Tag: women artists
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Lady in Ermine in Rome
Lady in Ermine and Sofonisba in Rome with Domina, the novel and new series based on the life of Livia, another historic woman with a story to tell.
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Happy International Women’s Day
And thank you, Leticia Ruiz, for the beautiful curation of the exhibition.
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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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Master Sofonisba Anguissola
In honor of Sofonisba’s newly recognized accomplishments and the Prado exhibition of her work, I would like to present her Boy Bitten (drawn for Michelangelo) and her Girl Laughing next to each other to accentuate Sofonisba’s effort. She conceived of these close in time and the figures and positioning show how she experimented with subtle […]
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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 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 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 […]