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 talent, and the generous patronage of art by church, state, and men of rank and wealth, made Italy a veritable paradise for artists.

Gradually, with the revival of learning, artists were free to give greater importance to secular subjects, and an element of worldliness, and even of immorality, invaded the realm of art as it invaded the realms of life and literature.

This was an era of change in all departments of life.  Chivalry, the great “poetic lie,” died with feudalism, and the relations between men and women became more natural and reasonable than in the preceding centuries.  Women were liberated from the narrow sphere to which they had been relegated in the minstrel’s song and poet’s rhapsody, but as yet neither time nor opportunity had been given them for the study and development which must precede noteworthy achievement.

Remarkable as was the fifteenth century for intellectual and artistic activity, it was not productive in its early decades of great genius in art or letters.  Its marvellous importance was apparent only at its close and in the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the works of Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, and their followers emphasized the value of the progressive attainments of their predecessors.

The assertion and contradiction of ideas and theories, the rivalries of differing schools, the sweet devotion of Fra Angelico, the innovations of Masolino and Masaccio, the theory of perspective of Paolo Uccello, the varied works of Fabriano, Antonello da Messina, the Lippi, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, the Bellini, and their contemporaries, culminated in the inimitable painting of the Cinquecento—­in works still unsurpassed, ever challenging artists of later centuries to the task of equalling or excelling them.

The demands of the art of the Renaissance were so great, and so unlike those of earlier days, that it is not surprising that few women, in its beginning, attained to such excellence as to be remembered during five centuries.  Especially would it seem that an insurmountable obstacle had been placed in the way of women, since the study of anatomy had become a necessity to an artist.  This, and kindred hindrances, too patent to require enumeration, account for the fact that but two Italian women of this period became so famous as to merit notice—­Caterina Vigri and Onorata Rodiana, whose stories are given in the biographical part of this book.

* * * * *

In Flanders, late in the fourteenth and early in the fifteenth centuries, women were engaged in the study and practice of art.  In Bruges, when the Van Eycks were inventing new methods in the preparation of colors, and painting their wonderful pictures, beside them, and scarcely inferior to them, was their sister, Margaretha, who sacrificed much of her artistic fame by painting portions of her brothers’ pictures, unless the fact that they thought her worthy of thus assisting them establishes her reputation beyond question.