Tracking down Sofonisba
A courageous woman and an intriguing painter
Sofonisba Anguissola (or Anguisciola) is a name you may not know. And you probably have heard of Michelangelo. But in fact, these two artists knew each other well – and Michelangelo thought Anguissola's talent was worth nurturing.
I only discovered Sophoniba Anguissola when I was captivated by a self-portrait in the Brera gallery in Milan.
You know the way sometimes a portrait locks on to you. Everywhere you go in that room, your eyes are led back to that portrait's enigmatic gaze. Your eyes lock on to it; you're making eye contact with someone centuries gone. This portrait did that to me.
So when I got back home, I tried to find out what I could about Sophonisba. And I was amazed at her story. Here was a woman whose wit, self-confidence and sheer obstinate love of life would be inspiring in any age – even more so when you consider she was born into a noble family in Genoa. A noblewoman's life was mapped out for her; marriage and children, or a convent. But Amilcare Anguisciola brought up his gaggle of daughters as artists, scholars, and painters; and though the others settled down, Elena to a convent and the others to marry, Sophonisba studied painting seriously, working first with Bernardino Campi, a renowned Lombard painter in Cremona.
Studying with Michelangelo
Later, Sophonisba travelled to further her studies in Rome, where she was introduced to Michelangelo. Introduced to the great man, she showed him a sketch she had done of a laughing girl. Comedy was an inferior genre to tragedy; and female figures were not what turned Michelangelo on – he preferred muscular, effortful male figures. Perhaps trying to put off this enthusiastic young girl, he suggested she draw him 'a crying boy'. Maybe he thought dissuading her from a life in art was for her own good.
Sophonisba wasn't to be put off. She added to her existing sketch the figure of a boy bitten by a crab – said to be modelled on her only brother Asdrubale. (Like Sophonisba herself, her father Amilcare and her brother were named after figures from Carthaginian history.) Michelangelo was stunned (probably by her chutzpah as much as by the drawing), and seems to have taken her on as an unofficial pupil, often swapping pages from his sketchbook with her.
Years later, it seems Caravaggio saw her boy caught by a crab and imitated it – a sign of respect; look at his 'Boy bitten by a lizard', and Sophonisba's sketch, and you'll see the similarity.
Sophonisba's bravery in tackling Michelangelo is reflected in the subversive painting which shows her teacher Bernardino Campi painting her. It was painted some years after she'd finished training with him, and you can read it as an assertion of independence. Her image, rather plump and smooth, floats above him – she is larger than his life-size, and placed more centrally in the picture. But there's a certain deniability in the painting – she could, if she needed to, explain it as a homage to her master – after all it's him doing the painting.
Though as a woman Sophonisba never tackled the 'high' genre of history painting, she made a good living as a portraitist, working in the north Italian cities. Here, she was headhunted to the Spanish court, where she worked as a painter and lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth de Valois, who was a keen amateur artist. The life of an artist suited her – so did the single life; she signs her pictures 'virgo', an assertion that she belongs only to herself rather than a claim to sexual continence. But Philip II decided to do her the dubious honour of marrying her off, at over forty. It was with her new husband that she moved to Sicily, then a Spanish possession.
Finding love with a younger man
When her husband died, she decided to move back to Genoa, taking ship from Sicily to Pisa. On the way, she fell in love – and practically as soon as she arrived in Pisa, she got married again – to the young (and wealthy) captain of the ship that had brought her there. I can't help admiring her for the way she continually seems to have made brave decisions, and stuck to them – she must have had real guts. And it does seem to have been a real love love match; her husband set up a studio for her in their house, and years later, celebrated what would have been her hundredth birthday *she died in her nineties) by erecting an inscription 'to his great love' on her tomb.
One of the paintings I most love is one of the portraits of herself as an old woman, probably the last she painted. It's incredibly honest; it shows a thin, almost skeletal face, immense depths of sadness in the eyes. This isn't a crone, but a woman who's lived so long she hardly wants to live any more. It's not a good painting in many ways – but in terms of sheer human honesty I'd put it up there with anything by Francis Bacon or Lucien Freud.
A gazetteer of Sofonisba Anguissola's paintings
So I've tried to track down paintings by this fascinating woman. They're all over the place, some in private collections, others in public galleries. Some in Poland; I wonder how they arrived there?
Althorp, UK
Self-portrait with virginals and an old woman 1561
Berlin
Portrait of Bianca Ponzoni Anguissola, 1557 – Gemaldegalerie
Boston
Museum of Fine Arts – Self-portrait 1556
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum – Juana of Austria with a girl
Chantilly
Musée Condé – Self-portrait
Dublin
National Gallery of Ireland – Portrait of Alessandro Farnese
Florence
Uffizi – Old woman studying the alphabet, mocked by a girl
Glasgow
Pollock House – woman in fur
Lancut, Poland
self-portrait at the easel, 1556
Nivaa, Denmark
Family portrait of Amilcare, Minerva and Asdrubale Anguissola, 1558
Madrid
Prado – Portrait of Philip II
Prado – Portrait of Elizabeth de Valois 1565
Miami
University of Miami Lowe Art Museum – The Holy Family with St Anne and John the Baptist
Milan
Brera – Portrait of Minerva Anguissola (or possibly a self-portrait)
Brera – Self-portrait
Museo Poldi-Pezzoli – Self-portrait 1550s
Montpellier
Musée Fabre – Portrait of Cameria
Naples
Capodimonte – boy bitten by a crayfish (sketch) 1554
Capodimonte – self-portrait at the spinet, 1559
Poznan, Poland
Muzeum Narodowe – Portrait of the artist's sisters playing chess 1555
Rome
Portrait of Titian and his Wife – Galeria Doria Pamphilij
Selfportrait- Galeria Borghese
St Petersburg
Profile portrait of a young woman
Siena
Pinacoteca Nazionale – Bernardino Campi painting Sofonisba Anguissola 1557-9
Vienna
Kunsthistorisches Museum – self-portrait, 1554
Photo credit: ALohrenz on flickr