Sofonisba Anguissola was an Italian painter, born in Cremona around 1532, who died in Palermo in November 1625 at about ninety three.
Her father, a nobleman, had her trained as a painter, drawings of hers reached Michelangelo, and Philip II of Spain called her to his court as a lady in waiting to his queen. She is remembered for her self portraits and for The Chess Game, a painting of three of her sisters at play.
Most people meet her through that one picture. In 1555 she painted three of her sisters around a chessboard. Lucia, on the left, is moving a piece. Minerva, across from her, raises a hand as if to protest, and the youngest, Europa, stands behind the board and laughs. An older servant watches from the corner without playing. Sofonisba was about twenty three.
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What sets the picture apart is where it comes from. Sofonisba painted her sisters because they were the faces she knew best. She painted herself even more often, and art historians say she made more self portraits than any other artist between Dürer and Rembrandt. They worked as calling cards, small proofs of what a young woman from Cremona could do.
In the summer of 1624 a young Flemish painter, Anthony van Dyck, visited her in Palermo. She was in her nineties and nearly blind, and he wrote in his notebook what she told him about painting old faces. He drew her too.
That page shows Sofonisba as a teacher, at the very end of a life that began with a father's unusual decision to put his eldest daughter in front of a painter. The one piece of advice it records is about light, and it comes back at the end of her story.
What You'll Discover
Why her father chose a painter.
Whether Michelangelo ever met her.
What she wrote in a book.
What thirteen years in Madrid left behind.
How her long life ended.
Which famous portrait is not hers.