Category: History & Influences
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Sargent & Spain
I did not see much of Sofonisba’s influence at the San Francisco Legion of Honor exhibition Sargent & Spain. I thought I would see her influence since he went to Spain to study the historic painters. But then I saw this painting, and I instantly thought of Sofonisba’s portrait of Eleonora de Medici at the…
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The Chess Game
Just last week the Wall Street Journal published an article about hobbies and diversions and referenced Sofonisba’s Chess Game painted in 1555. WSJ spoke of the hobbies that entertained the nobility. What Sofonisba enthusiasts see in the painting is the ingenuity of her work and the subversive messages of female power embedded in the chess…
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Sofonisba’s Philip II
In honor of Sofonisba Anguissola’s new-found celebrity, I wanted to place her Prado Portrait of Philip II alongside her Portrait of a Spanish Prince (San Diego Museum of Art). Sofonisba did not know Philip as a young child, but perhaps she could envision him as one. As Giorgio Vasari says, Sofonisba had invenzione. Perhaps she…
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Sofonisba or El Greco? Sofonisba Cradle to Grave
The details of Sofonisba Anguissola’s life show that she had the physical and geographical opportunity to paint a mature Catalina Micaela that her male contemporaries El Greco and Coello did not being far away in Spain. Sofonisba also had personal insight into the Infanta’s private world to render the Infanta of Spain, Catalina Micaela, as…
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Sofonisba’s Inventiveness; Vasari’s Inventione
Given Sofonisba’s 1554 Dominican Astronomer (signed and dated upside down), her nonconformist, voluptuous 1559 Virgin Mary (signed and dated) and her 1578 Madonna dell’ Itria, documented by her official bequest to the monastery (disputed for years as beyond her style), one cannot deny Sofonisba’s range, and the reason Vasari uses the term invenzione to describe her. Which…
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Who Painted the Lady in Ermine? Sofonisba or El Greco? Biography not Brushstrokes convinces: It’s Sofonisba, Cradle to Grave
The details of Sofonisba Anguissola’s life show that she had the physical and geographical opportunity to paint a mature Catalina Micaela that her male contemporaries El Greco and Coello did not being far away in Spain. Sofonisba also had personal insight into the Infanta’s private world to render the Infanta of Spain, Catalina Micaela, as…
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Sofonisba’s Influence on Giorgio Vasari
The 16th century artist, critic, and historian Giorgio Vasari is best known for his voluminous Lives of the Artists series where he painstakingly documents the biographies and styles of the great Renaissance masters. Master portraitist Sofonisba Anguissola inspired Giorgio Vasari. In 1566, Giorgio went to Cremona in Northern Italy to visit Sofonisba’s childhood home. Sofonisba…
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Sofonisba’s Influence on Diego Velazquez
Maria Kusche and Sylvia Ferino-Pagden have shown the influence of Sofonisba’s Portrait of Margaret of Savoy with Dwarf (c.1595) on two of Diego Velazquez’ pieces: his Portrait of Prince Baltasar Carlos (1632 Boston, Museum of Fine Arts) and his 1656 Las Meninas, particularly in the way Velazquez poses a vessel that passes between the figures.…
Lady In Ermine: The Story of A Woman Who Painted The Renaissance 