page_title: Sofonisba Anguissola
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Sofonisba Anguissola / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: .
context_page_description: Sofonisba Anguissola, also known as Sophonisba Angussola or Sophonisba Anguisciola, 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 traveled to Rome where she was introduced to Michelangelo, who immediately recognized her talent, and to Milan, where she painted the 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. She later became an official court painter to the king, Philip II, and adapted her style to the more formal requirements of official portraits for the Spanish court. After the queen's death, Philip helped arrange an aristocratic marriage for her. She moved to Sicily, and later Pisa and Genoa, where she continued to practice as a leading portrait painter.
  Her most distinctive and attractive paintings are her portraits of herself and her family, which she painted before she moved to the Spanish court.
context_section_description: After the death of Elisabeth of Valois in 1568, Philip II took a special interest in Anguissola's future. He had wished to marry her to one of the nobles in the Spanish Court. In 1571, when she was approaching the age of 40, Anguissola entered an arranged marriage to a Sicilian nobleman chosen for her by the Spanish court. Philip II paid a dowry of 12,000 scudi for her marriage to Fabrizio Moncada Pignatelli, son of the Prince of Paternò, Viceroy of Sicily. Fabrizio was said to be supportive of her painting. Anguissola and her husband left Spain with the king's permission, and are believed to have lived in Paternò (near Catania) from 1573 to 1579, though some recent scholarship has suggested that the couple remained in Spain. She 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. In Paternò she painted and donated "La Madonna dell'Itria".
  Anguissola's husband died in 1579 under mysterious circumstances. Two years later, while traveling to Cremona by sea, she fell in love with the ship's captain, sea merchant Orazio Lomellino. Against the wishes of her brother, they married in Pisa on 24 December 1584 and lived in Genoa until 1620. She had no children, but maintained cordial relationships with her nieces and her stepson, Giulio.
caption: Self-portrait, 1560 circa
exif: {}