Renaissance Princess 1560 - Awarded To Sofonisb

Oil on wood panel. This delicate girl portrait is attributed to the Lombard painter Sofonisba Anguissola (Cremona 1535 - Palermo 1625). The child, aged about eight years, says all its nobility already displaying a proud carriage and providing a confident look. The delicacy of her features and the softness of her flesh in addition to the great emotion that emerges from the paint. Dressed in a brown and beige silk dress with puffed shoulders, she wears a large gold necklace with beads. Blond hair pulled back, she is wearing a golden fillet finished with a headband. The costume, the little strawberry on the neck and knotted chain lead to date work in the 1560s This portrait would have been done during the long stay of the Spanish painter (Long after this period, portraits Anguissola were unfairly attributed to Sanchez Coello Allonso). This is likely a Spanish noble girl. The fineness of the painting under its small illustrates the mastery acquired in contact with the miniaturist Giulio Clovio. The work is presented in a beautiful wooden frame carved and gilded seventeenth century. Large acanthus leaves are rolled into a strong relief.

Dimensions: 15 x 12.8 cm panel - 32 x 29 cm with the frame.

Condition: Excellent. Flesh and jewelry intact. Small restorations scattered.

Sofonisba Anguissola (Cremona, c 1535 -. Palermo, 1625) was born into a noble family. It is one of the few women painters of his time to be recognized in his lifetime. Her father, Amilcare Anguissola, encourages her eight children to develop their artistic talents. He studied his eldest, Sofonisba, with Bernardino Campi (painter of portraits and religious subjects) since its 11 years! It was during this juvenile learning that affirms his love portrait painting. In the 1550s, she attended workshops in Mantua, Ferrara, Parma or Rome where she met Giulio Clovio who introduced him to the art of miniature. In 1559 began a long stay Spanish. She became lady in waiting to the queen, Isabella of Valois, to whom she teaches drawing. She painted a lot of portraits of members of the royal family and the nobility. Five years after the death of his patron, in 1573 she married an Italian noble joined it on its land of Sicily, but he died during a sea voyage in 1578. In 1579, she marries a second wife with Genoese merchant. definitively settled with her husband in Palermo 1615, she stopped painting, abandoning its visual faculties. Anton van Dyck, called Palermo to paint the Viceroy Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, came to pay homage. This means that this fascination aroused woman painter in his lifetime.