Sofonisba Anguissola

(b Cremona, c. 1532; d Palermo, Nov 1625). The best known of the sisters, she was trained, with Elena, by Campi and Gatti. Most of Vasari's account of his visit to the Anguissola family is devoted to Sofonisba, about whom he wrote: 'Anguissola has shown greater application and better grace than any other woman of our age in her endeavours at drawing; she has thus succeeded not only in drawing, colouring and painting from nature, and copying excellently from others, but by herself has created rare and very beautiful paintings'. Sofonisba's privileged background was unusual among woman artists of the 16th century, most of whom, like Lavinia Fontana (see FONTANA (ii),(2)), FEDE GALIZIA and Barbara Longhi (see LONGHI (i), (3)), were daughters of painters. Her social class did not, however, enable her to transcend the constraints of her sex. Without the possibility of studying anatomy, or drawing from life, she could not undertake the complex multi-figure compositions required for large-scale religious or history paintings. She turned instead to the models accessible to her, exploring a new type of portraiture with sitters in informal domestic settings. The influence of Campi, whose reputation was based on portraiture, is evident in her early works, such as the Self-portrait (Florence, Uffizi). Her work was allied to the worldly tradition of Cremona, much influenced by the art of Parma and Mantua, in which even religious works were imbued with extreme delicacy and charm. From Gatti she seems to have absorbed elements reminiscent of Correggio, beginning a trend that became marked in Cremonese painting of the late 16th century. This new direction is reflected in Lucia, Minerva and Europa Anguissola Playing Chess (1555; Poznan, N. Mus.) in which portraiture merges into a quasi-genre scene, a characteristic derived from Brescian models.

Part of the Anguissola family

See the Abbreviations for further details.

An internationally respected Renaissance portrait and genre artist, Sofonisba Anguissola (1535?-1625) thrived as a professional painter in a male-dominated milieu. As court painter to Philip II of Spain and art instructor to Queen Isabella of Valois, Anguissola took seriously her pursuit of the liberal arts. On numerous canvases, she demonstrated the development of realistic domestic scenarios, original studies that did not emulate the concepts of contemporary male painters.

Sofonisba was the daughter of Blanca Ponzone and Amilcare Anguissola, a minor noble and land owner in partnership with his father-in-law as a dealer in books, leather, silk, and art supplies. She was born around 1535 or a little earlier in Cremona, Lombardy, a north-central Italian province then under Spanish control. She and her five younger sisters and one brother lived in a comfortable palazzo on the Via Tibaldi two blocks from the city center and enjoyed an inherited family estate to the west at Bonzanaria on the Po River near Piacenza. At the height of the Italian Renaissance, when the gentry educated women only in courtesy, refined living, religion, and needlework, Anguissola had his girls trained in piano and painting. With Sofonisba as mentor, four of her sisters - Lucia, Europa, Elena, and Anna Maria - honed their talents well enough to interest the art community in Mantua, Urbino, Ferrara, Parma, and Rome.

Established International Reputation

A contemporary of Titian and Leonardo da Vinci, Anguissola studied under frescoist Bernardino Campi around 1546 and, upon his departure from Cremona, with draftsman and frescoist Bernardino Gatti, a former apprentice of Antonio Correggio. According to an article in Renaissance Quarterly by historian Mary D. Gerrard, Anguissola painted into the poses of her subjects numerous clues to her success in a patriarchal society and to her position among male artists. A double view of the painter and her first teacher earned fame for its lifelike imagery. She dated the canvas 1554 and added "Sophonisba Anguissola Virgo Se Ipsam Fecit" [Miss Sofonisba Anguissola herself made this]. The paired intensive pronouns, "Se Ipsam," indicate her pride in accomplishment. The choice of "virgo," which denotes that she is unmarried, also suggests self-possession and independence as well as the unquestioned moral reputation of an upper-class gentlewoman.

To promote his daughter's prowess to an elite audience outside of Cremona, Amilcare sent her self-portraits to Pope Julius III and to the Este court in Ferrara. The paintings earned the praise of critic Giorgio Vasari and sculptor-painter Michelangelo, who admired her depiction of a laughing girl. Michelangelo challenged her to paint the opposite emotion. Instead of choosing a weeping Madonna, she produced for him "Boy Pinched by a Crayfish" (1555?), a glimpse of a tearful boy protesting a wounded finger after he plunged his hand into a tray of fresh shellfish held by a smiling girl. Michelangelo's emissary, Tomasso Cavaliere, delivered the second work, along with Michelangelo's portrait of Cleopatra, to Florentine philanthropist and art collector Cosimo I de Medici, Duke of Florence.

Captured Spirit of the Age

In addition to commissioned portraits and a minor amount of allegorical religious art, Anguissola produced luminous, energetic paintings of family groupings, including a much admired portrait of her sister Minerva in courtly dress and resplendent gold jewelry. A boon to historians, the depictions Sofonsiba painted of home life to hang in their Cremona palazzo preserve minute autobiographical details of furnishings, hairstyles, dress, art objects, and activities. Social scientists study her domestic pictures to learn the family's economic status as well as the nature of the Anguissolas' private behavior, gender expectations, and relations among her parents and siblings, especially her brother, who was Amilcare's heir.

Anguissola's masterwork, an intimate conversation piece entitled "Three of the Artist's Sisters Playing Chess" (1555), introduced naturalism to the traditionally stiff, sometimes pompous home scenarios produced by her contemporaries. The painting glimpses the novelty of girls in competitive mode playing a board game popular among nobles since the early Renaissance. Because it requires logic and strategy, it characterizes the players as well educated and exposed to pastimes usually reserved for boys. Anguissola obviously admired her sisters for their spirit and displayed them as active, amiable, and intellectually curious.

Public acclaim for Anguissola's work tended to discount her innate gifts and hard work. Florentine artist Francesco Salviati wrote Campi in praise of his pupil and gave sole credit for her accomplishments to the teacher. In 1558, author Annibale Caro congratulated Anguissola's father on her skills as though they were a father-to-daughter gift. Other viewers of her art marveled that a mere woman could possess such talent. Poet Angelo Grillo praised Anguissola herself, but implied there was something freakish about her outstanding painting career by calling her a "miracle of nature."

Contribution to Art History

In her self-portraits, a genre in demand during the period, Anguissola pictures her wide-eyed likeness in austere braided hairstyle, no jewelry, and dignified black dress. Unlike the frivolous curls, gold baubles, ornate laces, and brocades fashionable among her female peers, this representation stresses a serious side to her personality as well as high self-esteem, decorum, nobility, and maturity. Her backdrops feature art paraphernalia, books, a chess set, and musical instruments, all elements of privilege and wealth and of her life as a serious student of high culture.

One of Anguissola's assets was her kinship with other females venturing into the arts. A valuable painting to art historians is her portrait of Croat illuminator and miniature painter Giulio Clovio, completed around 1557. He poses holding a treasured miniature of the Flemish artist Lavinia Terlincks (or Teerlinc), that Anguissola's painting preserves. She also fostered Bolognese painter Lavinia Fontana and Roman artist Artemisia Gentileschi and encouraged the instruction of other girls in the arts.

Court of Philip II

In 1559, Anguissola received an invitation to the court of Philip II of Spain, Europe's most powerful Hapsburg king, who learned of her talent from the Duke of Alba. Under the escort of the Duke of Sessa, she arrived in Madrid to take her place among mostly male courtiers and artists. During her 14-year residence, she guided the artistic development of his new French queen, Isabella (or Elizabeth) of Valois, and influenced the artwork of her two daughters, Isabella Clara Eugenia and Caterina Michaela. Anguissola painted a portrait of the king's sister, Marguerite of Spain, for Pope Pius IV in 1561 and, after Queen Isabella's death in childbirth in 1568, painted the likeness of Anne of Austria, Philip's third wife. For the royal family, Anguissola produced detailed scenes of their lives that now hang in the Prado Museum. With the gifts and a dowry of 12,000 scudi she earned along with her salary as court painter and lady-in-waiting to the queen, she amassed an admirable return from her craft.

In her late 30s, Anguissola entered an arranged marriage to Fabrizio de Moncada, a Sicilian nobleman chosen for her by the Spanish court. She lived with him in Palermo from 1571 to 1579 and received a royal pension of 100 ducats that enabled her to continue working and tutoring would-be painters. Her private fortune also supported her family and brother Asdrubale following Amilcare Anguissola's financial decline and death. Fabrizio died in 1579. Two years later, while traveling to Genoa by sea, she fell in love with the ship's captain, sea merchant Orazio Lomellini. Against the wishes of her brother, they married and lived in Genoa until 1620. She had no children, but maintained cordial relationships with her nieces and her husband's son Giulio.

Still productive into her 80s, Anguissola painted less often as her eyesight dimmed. In an atmosphere of collegiality, she welcomed art fanciers to her home and salon. In 1623, she befriended the young Flemish painter Sir Anthony Van Dyck, whom she advised on technique. In token of his regard, he painted her portrait.

Anguissola's adoring second husband described her as small of frame, yet "great among mortals." At her death around age 90, he buried her with honor in Palermo at the Church of San Giorgio dei Genovese. In 1632, the dedication of her tombstone celebrated her life. A Cremonese school bears the name Liceo Statale Sofonisba Anguissola. Reclaimed to art history during the rise of feminism, in 1995, 20 of her 50 paintings toured Europe and appeared at an exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D. C., entitled "Sofonisba Anguissola: A Renaissance Woman."

Books

The Concise Oxford Dicitonary of Art and Artists, edited by Ian Chilvers, Oxford University Press, 1996.

History of Art, fifth edition, edited by H. W. Janson and Anthony F. Janson, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997.

Perlingieri, Ilya Sandra, Sofonisba Anguissola: The First Great Woman of the Renaissance, Rizzoli, 1992.

Periodicals

ARTnews, September 1995.

Ms. Magazine, September 1988.

The Nation, July 31, 1995.

Renaissance Quarterly, Spring 1994; Autumn 1994.

Smithsonian, May 1995.

Online

"Anguissola, Sofonisba," Encarta,http://encarta.msn.com/index/conciseindex/AD/OAD95000.htm. (October 28, 2001).

"Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1625)," Women in Art,http://mystudios.com/women/abcde/s-anguissola.html (October 28, 2001).

"Women Artists, Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries," California State University at Pomona,http://www.csupomona.edu/~plin/women/16-17century.html (October 28, 2001).

Anguissola, Sofonisba (c. 1532–1625), Italian portrait painter. The daughter of Amilcare Anguissola and Bianca Ponzone of Cremona, Sofonisba Anguissola enjoyed international recognition during her lifetime. In the history of art her name has appeared with regularity since Marco Girolamo Vida counted her, at age fifteen, among the most significant painters in Cremonensium Orationes III Adversus Papienses in Controversia Principatus (1550), and Giorgio Vasari praised her as "miraculous" in the second edition of The Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1568). Her known works include small devotional pictures, such as the Holy Family (1559, Accademia Carrara, Begamo); numerous portraits, like the life-size Portrait of Isabel Valoise (c. 1565, Prado, Madrid); more than a dozen self-portraits, which date principally to her youth; and paintings and finished drawings of her family. Within this corpus, the images depicting her family hold special significance. The intimacy, wit, and captured spontaneity seen in paintings like The Artist's Sisters Playing Chess (c. 1555, Muzeum Narodowe, Poznań) and the drawing Young Girl Teaching an Old Woman the Alphabet (mid-1550s, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence), were unprecedented, making Anguissola the innovator of what has come to be called "the conversation piece."

Sofonisba Anguissola was the oldest in a family of six daughters and a son. It has been reasonably suggested that her father, who became her most ambitious promoter, decided to provide her and her sisters with a humanist education and artistic training in the hope of alleviating some of the monetary strain of financing six dowries. The rationale, which proved correct, was that the exceptionality of female artists ensured the rarity and desirability of their work. In her early teens, Sofonisba, together with her sister Elena (who died after 1584), was sent to study painting with Bernardino Campi. If the association, which lasted from c. 1546–1549, was not typically that of apprentice to master but resembled more the relationship of paying guest to instructional host, the actual artistic training Anguissola received seems to have followed conventional lines. She was taught the fundamentals of materials and techniques, and instructed to copy the works of her teacher and other masters. Anguissola's small panel painting of the Pietà (after 1560, Pinacoteca Brera, Milan), which depends clearly on Campi's Deposition (Pinacoteca Brera, Milan), as well as her Nursing Madonna (1588, Szepmusveseti Muzeum, Budapest), which replicates the style and composition of works by the Genoese master Luca Cambiaso, indicate that she continued to learn in this way long after her departure from Campi's workshop and even after her subsequent period of study (1549–c. 1552) with Benardino Gatti (1495–1576), called Il Sojaro, had ended.

Throughout this period, Anguissola's father corresponded with an array of influential humanists and potential patrons. Extant letters to Michelangelo Buonarroti reveal Amilcare Anguissola's zeal in seeking the best possible guidance for his artist daughter. In one letter, dated 7 May 1557, he thanks the great master for the "innate courtesy and goodness" that prompted him "in the past to introduce her to art" and requests Michelangelo "to guide her again." Although no image has been securely identified with this correspondence, Anguissola's drawing Asdrubale Bitten by a Crayfish (late 1550s, Museo di Campodimonte, Naples), has linked her name to that of Michelangelo since 1562. A considerable number of Anguissola's self-portraits date to this decade. These works, which are very small in scale and somber in tonality, were in all likelihood promotional gifts. Sofonisba presents herself at the keyboard, seated before an easel holding a brush and palette, and even as the subject of a portrait painted by her first teacher, Bernardino Campi. Whether through the efforts of her father, the dissemination of her self-portraits, or both, Anguissola's fame spread within and outside the borders of the Italian peninsula. Her paintings were requested by, and subsequently entered the collections of, Pope Julius III and members of the Este, Farnese, Medici, and Borghese families.

In 1559, Anguissola entered the Spanish court as lady-in-waiting and portrait painter to the queen, Isabel of Valois. She remained in Spain until 1573, sharing with Anthonis Mor and Alonso Sánchez Coello the prestige of being a member of the triumvirate of Spanish court painters. While Anguissola executed a few devotional panels during her tenure in Spain, most of her time was devoted to painting portraits of members of the royal court and family. In keeping with the decorum of courtly taste and reflecting the austerity of the religious climate, these portraits, like those by Mor and Coello, are marked by an almost formulaic restraint in composition, color, and light. Despite the reserved formality, poised elegance, and almost petrified stiffness of Anguissola's Spanish subjects, the physiognomies she recorded reveal distinctive personalities. In this respect, Anguissola's roots in the Lombard tradition, specifically the mimetic melding of stark naturalism with a calculated style made popular by Moretto da Brescia and Giovanni Moroni, are clearly evident.

Sometime after August 1569 and through the intervention of King Philip II of Spain, Anguissola married Don Fabrizio de Moncado, the brother of the viceroy of Sicily. Following her return to Italy in 1573, she resided in Palermo. In 1579 or 1580, she remarried, wedding Orazio Lomellino, a Genoese gentleman. By October 1583 she was living in Genoa. An inscribed portrait sketch of Anguissola by Anthony Van Dyck (British Museum, London) confirms that she had returned to Palermo by 1624. Early sources indicate that her late oeuvre consisted primarily of devotional works. Although many of these paintings have yet to be securely identified, those that are known, such as Holy Family with Saint Anne and the Young John the Baptist (1592, Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables), suggest that she responded to the impress of Counter-Reformation sobriety and the influence of Cambiaso's use of modeling and nocturnal luminosity. As is the case with her early works, her later paintings attest to an awareness of current trends in art theory. In accordance with the dictates of Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti's Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane, 1582, Anguissola rendered her subjects in a manner that "delights," "teaches," and "moves" the viewer to feelings of contemplative devotion.

Bibliography

Primary Source

Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects. Translated by Gaston Du C. de Vere. Vol. 3, pp. 1646–1649. New York, 1979. Translation of Le vite de'più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori (1568).

Secondary Sources

Garrard, Mary. "Here's Looking at Me: Sofonisba Anguissola and the Problem of the Woman Artist." Renaissance Quarterly 47 (1994): 556–622.

Jacobs, Fredrika H. Defining the Renaissance Virtuosa: Women Artists and the Language of Art History and Criticism. New York, 1997.

Sofonisba Anguissola e le sue sorelle. Exh. cat., Cremona, 1994.

Woods-Marsden, Joanna. Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist. New Haven, 1998.

—FREDRIKA H. JACOBS

Sofonisba Anguissola
Self-Portrait, 1556, Lancut Museum, Poland
Born	c. 1532 Cremona, Lombardy, Italy
Died	November 16, 1625 (age 93) Palermo, Sicily, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Field	Portrait painting, Drawing
Training	Bernardino Campi, Bernardino Gatti,
Movement	Late Renaissance
Patrons	Philip II of Spain

Sofonisba Anguissola (also spelled Anguisciola; c. 1532 - November 16, 1625) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.

Contents 1 The Anguissola Family 2 Experiences as a Female Artist 3 At the Spanish Court 4 Personal life 5 Late Years 6 Style 7 Historical Significance 8 See also 9 Notes 10 Bibliography 11 External links

The Anguissola Family

Family Portrait, Minerva, Amilcare and Asdrubale Anguissola, 1557.

Portrait of Bianca Ponzoni Anguissola, the artist's mother. 1557. Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Sofonisba Anguissola was born in Cremona, Lombardy around 1532, the oldest of seven children, six of whom were daughters. Her father, Amilcare Anguissola, was a member of the Genoese minor nobility. Sofonisba's mother, Bianca Ponzone, was also of an affluent family of noble background.

Over four generations, the Anguissola family had a strong connection to ancient Carthaginian history and they named their offspring after the great general Hannibal, thus the first daughter was named after the tragic Carthaginian figure Sophonisba.

Amilcare Anguissola encouraged all of his daughters (Sofonisba, Elena, Lucia, Europa, Minerva and Anna Maria) to cultivate and perfect their talents. Four of the sisters (Elena, Lucia, Europa and Anna Maria) became painters, but Sofonisba was by far the most accomplished and renowned. Elena became a nun (Sofonisba painted a portrait of her) and therefore had to give up painting. Both Anna Maria and Europa gave up art upon marrying, while Lucia Anguissola, the best painter of Sophonisba's sisters, died young. The other sister, Minerva, became a writer and Latin scholar. Asdrubale, Sophonisba's brother, studied music and Latin but not painting.

Her aristocratic father made sure that Sofonisba and her sisters received a well-rounded education that included the fine arts. Anguissola was fourteen years old when her father sent her with her sister Elena to study with Bernardino Campi, a respected portrait and religious painter of the Lombard school, also from Cremona, Sofonisba's home town. When Campi moved to another city, Sofonisba continued her studies with the painter Bernardino Gatti (known as Il Sojaro). Sofonisba's apprenticeship with local painters set a precedent for women to be accepted as students of art.^[1][2]

Dates are uncertain, but Anguissola probably continued her studies under Gatti for about three years(1551-1553).

Lucia, Minerva and Europa Anguissola Playing Chess, 1555. Muzeum Narodowe (National Museum), Poznań, Poland.

Sophonisba's most important early work is Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola (c 1550 Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena). The double portrait depicts her art teacher in the act of painting a portrait of her.

In 1554, at age twenty-two, Sofonisba traveled to Rome, where she spent her time sketching various scenes and people. While in Rome, she met Michelangelo through the help of another painter who knew her work well. Meeting Michelangelo was a great honor for Sofonisba and she had the benefit of being informally trained by the great master.

When he made a request for her to draw a weeping boy, Sofonisba drew 'Child bitten by a crab' and sent it back to Michelangelo, who immediately recognized her talent (this sketch would continue to be discussed and copied for the next fifty years among artists and the aristocracy)^{[citation needed]}.

Michelangelo subsequently gave Anguissola sketches from his notebooks to draw in her own style and offered advice on the results. For at least two years Sofonisba continued this informal study, receiving substantial guidance from Michelangelo.

The great early art historian Giorgio Vasari wrote this about Sofonisba: ‘Anguissola has shown greater application and better grace than any other woman of our age in her endeavors at drawing; she has thus succeeded not only in drawing, coloring and painting from nature, and copying excellently from others, but by herself has created rare and very beautiful paintings."^{[cite this quote]}

Experiences as a Female Artist

Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola, c. late 1550s.

Although Sofonisba enjoyed much more encouragement and support than the average woman of her day, her social class did not allow her to transcend the constraints of her sex. Without the possibility of studying anatomy or drawing from life (it was considered unacceptable for a lady to view nudes), she could not undertake the complex multi-figure compositions required for large-scale religious or history paintings.

Instead, she searched for possibilities of a new style of portraiture, with subjects set in informal ways. Self-portraits and members of her own family were her most frequent subjects, as seen in such paintings as Self-Portrait (1554, Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna), The Chess Game (1555, Museum Narowe, Poznan), that depicts three of her sisters Lucia, Minerva and Europa, and Portrait of Amilcare, Minerva and Asdrubale Anguissola (c. 1557-1558, Nivaagaards Malerisambling, Niva, Denmark).

At the Spanish Court

When she was already well known, Anguissola went to Milan sometime in 1558, where she painted the Duke of Alba who in turn recommended her to the Spanish king, Philip II. The following year, Sofonisba was invited to join the Spanish Court, which was the turning point in her career.

Portrait of Queen Elisabeth of Spain with a zibellino.

The Prado Philip II, now recognised as by Anguissola

Sofonisba Anguissola was around twenty seven years old when she left Italy to join the Spanish court. In the winter of 1559-1560 she arrived at Madrid to serve as a court painter and lady-in-waiting to the new Queen, Elisabeth of Valois, Philip II’s third wife, who was an amateur portraitist herself. Sofonisba was essentially engaged to tutor the Queen, at which she was considered successful, a French courtier writing to Catherine de' Medici, Elizabeth's mother:

It is incredible how, having learned a little from one of her Italian ladies whom the king has given her, she has advanced in her painting

- going on to pass on a request for François Clouet to make up some crayons for the Queen.^[3]

Sofonisba soon gained the esteem and confidence of the young Queen and spent the following years painting many official portraits for the court, including Philip II’s sister Juana, and son, Don Carlos.

This work was far more demanding than the informal portraits upon which Anguissola had based her early reputation, as it took a tremendous amount of time and energy to render the many intricate designs of the fine fabrics and elaborate jewelry essential to royal subjects. Yet despite the challenge, Sophonisba's paintings of Elisabeth of Valois (and later, of Anne of Austria, Philip II’s fourth wife) are vibrant and full of life.

While in the service of Elizabeth of Valois, Anguissola worked closely with Alonso Sanchez Coello. So closely in fact, that the famous painting of the middle-aged King Philip II was long attributed to Coello or Pantoja. Only recently has Anguissola been recognized as the painting's creator.^[4]

Personal life

Self-portrait, 1554

In 1570, Anguissola was thirty-eight and still unmarried. After the death of Elisabeth of Valois, Philip II took additional interest in Sofonisba's future and arranged a marriage for her. Around 1571, she married Don Francisco de Moncada, son of the prince of Paterno, viceroy of Sicily. The wedding ceremony was celebrated with great pomp, and she received a dowry from the Spanish king. After the wedding the couple traveled to visit her family, as well as her husband's estates, in Italy but eventually returned to Spain. After eighteen years with the Spanish court, Sofonisba and her husband finally left Spain with the permission of the King sometime during 1578. They went to Palermo where Sofonisba's husband died in 1579.

At the age of forty-seven, while traveling home to Cremona, Sofonisba met the considerably younger Orazio Lomellino, the captain of the ship she was traveling on. They were married shortly afterwards, in January of 1580, in Pisa.

Orazio recognized and supported her in her artwork and they had a long and happy marriage. They settled in Genoa, where her husband's family lived in their large home. Anguissola was given her own quarters, studio and time to paint and draw.

Late Years

Orazio's fortune plus a generous pension from Philip II, allowed Sofonisba to paint freely and live comfortably. By now quite famous, Sofonisba received many colleagues who came to visit and discuss the arts with her. Several of these were younger artists, eager to learn and mimic Anguissola's distinctive style.

In 1623, Anguissola was visited by the Flemish painter Sir Anthony Van Dyck, who had painted several portraits of her in the early 1600s, and recorded sketches from his visits to her in his sketchbook. Anthony Van Dyck noted that, although "her eyesight was weakened," Sofonisba was still quite mentally alert. Excerpts of the advice she gave him about painting also survive from this visit. Van Dyck drew her portrait while visiting her; this was to be the last portrait made of Sofonisba. The very next year, she returned to Sicily.

In her late period, Anguissola painted not only portraits but religious themes, as she had done in the days of her youth (unfortunately, many of her religious paintings have been lost). She was the leading portrait painter in Genoa until she moved to Palermo in her last years. In 1620, she painted her last self-portrait.

Contrary to later biographers' claims, she was never entirely blind but perhaps had cataracts. Sofonisba became a wealthy patron of the arts after the weakening of her sight. She died at age 93, in Palermo in 1625. She was internationally acclaimed and respected throughout her life.

Seven years later, on the anniversary of what would have been her 100th birthday had she lived, her husband placed an inscription on her tomb that reads, in part:

To Sofonisba, my wife ... who is recorded among the illustrious women of the world, outstanding in portraying the images of man ... Orazio Lomellino, in sorrow for the loss of his great love, in 1632, dedicated this little tribute to such a great woman.^{[cite this quote]}

Style

Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-Portrait, 1610.

The influence of Campi, whose reputation was based on portraiture, is evident in Sofonisba's early works, such as the Self-portrait (Florence, Uffizi). Her work was allied to the worldly tradition of Cremona, much influenced by the art of Parma and Mantua, in which even religious works were imbued with extreme delicacy and charm. From Gatti she seems to have absorbed elements reminiscent of Correggio, beginning a trend that became marked in Cremonese painting of the late 16th century. This new direction is reflected in Lucia, Minerva and Europa Anguissola Playing Chess (1555; Poznan, N. Mus.) in which portraiture merges into a quasi-genre scene, a characteristic derived from Brescian models.

The main body of Anguissola's earlier work consists of self-portraits (the many "autoritratti" reflect the fact that portraits of her were frequently requested due to her fame) and portraits of her family. In addition she did not always rely on painting for her livelihood. The self- and family portraits are considered by many to be her finest works.

A total of about 50 works have been securely attributed to Sofonisba. Her works can be seen at galleries in Bergamo, Budapest, Madrid (Museo del Prado), Naples, Siena, and Florence (Uffizi Gallery).

Historical Significance

Sofonisba Anguissola's oeuvre had a lasting influence upon subsequent generations of artists. Her portrait of Queen Elisabeth of Valois with a zibellino (the pelt of a marten set with a head and feet of jewelled gold) was the most widely copied portrait in Spain. Copiers of this work include many of the finest artists of the time, such as Peter Paul Rubens.

Sofonisba is also important to feminist art historians. Although there has never been a period in Western history in which women were completely absent in the visual arts, Anguissola's great success opened the way for larger numbers of women to pursue serious careers as artists. Some famous successors to her example include Lavinia Fontana, Barbara Longhi, Fede Galizia and Artemisia Gentileschi.

Sophonisba once said, “Life is full of surprises, I try to capture these precious moments with wide eyes.”

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sofonisba Anguissola

• Cultural depictions of Philip II of Spain
• Women Artists

Notes

1. ^ Greer, Germaine (1978), The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work, New York: Farrar, p. 180 
2. ^ Glenn, Sharlee Mullins (1990), "Sofonisba Anguissola: History's Forgotten Prodigy.", Women's Studies 18 (2/3): 296 
3. ^ Campbell, Lorne, Renaissance Portraits, European Portrait-Painting in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries, p. 151, 1990, Yale, ISBN 0300046758
4. ^ Museo del Prado, Catálogo de las pinturas, 1996, p.7 , Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Madrid, ISBN 8487317537

Bibliography

• Ilya Sandra Perlingieri, Sofonisba Anguissola, Rizzoli International, 1992 ISBN 0-8478-1544-7
• Chadwick, Whitney, Women, Art, and Society, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990 ISBN 0-500-20354-7
• Harris, Anne Sutherland and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Knopf, New York, 1976 ISBN 0-394-41169-2
• Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Maria Kusche, Sofonisba Anguissola: A Renaissance Woman,National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1995 ISBN 0-940979-31-4
• Pizzagalli, Daniela La signora della pittura : vita di Sofonisba Anguissola, gentildonna e artista nel Rinascimento, Milano 2003 ISBN 8817995096

External links

• Mansfield University
• Online gallery featuring 29 works

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