Skip to main content
Category

International Women’s Day

The tender and cruel Sofonisba Anguissola

By International Women's Day, Renaissance Art, Talking art

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about an incredible female artist called Lavinia Fontana. This week is all about the ‘tender and cruel’ Sofonisba Anguissola who made her name in Rome and later worked for Philip II Spain in Madrid.

Anguissola’s talent was recognised very early on, she was lucky enough to have a forward thinking and liberal father who was keen to educate his daughters (he had six in total and just one son) and he encouraged her to draw and paint and even got her a tutor, the artist Bernadino Campi.

self portrait Sofonisba Anguissola

Sofonisba Anguissola,
Self-portrait, 1560-1,
Pinacoteca Brera, Italy

That isn’t to say that life as a female artist was plain sailing for Anguissola. It is true that when she met Michelangelo in Rome in 1554 when she was in her early 20s he gave her sketches from his notebooks to help her develop her own style. There’s also evidence that he helped and guided her quite substantially over at least a couple of years. She must have really impressed him; Michelangelo was known to be massively grumpy and critical!

Around the same time that Anguissola met Michelangelo, the Florentine painter Francesco Salviati wrote a letter to her tutor, Campi, congratulating him on his great achievement. It went on to say that this achievement was born of his beautiful intellect. Was it that Anguissola was being educated and trained by the best of the best? Michelangelo and Campi?

Not so much.

Campi’s achievement was Anguissola!

The slight must have made Sofonisba at least a little bit peeved and we all know that revenge is a dish best served cold. Although there is no documentation that I’m aware of that lays out Anguissola’s intent, take a look at this double portrait.

It was described to me once as both incredibly tender and incredibly cruel.

It is an image of Bernadino Campi painting Sofonisba Anguissola’s portrait painted by Anguissola in 1559. Got it?! Anguissola has imitated his style in the painting of her portrait – the one that Campi is supposed to painting – but the thing is that he was a less accomplished artist than she was. So she is imitating his style, which should be flattering, but because he is the lesser artist, it isn’t. There’s another thing. She has also made herself the larger of the two so that she dominates him. Two fingers to Salviati? I think so. On the other hand, honouring Campi in her work in the first place was a lovely thing to do and the intimacy between them is, I feel, very apparent, especially when her original design is taken into account.

Anguissola portrait of Campi

Sofonisba Anguissola, Bernardino Campi painting Sofonisba Anguissola, c.1559, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena

Take a look at these three images. The first is of the painting before it was restored in 1996. The second is during restoration and the third is post restoration.

Anguissola's portrait of Bernadino Campi pre restoration
Sofonisba Anguissola portrait of Campi during restoration
Anguissola portrait of Campi

In the the first and third image her left hand is holding a pair of gloves. During restoration, she appears to have grown a limb! A second left hand is visible reaching up as though to remove the brush or at least the mahlstick from Campi’s grasp. Or maybe she’s helping by holding the mahlstick steady as he paints the delicate lace of her dress?

You could say that this is a simple pentimento – a change that occurs as the artist works through their design on the canvas – but this version is very detailed so Anguissola got a long way down the line before she decided to let Campi get on with it and stopped trying to intervene / help, instead occupying her hand with the gloves.

It was decided to restore the painting to the image that Anguissola finally intended, hence the after restoration image doesn’t include the third arm.

Finally, I had to include this by painting by van Dyck of Anguissola in the last year of her life. It was painted in 1624, she died in 1625 aged 93.

Sofonisba Anguissola by Van Dyke

Van Dyke, Sofonisba Anguissola, 1624, Knole House, Kent

The video of this episode can be viewed here. To view the entire ‘Elevenses with Lynne’ archive, head to the Free Art Videos page.

Erm, a bum squeeze for International Women’s Day?!

By Elevenses, International Women's Day, Lavinia Fontana, Talking art

I suppose this could really have been the prequel to last week’s Mars by Velázquez. This is the God of War with his lover Venus, tentatively wondering whether he’s going to get away with touching her bum! This is for International Women’s Day – what am I thinking?!

Lavinia Fontana Venus and Mars

Lavinia Fontana, Mars and Venus, c. 1595, Madrid, Fundación Casa de Alba

We have a similar concept to the Velázquez painting in that all the trappings of war are on the floor, Venus has shimmied out of her chemise and taken off her slippers ready to climb into bed and love, rather than war, certainly seems to be the order of the day. Once again we are invited to come to the conclusion that that love conquers all.

The vase that is so prevalent in the foreground could be a reference to the womb, most often used in reference to the Virgin Mary, or it could be part of anyone of a number of complex rebuses, the simplest of which takes the first letter of shield and vase – s and v (handily the same in Latin), which is an abbreviated form of sotto voce – as in ‘shhh! keep it quiet’ because Mars and Venus were in an illicit love affair. There are various other suggestions along these lines in a book called Lavinia Fontana’s Mythological Paintings: Art, Beauty, and Wisdom by Liana De Girolami Cheney.

Now we get to the point (finally) of this post. The reason that I’ve chosen this work is to celebrate International Women’s Day. Crap choice then, you might be thinking. But is it?!

Fontana Venus and Mars detail

You can and should read this as a gratuitous bum touching moment. It was created at a time in which the view of a bottom squished on a cushion was sending pulses racing all over Europe, but this is so much more than that.  This was painted by a lady called Lavinia Fontana.

Fontana was from Bologna, born in 1552 and trained by her father – as pretty much all female artists of that time were, otherwise they didn’t have the opportunity to become artists. She became the main bread winner in her house and ran her own workshop whilst her husband acted as her agent and raised their eleven children. In later life she worked in Rome under the patronage of the Pope and was the first female painter to be elected into the Academy of St Luke in Rome. Some art historians credit her with being the first woman artist to paint female nudes.

So why has she painted this? It was almost certainly a commission, and it references the slightly out of control desire for the nude seated female bottom.

But look more closely. That hand isn’t quite right on her bottom; the bottom and the hand don’t have a relationship somehow, it’s almost as though the hand is on the canvas rather than in it – or it’s both? Does that make it a double grope?! That’s making a bit of a statement. Then we have phallic symbols, the spiky centre of the shield and the sword, both a bit useless on the floor and instead the sleeve of her chemise has found its way between Venus’s legs. A limp bit of white material. You might also notice that Mars is lower than Venus so she’s dominating him psychologically and physically. I feel that it’s all a bit subversive. If Venus can’t do anything about the arse grab she can certainly wither a man with her superiority! In which case is her look over her shoulder an invitation or is it a look of ‘see what I have to put up with!’?

The flower doesn’t offer much of a clue. It’s been identified as a daffodil or narcissus which could variously allude to the potency love, or rebirth which goes hand in hand with death, or to Mars himself – they bloom in late February and March and he does have some on his helmet too.

But in all this, I have to wonder why they think it’s okay to get jiggy with Cupid in the room? He looks as though he’s fallen asleep over his laptop! Of course he’s there to help us identify Venus, he’s her son, just as the pearls she wears (and sits on!) reference her birth from the sea.

Cupid detail Mars and Venus Lavinia Fontana

The video of this episode can be viewed here. To view the entire ‘Elevenses with Lynne’ archive, head to the Free Art Videos page