miracles produced by nature in our days". De' Rossi in The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects Although we know of many woman artists in Renaissance Italy, Properzia was the only woman to be included in Vasari's biographies. In her life, Vasari gives examples of ancient women from the Classical tradition who achieved extraordinary things, and contemporary female writers, and then states "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", going on to describe Properzia's achievements. Some scholars have seen Vasari's life as shaped only by derogatory assumptions about women, but it can be read in more complex ways, for instance, where Properzia's female body allegorises aspects of contemporary art making. Vasari does claim that de' Rossi was able to depict Joseph and Potiphar's wife so successfully because she was madly in love with a "handsome young man" who cared little for her, and that in carving this piece she was able to get over her passion. This description draws on contemporary notions of women controlled by their passions and by melancholia. Legacy Gian Paolo Lomazzo wrote a life of Properzia, adding details to the tale around the Joseph and Potiphar's wife piece and comparing her to tragic women of antiquity such as Sappho. Felicia Hemans included the poem in her collection, Records of Women (1828) where she focused on the artist's unrequited love through an ekphrasis based on Louis Ducas' painting of 1822. Properzia functioned for Hemans as a female artist who transcends the role of muse, liberating herself from traditional gender constraints through the act of self-creation. 1828 also saw the publication and performance of a play of Properzia's life by Paolo Costa which also focuses on Properzia's unrequited love, eventually leading to her death. In 1830, the Accademia delli Belli Arti of Bologna celebrated Properzia among other early modern women artists, noting her unique role as a sculptor and defending her against Vasari's construction of her as a woman who couldn't cope with the extremes of unrequited passion. Notes References Chadwick, Whitney, Women, Art, and Society, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990 Heller, Nancy G. Women Artists: An Illustrated History.New York: Abbeville