na Anguisciuola, Schioppa,
Nugarola, Madonna Laura Battiferri, and a hundred others, all most
learned as well in the vulgar tongue as in the Latin and the Greek--but
also in every other faculty. Nor have they been too proud to set
themselves with their little hands, so tender and so white, as if to
wrest from us the palm of supremacy, to manual labours, braving the
roughness of marble and the unkindly chisels, in order to attain to
their desire and thereby win fame; as did, in our own day, Properzia de'
Rossi of Bologna, a young woman excellent not only in household matters,
like the rest of them, but also in sciences without number, so that all
the men, to say nothing of the women, were envious of her.

This Properzia was very beautiful in person, and played and sang in her
day better than any other woman of her city. And because she had an
intellect both capricious and very ready, she set herself to carve
peach-stones, which she executed so well and with such patience, that
they were singular and marvellous to behold, not only for the subtlety
of the work, but also for the grace of the little figures that she made
in them and the delicacy with which they were distributed. And it was
certainly a miracle to see on so small a thing as a peach-stone the
whole Passion of Christ, wrought in most beautiful carving, with a vast
number of figures in addition to the Apostles and the ministers of the
Crucifixion. This encouraged her, since there were decorations to be
made for the three doors of the first facade of S. Petronio all in
figures of marble, to ask the Wardens of Works, by means of her husband,
for a part of that work; at which they were quite content, on the
condition that she should let them see some work in marble executed by
her own hand. Whereupon she straightway made for Count Alessandro de'
Peppoli a portrait from life in the finest marble, representing his
father, Count Guido, which gave infinite pleasure not only to them, but
also to the whole city; and the Wardens of Works, therefore, did not
fail to allot a part of the work to her. In this, to the vast delight of
all Bologna, she made an exquisite scene, wherein--because at that time
the poor woman was madly enamoured of a handsome young man, who seemed
to care but little for her--she represented the wife of Pharaoh's
Chamberlain, who, burning with love for Joseph, and almost in despair
after so much persuasion, finally strips his garment from him with a
wo