Sofonisba Anguissola

Sofonisba Anguissola, considered to be the first successful woman painter of the Renaissance, was fortunate enough to have been born into a family that encouraged all their children, regardless of whether they were female or male, to be educated and to cultivate their talents.

In 1535, Sofonisba was born in Cremona (today part of Italy) into a noble Genovese family. Her father, Amilcare, made certain that Sofonisba and her sisters received a good education, including fine arts. When she was 14, he arranged for her to study with Bernardino Campi, a painter who was a member of the Lombardy art circle, and she later continued her artistic education with the painter Bernardino Gatti.

Sofonisba and four of her sisters were painters; however, she was the one who excelled at her art and became the renowned painter, dedicating herself throughout her entire career to painting portraits and self-portraits. Her sisters abandoned their painting early in their lives; one became a nun, two abandoned their painting when they got married and the youngest one died when she was quite young. Her sister Minerva was a writer and Latinist and her brother Hasdrubal studied music and Latin.

In 1554, Sofonisba traveled to Rome and, through other painters who were acquainted with her art, she was able to meet Michael Angelo who recognized her talent and provided her with guidance and orientation for a period of at least two years.

The acclaim of Sofonisba’s drawings reached the Spanish Court and, in the summer of 1559, she was invited to the court of Philip II. While at court she became one of Elizabeth of Valois’ ladies-in-waiting and continued to paint portraits of the members of the court. For more than ten years, Sofonisba lived at the Spanish Court, first as Elizabeth of Valois’ lady-in-waiting and, after the death of the Queen, as tutor of the princesses, especially Isabel Clara Eugenia.

As has frequently been the case with women artists, and given that she never signed her paintings, her best portraits of Phillip II or that of Elizabeth of Valois Holding a Painting of Phillip II, which were painted during her stay at the Spanish court, were attributed to other artists, and the name of Sofonisba Anguissola fell into oblivion.

It was in 1990 that the Prado Museum in Madrid studied the above portraits and came to the irrefutable conclusion that the author of these paintings was Sofonisba. Some historians even believe that El Greco’s The Lady in Ermine, could have been painted by her.

While she lived in Spain, Sofonisba spent her most of her time painting official portraits of the members of the Court, including those of the Queen and other members of the royal family. Her paintings of Elizabeth of Valois and of Ana of Austria, Phillip II’s fourth wife, are vibrant and full of life. During these years she also painted several self-portraits depicting herself as a painter, thus asserting her status as an artist.

In 1570, when she was 35 years old – which was considered a very advanced age to be single at the time – she married Fabrizio de Moncada, brother of the Viceroy of Sicily. After the grand wedding was celebrated, and for which she received a generous dowry from the King of Spain, she moved to Palermo with her husband in the summer of 1573, and remained there until 1579, after her husband’s untimely death the year before.

After her husband’s death, and being the free spirit that she was, the artist chose her second husband, the Genovese nobleman Orazio Lomellino, twenty years younger than she was. They were married in 1579 in Pisa and established their home in Genova, in a house where she was able to set up her own studio where she could paint and draw as much as she pleased. The generous pension given to her by Phillip II, in addition to Orazio’s personal fortune, allowed Sofonisba to paint and to live a free and comfortable life.

She lived in Genova from 1581 until 1615, where she was regarded as a person of prestige, both for her cultural knowledge and artistic talent as well as for her privileged contacts with the Spanish Court. She spent the last ten years of her life in Palermo, enjoying her Sicilian properties.

In 1624, when Sofonisba was 96 years old, Anton van Dyck visited her in Palermo and made some sketches and annotations of her in his travel diary, stating that her brilliance was intact as well as her capacity to discuss painting at length.

Sofonisba died in Palermo in 1625, having been internationally acclaimed and respected during her life, setting a precedent and opening the way so that other women could have the opportunity of finding their path in the world of art.

Pages visited:

Wikipedia / Museo del Prado / El País Semanal / Ruiza, M., Fernández, T. y Tamaro, E. (2004). Biografia de Sofonisba Anguissola. En Biografías y Vidas. La enciclopedia biográfica en línea. Barcelona (España). Recuperado de https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/a/anguissola.htm el 25 de marzo de 2020.