In a critical estimate of Miss Foley we read:  “Her head of the somewhat impracticable but always earnest senator from Massachusetts—­Sumner—­is unsurpassable and beyond praise.  It is simple, absolute truth, embodied in marble.”—­Tuckerman’s Book of the Artists.

“Miss Foley’s exquisite medallions and sculptures ought to be reproduced in photograph.  Certainly she was a most devoted artist, and America has not had so many sculptors among women that she can afford to forget any one of them.”—­Boston Advertiser, January, 1878.

FONTAINE, JENNY. Silver medal, Julian Academy, 1889; silver medal at Amiens Exposition, 1890 and 1894; honorable mention, Paris Salon, 1892; gold medal at Rouen Exposition, 1893; third-class medal, Salon, 1896; bronze medal, Paris Exposition, 1900.  Officer of the Academy, 1896; Officer of Public Instruction, 1902.  Member of the Societe des Artistes Francais, Paris; Societe de l’Union Artistique, du Pas-de-Calais, at Arras; corresponding member of the Academy of Arras.  Pupil of Jules Lefebvre and Benjamin-Constant.

Mlle. Fontaine paints portraits only—­of these she has exhibited regularly at the Salons for sixteen years.  Among her sitters have been many persons of distinction, both men and women.

At the Salon of 1902 she exhibited her own portrait; in 1903, portraits of MM.  Rene et Georges D. The Journal des Arts, giving an account of the exhibition at Rheims, summer, 1903, says:  “The portraits here are not so numerous as one might expect, but they are too fine to be overlooked.  Mlle. Jenny Fontaine has, for a long time, held a distinguished place as a portraitiste in our Salons, and two of her works are here:  a portrait of a young girl and one of General Jeanningros.”

FONTANA, LAVINIA. Born in Bologna, 1552.  Her father was a distinguished portrait painter in Rome in the time of Pope Julius III., but the work of his daughter was preferred before his own.  She was elected to the Academy of Rome, while her charms were extolled in poetry and prose.

Pope Gregory XIII. made her his painter-in-ordinary.  Patrician ladies, cardinals, and Roman nobles contended for the privilege of having their portraits from her hand.  Men of rank and scholars paid court to her, but, with a waywardness not altogether uncommon, she married a man who was even thought to be lacking in sense.

One of her two daughters was blind of one eye, and her only son was so simple that the loungers in the antechamber of the Pope were accustomed to amuse themselves with his want of wit.  She is said to have died of a broken heart after the death of this son, and her portrait of him is considered her masterpiece.

Her own portrait was one of her most distinguished works, and though it is in possession of her husband’s family, the Zappi, of Imola, it may be judged by an engraving after it in Rossini’s “History of Italian Painting.”