Portrait of Prince Alessandro Farnese

Sofonisba Anguissola · 1560

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Sofonisba Anguissola

Cremona · 1531–1625

Sofonisba Anguissola was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Cremona to a relatively poor noble family. She received a well-rounded education that included the fine arts, and her apprenticeship with local painters set a precedent for women to be accepted as students of art. As a young woman, Anguissola travelled to Rome where she was introduced to Michelangelo, who immediately recognized her talent, and to Milan, where she painted Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba. The Spanish queen, Elizabeth of Valois, was a keen amateur painter, and in 1559 Anguissola was recruited to go to Madrid as her tutor, with the rank of lady-in-waiting.

Independent artist guide by Momentable. Biography from Wikipedia; artworks credited to the museums that hold them.

Stream Sofonisba Anguissola

Portrait of Prince Alessandro Farnese — The living window: art moves here the way it moves in your living room.

life: 1531–1625life
rights: Public domainrights

The work

A selection of 2 works, free to stream.

Self-portrait
Sofonisba Anguissola · 1554
Kunsthistorisches Museum

Works worth knowing

What Sofonisba Anguissola made, and why each one is worth looking at.

How Sofonisba Anguissola worked

From the record of their own practice.

The influence of Campi, whose reputation was based on portraiture, is evident in Anguissola's early works, such as the Self-Portrait (Florence, Uffizi). Her work was akin to the worldly tradition of Cremona, influenced greatly 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 in Cremonese painting of the late 16th century. This new direction is reflected in Lucia, Minerva and Europa Anguissola Playing Chess (1555; National Museum in Poznań) in which portraiture merges into a quasi-genre scene, a characteristic derived from Brescian models.