Renaissance and Reformation Biographies | Sofonisba Anguissola Biography

1532
Cremona, Italy 1625
Palermo, Italy

Painter

"[Sofonisba Anguissola] has shown greater application and better grace than any other woman of our age in her endeavors at drawing … [and] by herself has created rare and very beautiful paintings."

Sixteenth-century art historian Giorgio Vasari quoted in A Guide to the Collection of European Art to 1900. [Online] Available http://www.mfa.org/handbook/portrait.asp?id=195.5&s=6, April 4, 2002.

Italian painter Sofonisba Anguissola (pronounced ahn-GWEE-so-lah) was the first woman artist to establish an international reputation and to produce a substantial body of work. Her portraits depicted stories, a technique that was ahead of her time. At the end of the sixteenth century the main interests of Italian art were...