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Oil on wood panel. This delicate little girl portrait is attributed to the Lombard painter Sofonisba Anguissola (Cremona 1535 - Palermo 1625). The child, about eight years old, maintains its nobility claiming a proud carriage and providing a intense look. The delicacy of her features and the softness of her flesh adds to the great emotion that emerges from the painting.
Dressed in a brown and beige silk dress with puffed shoulders, she wears a large gold necklace with pearls. Blond hair pulled back, she is wearing a golden fillet finished with a headband. The costume, the little ruff on the neck and knotted chain enable us to date work in the 1560s. This portrait would have been done during the long Spanish stay of the painter (Long after this period, Anguissola portraits were unfairly attributed to Sanchez Coello Allonso). This is plausibly a Spanish noble girl.
The fineness of the painting to its small size 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) is born in a noble family. She is one of the few women painters to be recognized in his lifetime. Her father, Amilcare Anguissola, encourages his eight children to develop their artistic talents. His eldest, Sofonisba, studies with Bernardino Campi (painter of portraits and religious subjects) since its 11 years! During this juvenile learning she affirms her taste for painting of portrait. In the 1550s, she attended workshops in Mantua, Ferrara, Parma or Roma where she met Giulio Clovio who introduced him to the art of miniature.
In 1559 began a long Spanish stay. 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 her patron, in 1573 she married a noble Italian. She joined him on its land of Sicily, but he died during a sea travel in 1578. In 1579, she marries a second time with a Genovese merchant. Definitively settled with her husband in Palermo in 1615, she stopped painting, she lost its visual faculties . Anton van Dyck, called in Palermo to paint the Viceroy Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, came to visit her. It shows that the woman was subject of fascination in his lifetime.
