By some she was believed to have been sacrificed to the same professional jealousy that destroyed Domenichino; others accepted the theory that a princely lover who had made unworthy proposals to her, which she had scorned, had revenged himself by her murder. At length a servant, Lucia Tolomelli, who had been a long time in the Sirani family, was suspected of having poisoned her young mistress, was arrested, tried, and banished. But after a time the father of Elisabetta, finding no convincing reason to believe her guilty, obtained her pardon.
Whatever may have been the cause of the artist's death, the effect upon her native city was overwhelming and the day of her burial was one of general mourning, the ceremony being attended with great pomp. She was buried beside Guido Reni, in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary, in the magnificent Church of the Dominicans.
Poets and orators vied with each other in sounding her praises, and a book called "Il Penello Lagrimato," published at Bologna soon after her death, is a collection of orations, sonnets, odes, epitaphs, and anagrams, in Latin and Italian, setting forth the love which her native city bore to this beautiful woman, and rehearsing again and again her charms and her virtues.
In the Ercolani Gallery there is a picture of Elisabetta painting a portrait of her father. It is said that she also painted a portrait of herself looking up with a spiritual expression, which is in a private collection and seen by few people.
Smith, Jessie Willcox. Mary Smith prize, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1903. Member of the
