Tag: Portraiture
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Excited for the Bay Area Book Festival. Come visit me Sunday May 7th in Berkeley
I’ll be signing books you bring. Find through your local bookshop or on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Lady-Ermine-Renaissance-Biographical-Anguissola/dp/1734614706 ISBN 978-1-7346147-0-1 ISBN 978-0-86698-821-6. LADY IN ERMINE dramatizes the true life of the most successful female artist of the Renaissance Sofonisba Anguissola (c.1535-1625) who influenced generations of artists, and then history forgot about her.
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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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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 Was Not Always Forgotten

In 1774, Giambattista Zaist wrote Notizie Istoriche de’ Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti Cremonesi or Historical Notes of Painters, Sculptors, and Architects of Cremona. For seven pages he writes about the accomplishments of Sofonisba Anguissola, recounting her early years, her time in Spain, her long legacy. He concludes with these words, “che superò l’artifizio non solo…
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Sofonisba in the Seventeenth Century
Sofonisba Anguissola continued painting well into her senior years and stopped only after her eyesight failed, as Anthony van Dyck noted in his sketchbook. The Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo attributes this sweet Madonna and Child to Sofonisba in the seventeenth century.
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Sofonisba Painted Catalina Micaela, the Lady in Ermine, Infanta of Spain, as a child and an adult
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…
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Sofonisba and the Habsburg-Valois Royal Wedding 1560
Sofonisba was one of the 17 original ladies in waiting chosen for the court of the new fourteen year old Spanish queen, the former Elisabeth de Valois, daughter of Henry II of France and Catherine de Medici. Eight Spanish noblewomen and eight French noblewomen comprised the rest of the young queen’s court. Sofonisba stood out…
