Sofonisba's Life

            Sofonisba Anguissola was born between 1532-33 in Cremona, a Northern Italian city. Her father was Amilicare Anguissola who dealt with commercial and diplomatic as a council member for the government of Cremona. Her mother was Bianca Ponzoni, the daughter of a noble Cremonese family. She was the oldest of seven, and was well educated in the liberal arts. Her father arranged for her and her sister Elena to be taught drawing and painting from a man named Bernardino Campi. After Campi left, Bernardino Gatti, otherwise known as Il Sojaro, educated the sisters. Sofonisba also received remote instruction in the form of letters and drawings from the great Renaissance master Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. At the request of Amilicare, Michelangelo would send Sofonisba drawings and challenge her through letters to create certain styles of art and build upon the talent he saw from the drawings her father sent him. In this way Sofonisba was pushed to expand her field of expression and explore new artistic concepts as she perfected her art.

            Sofonisba’s reputation as a skillful artist soon spread. So much so that in 1559, Philip II of Spain sent her a message, requesting that she enter his court at Milan as a servant of his future queen Isabelle de Valois. At this new position Sofonisba continued to prove her skill, completing many portraits of the royal family, as well as instructing Isabelle in the art of drawing and painting. At court Sofonisba established a new precedent in that she independently created the portraits of the Royal Family. Before that time female artists were only expected to have the skill to copy what a male artist had made, but Sofonisba broke this mold and showed the Royal family that she was more than capable of creating her own work. When Isabelle died in childbirth in 1568 Sofonisba stayed on at court in order to care for the two infants Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela. Five years later she was married to Don Fabrizio Moncada , a member of a noble Sicilian family, with a dowery from King Phillip valued at around two thousand ducats, which was quite a sum! This signaled the end of her career in Phillip’s court and she moved from Spain to Italy to be with her husband. She made efforts to stay connected with the court, even giving an non-commissioned self-portrait of her older self as a gift to Phillip II’s successor.

            In 1578 Sofonisba’s husband died. At this point her father had also died and so she was inclined to turn to her brother Asdrubale for help with questions of administration and inheritance. With this in mind she traveled to Lombardy with him in 1579. She decided to marry the ship’s captian, whose name was Orazio Lomellini. He lived in Genoa and came from an important Genoese family. In 1615 she moved with Lomellini to Palermo. She continued to paint and draw throughout her life. She is well known for her focus on physiognomic features in her paintings as well as displaying her own image as a cultured, mature, well-educated, capable female figure. She died  in 1625 in her nineties and was buried in the church of San Giorgio dei Genovesi in Palermo.