Italy, 1554. The vast majority of upper-class women were destined for marriage or the convent. The painter
Sofonisba Anguissola
, no.
He was 20 years old when he traveled from his native Cremona to Rome to meet Michelangelo. Imagine the nerves. She came recommended by artists, with a drawing of a smiling baby, and the creator of the Sistine Chapel decided to try it: he asked her to recreate a crying baby. She portrayed
her little brother Asdrubale bitten by a crab
and the teacher had no doubt that it was worth accompanying her. For two years, she gave him informal lessons, which included sketches of him for her to paint.
Sofonisba had created wonders before. For example,
Self-portrait with Bernardino Campi
, his teacher since he was 14, which shines in the Pinacoteca of Siena. It is the painting of
a man painting a woman painted by a woman; pure boldness without stridency
, placid. And in 1555 he finished another dream painting, which consecrated it:
Chess Game
, a game of glances between his sisters
Lucia, Minerva and Europa and an elderly nanny.
About this work, the great Renaissance art critic, Giorgio Vasari, wrote that it shows “so much diligence and promptness, that its protagonists
seem alive and lack nothing more than words
.”
Sofonisba could not study like the men of her time did. Her nudes were forbidden to him. And
the role of her father
, Amilcare Anguissola, was fundamental in breaking the gender barriers that would have closed her career. In fact
, the six Anguissola sisters learned painting, music, Latin and chess, as well as embroidery
, and Vasari saw his work on chess in the family home because Amilcare invited him.
In 1558 Sofonisba portrayed the Duke of Alba, who recommended her to Isabel de Valois - a fan of drawing - after her marriage to Philip II of Spain. At the age of 25 she was already painting the Hispanic court. There Alonso Sánchez Coello, her boss, imposed her style and for a long time a portrait of Philip II that she painted was attributed to him. Today
it is being investigated whether
The Lady with an Ermine
that we know as
El Greco's - not Leonardo Da Vinci's - was her work as well.
In 1573 Sofonisba married a Sicilian nobleman. She was widowed. She remarried.
Philip II - famous for his macabre -
wanted to oppose her second wedding with a man younger than her, but Sofonisba wrote to him that
her refusal had come when the marriage was already consummated
.
Spot
. She settled in Genoa and continued painting despite the cataracts. There she was portrayed by another famous artist, Anthony van Dyck, when she was 91 years old. She died two years later.
It is said that the gestures that Sofonisba captured in the drawing that convinced Michelangelo of her talent,
the baby's grimace of pain, his little hands flapping
, inspired about 6 decades later
Child Bitten by a Crab
, by another genius, Caravaggio. Before, she
opened the doors of workshops and courts to other women
. But not everything depends only on you, your family and your contacts. Not even if you studied with Michelangelo himself. Only in
2019
did the artist star in a key exhibition at the Prado Museum in Madrid - which celebrated her 200th birthday - alongside Lavinia Fontana, one of her first disciples. For the second time, she was consecrated.
J.S.