1659

The Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist

Italian, 1638 - 1665

Elisabetta Sirani was, like her father Giovanni, influenced by Guido Reni, although she never studied with the older master. As one of very few female artists at the time, Elisabetta was apparently regarded as a sort of precocious curiosity. According to an anecdote in a seventeenth-century biography, she once jumped up in the midst of listening to a conversation and drew, in a few fluent strokes, the composition of a painting described by her companions. The delicate freshness of this etching supports the idea that she drew with great facility.