirling Maxwell's collection there is a picture by her, 'Two girls in a boat with a youth rowing,' on wood, 'of very graceful motive and careful treatment.'