Sofonisba Anguissola, "the First Great Woman Artist of the Renaissance"

Sofonisba Anguissola (died 16 November 1625)

Born in Cremona, Italy, probably about 1532, Sofonisba Anguissola was the eldest of seven children--six of them daughters--born to Amilcare Anguissola and his wife, Bianca Ponzone, both of whom were members of noble families.

Sofonisba Anguissola, self-portrait,
1552

Amilcare made sure that his daughters received an excellent humanist education, but he also recognized his daughters' creative gifts. Unusual for the period, when women artists followed their fathers or brothers into the studio, Sofonisba and her sister Elena were apprenticed to a local painter, Bernardino Campi, in 1546. As Germaine Greer writes, when he sent his daughters to study painting, Amilcare Anguissola "was setting an extraordinary precedent." 

While Sofonisba may have been recognized as a "prodigy," Greer notes that her father may also have had other motives in providing his daughter with training as a painter: he had six daughters for whom he would have to provide dowries. His son did not study painting, but his daughters "were encouraged to develop as many accomplishments as they could," including painting. The arrangement with Campi was not a usual apprenticeship, since he had no other students and the two Anguissola "apprentices" were "treated as paying guests in the household." 

In any case, as Greer concludes, the investment in Sofonisba Anguissola "was a wise one." She was not only able to earn a good living, but she also was able to teach her younger sisters, or at least three of them, to paint.* And after three years with Campi, Sofonisba continued her training with another Cremonese, Bernardino Galli. 

In 1552, Sofonisba traveled to Rome, where she was introduced to Michelangelo. Encouraged by Michelangelo, she was also informally advised by him--he sent her sketches to draw and offered his critiques and advice.

As a woman, Anguissola could not study anatomy or draw from life; instead, she focused on portraits which, as Greer clarifies, were deemed appropriate for women because "portrait painting did not imply any unbecoming breadth of experience." By 1558, she had gained enough of a reputation that she was in Milan to paint the duke of Alba--he, in turn, recommended her to Philip II of Spain. In 1559, Anguissola traveled to Madrid. She spent nearly twenty years as court painter and lady-in-waiting.

Anguissola's portrait of
Elisabeth of Valois, queen of Spain

There she also taught the Spanish king's third wife, Elisabeth of Valois, who was an amateur painter. Among the portraits Anguissola painted was one of the king's sister and regent, Joanna of Castile, whom we have already met. And she would also tutor Elisabeth of Valois' daughter, Isabel Clara Eugenia, who would be yet another Habsburg women to serve her family as regent.

After the death of Elisabeth of Valois, Philip II married for a fourth time, and Anguissola also painted a portrait of the new queen, Anne of Austria. (The 1734 fire in the royal palace destroyed most of Anguissola's paintings from her period in Madrid as a court painter.)

About 1573 (dates vary), Philip II provided Anguissola with both a dowry and a husband, marrying her to a Sicilian nobleman, Fabrizio de Moncada. (Although she was in her fifties, as an unmarried woman, Anguissola would have been a ward of the king, and marrying would have allowed her to "escape" that "filial role," as Greer indicates, though she would then have been a ward of her husband.)

Sources disagree about whether she relocated to Sicily or whether she remained in Madrid. In any case, after Moncada's death in 1579, she remarried in 1580, this time not to a husband of someone else's choice, but to a man she chose for herself, Orazio Lomellino, a Genoese nobleman. From 1584 until about 1616 or 1620, she lived in Genoa.

Anguissola's portrait of
Joanna of Castile

By 1624 the couple was in Palermo, where, on 12 July, Anguissola was visited by the Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck. He sketched a portrait of her (he thought she was ninety-six years old at the time [she was likely about ninety-two]), and believed that she was nearly blind (she suffered from cataracts). 

The entry on Sofonisba Anguissola in the National Museum of Women in the Arts Database notes that she is "arguably the first known woman artist to achieve international fame." (On this article, see update, below.)

Ilya Sandra Perlingieri's beautiful Sofonisba Anguissola: The First Great Woman Artist of the Renaissance is out of print, but you can still find used copies. I have used Germaine Greer's The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work here (and elsewhere, when talking about women artists). 

*Elena Anguissola ended her painting career, begun with her sister when the two apprenticed with Campi, when she became a nun. In addition to Sofonisba and Elena, Lucia, Europa, and Anna Maria also became painters--only Minerva did not. Europa and Anna Maria married and gave up painting. Lucia, born in 1536 or 1538, died before 1568. An early biographer thought that, had she lived, Lucia Anguissola would have become a better artist than Sofonisba.

Update (November 2019): Sadly, as of November 2019, a profile of Sofonisba Anguissola is no longer to be found in the NMWA database. I have nonetheless left in the quotation because I thought it an important assessment of Anguissola's reputation. An archived version of the NMWA profile is--at least temporarily--available here.)

Update, 16 December 2019: The Prado Museum (Madrid) is now hosting a special exhibition, "A Tale of Two Women Painters: Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana" (through 2 February 2020). According to the museum's website, the exhibition has put together "a total of 65 works," including some fifty-six paintings, the art coming from "more than" a score of European and American connections: "the Museo del Prado is presenting a survey of the careers of these two painters, who achieved fame and renown among their contemporaries but whose artistic personalities became obscured over time."

In her splendid review of the exhibition for the New York Times, Deborah Solomon praises the show and the art, but adds, "The Prado show, which was curated by Leticia Ruiz Gómez, takes the form of a double feature, pairing two artists who flourished in the same era, in the same area of northern Italy, but who probably never met. Their works are made to mingle in the galleries in a pas-de-deux. But is this approach appropriate? It is hard to imagine that male artists would have to share the galleries quite this way, and you wonder if the curators at the Prado think that women need to team up to better confront the patriarchy."

Indeed.

Isabel Clara Eugenia, Regent of the Netherlands

Isabel Clara Eugenia of Spain, archduchess of Austria and regent of the Netherlands (born 12 September 1566)

The daughter of Philip II, king of Spain, and his third wife, Elisabeth of Valois, Isabel Clara Eugenia is yet another of the remarkable Habsburg women who served as regents for their fathers, nephews, and brothers.

Isabel Clara Eugenia,
archduchess of Austria

Born in Segovia on 12 September 1566, Isabel Clara Eugenia is related to a number of women we have already met or whom we will soon meet--her paternal grandmother was Isabel of Portugal (1503-39), who had acted as regent of Spain for her husband, the Habsburg emperor Charles V, and her maternal grandmother was Catherine de' Medici, queen and regent of France. 

Although Isabel Clara Eugenia had been betrothed at the age of two to Rudolph II, who would ultimately become the Holy Roman Emperor, she remained in Spain with her father. As Philip grew older, he had come increasingly to rely on his daughter to assist him.

In March of 1588, the ministers of Henry III of France, his contemporary, announced that King Philip was "mad": "The grand chancellor assured his awed dinner guests in Paris that while Philip's councillors debated state affairs, his eldest daughter, Isabel, was signing documents and in control of government." 

This "scandalous" announcement derived from reports made by Philip's ambassador in Paris, who had told the French king's mother, Catherine de' Medici, about the significance of Isabel's role in her father's government. Rumors were also spreading in Spain that, if Philip were "incapacitated," it would be Isabel who would "take control of the government" of her father's kingdom, and not her half-brother Philip III.

Her potential to function for her father as a "regent" had been noted as early as 1574, when an eight-year-old Isabel was suggested as regent of the Netherlands. She obviously would have been a figurehead then, but from an early age she had been extremely close to her father, who had played a "direct role" in raising her and her sister Catherine Michelle. 

Isabel, in particular, had emulated her father, and he had allowed her "to take part in his office work." By 1586, she was able to be a significant help and adviser to her father; she "read him the letters and despatches he had to deal with, adding her suggestions on how they should be answered." He "even gave her access to the most important papers of state."

In 1592, Philip proposed Isabel for the throne of France, not as a bride for a ruling king but as queen regnant--the last Valois king of France had died, and Isabel, through her mother Elisabeth of Valois, had a claim to the throne.

As a Catholic, she was preferable to the closest male claimant, Henry of Navarre, a Protestant, but as a woman she had a distinct disadvantage. A challenge to French Salic law, which excluded women from inheriting the throne, never had to be made, however, since Henry converted to Catholicism and assumed the French crown as Henry IV.

As his death neared, Philip might have been well advised to name his daughter Isabel as his successor in Spain, for his son Philip (the child of Philip II and his fourth wife, Anne of Austria) had no preparation for or experience with the responsibilities of government. The king "had made no previous attempt to bring him into the process of government, an attitude which contrasts with the confidence he had place in . . . Isabel when she was even younger." 

Despite the fact that Philip was, by all reports, "very childish," in poor health, knew nothing "of matters of state," and "appeared to have little intellectual capacity," his sex seemed to determine his father's choice of Philip as his successor. But, while she would not take her father's place in Spain, Isabel would have a role in government nonetheless. 

In 1598, Philip II arranged for his daughter's marriage to her cousin Albert of Austria, and "the two would become joint rulers" of the Netherlands. On 11 September 1598, as Philip lay dying, he told his daughter that he was sorry he would not live to see her marriage, but he asked that she "govern the Netherlands well" with her husband's help. Philip II died two days later. 

Isabel Clara Eugenia, 1625,
garbed as a Franciscan tertiary
but still acting as governor of the Netherlands

On 18 April 1599, when Isabel Clara Eugenia was thirty-three years old, she married the archduke of Austria, as her father had arranged, and after the ceremony, the two took up their positions in the Netherlands.

By then, the seven northern provinces (the United Provinces) of the Low Countries had become independent; from April 1599 until Albert's death in 1621, the two governed the ten southern provinces of the Netherlands as regents for Isabel's brother Philip III.

When Albert died in 1621, Isabel joined the Third Order of St Francis, but she retained her role as governor of the Netherlands, which she continued administer on her brother's behalf until her death on 1 December 1633.

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe.