Sofonisba Anguissola

(Italy, 02/02/1532 - 16/11/1625)

Born into a noble Cremonese family, Anguissola benefited from an education that extended well beyond the expectations for girls of her era. Her father, Amilcare Anguissola, believed passionately in the intellectual and artistic potential of his daughters and ensured that they received rigorous instruction in traditionally masculine fields of painting and literature as well as science, and actively promoted their artistic ambitions. In fact, her father was so active in selling her work that he is considered to be one of the first self-portrait art dealers.

Sofonisba’s commitment to both her own development and that of her sisters helped create a remarkable artistic dynasty. Three of her siblings, Elena, Europa and Lucia, also became artists because, like so many women, Sofonisba taught them, and then they in turn taught their youngest sister, Anna Maria. In this familial workshop, the Anguissola sisters cultivated a distinctive visual language that foregrounded women’s intellectual agency, an innovation that would become a hallmark of Sofonisba’s oeuvre.

At the age of 11, Anguissola and her sister Elena were sent to apprentice at Bernardino Campi’s studio for three years and, by 1554, her emerging reputation had reached Renaissance-man Michelangelo, who offered her guidance and encouragement after reviewing some of her drawings. Likewise, the first Renaissance art historian, Giorgio Vasari, admired her exceptional skill, remarking that her portraits were “so lifelike that they lack only speech.”

Her early works produced at this time reveal a pioneering focus on women engaged in intellectual pursuits and are the first to portray an artist’s family as primary subjects. Through intimate depictions of her sisters reading, making music or engaged in creative dialogue, Anguissola asserted the intellectual presence of women within humanist culture.

In 1559 her talent brought her to the Spanish court where she was appointed lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth of Valois. Anguissola soon became the court’s favored portraitist with her restrained yet psychologically nuanced portraits of the royal family and members of the court establishing a new standard for elegance, dignity and emotional clarity and shaping the visual identity of the Habsburg monarchy for more than two decades. In this role, Anguissola exemplified the possibilities available to an educated woman of the mid-16th century, navigating courtly expectations while advancing her artistic career with remarkable agency.

Beyond her commissions, Anguissola produced an extensive series of self-portraits, at least twelve of which survive, with records of several more. Often modest in scale yet rich in implication, these works stand as powerful declarations of artistic identity and intellectual self-possession, presenting the artist not as a passive subject, but as an active creator, brush in hand, engaged in the very act of representation.

In her Self-Portrait at the Easel (1556), she boldly inscribed: ‘I, Sofonisba Anguissola, unmarried, am the equal of the Muses and Apelles in playing my songs and handling my paints.’ This confident assertion encapsulates her lifelong pursuit of claiming a space for women within the highest circles of artistic achievement.

Image: Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-Portrait at an Easel (1556). Oil on canvas, 66 x 57 cm. Łańcut Castle, Poland.