page_title: Lucia Anguissola
section_title: Portrait of Pietro Manna (Maria)
hierarchical_section_title: Lucia Anguissola / Paintings / Portrait of Pietro Manna (Maria)
caption_attribution_description: Español: Pietro Manna, médico de Cremona
context_page_description: Lucia Anguissola was an Italian Mannerist painter of the late Renaissance. She was born in Cremona, Italy. She was the third daughter of seven children born to Amilcare Anguissola and Bianca Ponzoni. Her father was a member of the Genoese minor nobility and encouraged his five daughters to develop artistic skills alongside their humanist education. Lucia most likely trained with her renowned eldest sister Sofonisba Anguissola. Her art, mainly portraits, are similar in style and technique with her sister. Her skill was seen by contemporary critics as exemplar. According to seventeenth-century biographer Filippo Baldinucci, Lucia had the potential to "become a better artist than even Sofonisba" had she not died so young.
  One of her extant paintings, Portrait of Pietro Manna, was praised by Giorgio Vasari, who saw it when he visited the family after her death. He wrote that Lucia, "dying, had left of herself not less fame than that of Sofonisba, through several paintings by her own hand, not less beautiful and valuable than those by the sister."
context_section_description: The Portrait of Pietro Manna, misidentified by Giorgio Vasari as a portrait of Pietro Maria, is estimated to be made around 1557-1560, for there is no specific year that Lucia finished it. The portrait suggests aspects of Lucia's education in humanism, classical mythology, psychology, and art. It is also the only painting she signed with her full name. Her signature reads “Lucia Anguissola Amilcaris F[ilia] Adolescens F[ecit].” This could translate as “Lucia Anguissola, adolescent daughter of Amilcare, made this,” although one argument suggests that the word "adolescens" might be better translated as "growing" and used to indicate that she was continuing to mature, as Lucia Anguissola should have been in her early twenties when she made this portrait.
  In this painting, she represented her family's name and heritage. The man sitting in the portrait is thought to be a relative to the Anguissola family, and commonly assumed to be a physician or doctor, but that is false. The snake on the rod in his left hand has two meanings. A rod with a snake wrapped around it can be an Asclepeion rod, indicating a medical symbol, but in this case the snake most likely serves as a visual translation of the artist's name, "Anguis Sola," which appeared on her family coat of arms as "Anguis Sola Fecit Vinctoriam," literally translating “the lone snake became victorious.” The Asclepeion rod could also be a sign of Lucia Anguissola's education in classical mythology; she is one of the first artists to place it in the hands of a contemporary. This painting may have been intended to indicate the rise of the next female painter in the Anguissola family. Her father, Amilcare, showed it to Giorgio Vasari shortly after Lucia died. The man in the portrait is depicted with a sensitive portrayal, in a restricted palette of greys and browns. Lucia's skill is demonstrated in her ability to illustrate the sitter's personality in the animated face with a cocked eyebrow and the shoulders held at different levels.
caption: Signature on the painting of Pietro Manna
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