Giovanni Andrea Sirani was a devoted pupil and assistant of Guido Reni. He was probably the teacher of his talented daughter Elisabetta. Her sisters Anna Maria (1645–1715) and Barbara (alive in 1678) were also practicing artists and Elisabetta herself is known to have had female students. Elisabetta Sirani's drawings employ a highly individual pen-and-wash method, eschewing outline and employing quick, blunt strokes of barely dilute ink to create striking chiaroscuro effects. Her painting style is less distinctive, her fierce chiaroscuro softened by the rich brown shadows favoured by her generation of Bolognese painters.