Sofonisba Anguissola first painted Catalina Micaela, Infanta of Spain, the Lady in Ermine, when Catalina Micaela was a child.
Sofonisba Anguissola rendered a miniature painting of each Infanta of Spain in a Book of Hours, previously owned by the French King Francois I who passed it to his daughter in law Catherine de Medici on his death in 1547. Catherine possessed this Book of Hours for forty-two years and inserted family portraits of their line into the Book of Hours along the way. It contains an anonymous portrait of Catalina Michaela’s parents Isabel and Philip II, and a portrait of each Infanta, Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela as children, both of which are attributed to Sofonisba Anguissola (Bibliotheque Nationale, MS n.a.l, 82, fol. 196, see Gazette Des Beaux-Arts December 2002, “Catherine de Medici and Her Two Spanish Granddaughters: Iconographical Additions from a French Sixteenth-Century Book of Hours” by Dana Bentley-Cranch. (307-318, 311).
Sofonisba knew Catalina Micaela, the Lady in Ermine, cradle to grave, just like she knew the line of Spanish Habsburgs– personally and intimately.
Lady In Ermine: The Story of A Woman Who Painted The Renaissance 
One response to “Sofonisba Painted Catalina Micaela, the Lady in Ermine, Infanta of Spain, as a child and an adult”
[…] During this period, Sofonisba painted the two Infantas Catalina Micaela and her older sister Isabel Clara Eugenia in miniature for Catherine de Medici’s Book of Hours, previously owned by the French King Francois I who passed it to his daughter in law Catherine de Medici on his death in 1547. Catherine possessed this Book of Hours for forty-two years and continually updated it with family portraits to document their line. Catherine de Medici relied upon Sofonisba Anguissola (not El Greco, nor Coello) to memorialize her Spanish granddaughters in her personal prayer book. The book contains an anonymous portrait of Catalina Micaela’s parents Isabel and Philip II along with Sofonisba’s miniatures of the Infantas, Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela. (Bibliotheque Nationale, MS n.a.l, 82, fol. 196, see Gazette Des Beaux-Arts December 2002, “Catherine de Medici and Her Two Spanish Granddaughters: Iconographical Additions from a French Sixteenth-Century Book of Hours” by Dana Bentley-Cranch. (307-318, 311). https://sofonisba.net/2018/10/19/sofonisba-painted-catalina-micaela-the-lady-in-ermine-infanta-of-sp… […]
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