page_title: Sofonisba Anguissola
section_title: Experiences as a female artist
hierarchical_section_title: Sofonisba Anguissola / Experiences as a female artist
caption_attribution_description: Self-portrait with Bernardino Campi. Oil on canvas, 1110 x 1095mm (43 3/4 x 43 1/8"). Pinacoteca Nazionale, Sienna.
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: Anguissola's education and training had different implications from those of men, since men and women worked in separate spheres. Her training was not to help her into a profession where she would compete for commissions with male artists, but to make her a better wife, companion, and mother. Although Anguissola enjoyed significantly more encouragement and support than the average woman of her day, her social class did not allow her to transcend the constraints of her sex. Without the possibility of studying anatomy or drawing from life (it was considered unacceptable for a lady to view nudes), she could not undertake the complex multi-figure compositions required for large-scale religious or history paintings.
  Instead, she experimented with new styles of portraiture, setting subjects informally. Self-portraits and family members were her most frequent subjects, as seen in such paintings as Self-Portrait (1554, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), Portrait of Amilcare, Minerva and Asdrubale Anguissola (c. 1557–1558, Nivaagaards Malerisambling, Niva, Denmark), and her most famous picture, The Chess Game (1555, Muzeum Narodowe, Poznań), which depicted her sisters Lucia, Minerva and Europa. Painted when Sofonisba was 23 years old, The Chess Game is an intimate representation of an everyday family scene, combining elaborate formal clothing with very informal facial expressions, which was unusual for Italian art at this time. The Chess Game explored a new kind of genre painting which places her sitters in a domestic setting instead of the formal or allegorical settings that were popular at the time. This painting has been regarded as a conversation piece, which is an informal portrait of a group engaging in lively conversation or some activity .
  Anguissola's self-portraits also offer evidence of what she thought her place was as a woman artist. Normally, men were seen as creative actors and women as passive objects, but in her self-portrait of 1556, Anguissola presents herself as the artist, separating herself from the role as the object to be painted. Additional pieces show how she rebels against the notion that women are objects, in essence an instrument to be played by men. Her self-portrait of 1561 show her playing an instrument, taking on a different role.
  She became well known outside of Italy, and in 1559 King Phillip II of Spain asked her to be lady-in-waiting and art teacher to Queen Elisabeth of Valois, who was only 14 at the time. Queen Elisabeth of Valois and Sofonisba became good friends, and when the Queen died nine years later, Sofonisba left the court because she was so sad. She had painted the entire royal family and even the Pope commissioned Anguissola to do a portrait of the Queen.
caption: Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola, c. late 1550s
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