Figure 1.--This enigmatic painting by Anguissola is a 9-year old scion of an Italian nobel family, Massimiliano Stampa. It was painting in the late 16th Century when boys and men still wore bloomer like breeches and long, tight-like stockings.

Anguissola is one of the few know Renaissance women painters. Unlike most girls ofvher era, shev was encouraged by her unusually enlightened father. She was trained as a painter when most well-born young women of Renaissance Italy were expectedf to sit closed up in their palazzos and pursue needle work. Her accomplishments led to a life of drama and romance on a grand scale. She became a celebrated portrait painter at the court of Spanish King Philip II. She lived to a hearty old age, an became an international celebrity who was praised but no less an artist than Michelangelo and lauded by artists throughout Europe.

Childhood

Sofonisba Anguissola was the oldest daughter of Amilcare Anguissola, a member of the Genonese minor nobility. Her father had uncharacteritically enlighted views about women, perhaps because he and his wife Bianca had five daughters and only one son. By all accounts their comfortable palazo was a happy home, rich in laughter and the intelectual fermant of the high Renaisance.

Education

The life of Renaisance women was severely restricted. Girls were not educated and in Italy they were virtually cloistered in comfortable pilazaos and expected to care for their husbands and children. Sofonisba's father, however, educated each of his girls and each demonstrated artistic promisder. He could not send them to school, but he saw to thir education. Sofonisba at about 11 years of age began to study in the studio of Bernardino Campi.

Career

Her intreaguing portraits were soon attracting the notice of the airistocracy in Mantua and Parma. Michalangelo praised her drawings.

Anguisolla, still in her 20s, was called to Spain by King Phillip II, a patron of the arts. Much of Italy at the time was ruled by Spain. She worked in Spain for 14 years, as an art instructor to Queen Isabel and as a court painter, producing some of the most personal images of the royal family. Most are now in the Prado.

Mairrage

Anguissola returned to Italy in 1573. She mairred a ship captain, son of a Genonese noble family. It was a happy mairrage and a generous pension from the King allowed her to paint and live comfortably into her 80s. She was an international celeberity, in part because she was a woman, one of the few who achieved artistic prominance until the 20th Century.

Clothing

The boys and men Anguissola painted in the 16th Century wore bloomer like breeches and long stockings. Interestingly, the women that she painted wore long dresses as, unlike men, it was not considered proper for women to show their legs. There were no childrens clothes. Boys after breeching wore the same style as their fathers. Their breeches in the 17th Century evolved into knee breeches.

Created: March 4, 1999
Last updated: July 16, 1999