A skilled artist, adept at capturing the natural fragility of a fleeting moment, Sofonisba Anguissola’s extraordinary career as a portraitist earned her a certain renown. The daughter of Amilcare Anguissola and Bianca Ponzoni, noblepeople of Cremona and parents to six daughters and one son, she was raised in a household that supported girls’ education and, like her sisters, was schooled in music, dance, literature, drawing and painting. A man of culture, A. Anguissola encouraged those of his daughters who showed artistic potential, sending Sofonisba and her sister Elena – who would later choose convent life – to study under two celebrated painters: Bernardino Campi (1522–1591) from 1546 to 1549 and Bernardino Gatti, known as Sojaro (1495–1576), until 1551. The two masters initiated S. Anguissola into the arts of oil painting, pigment mixing, devotional composition and portraiture. It was in the latter genre that the young woman excelled. Her portraits of family members (Portrait of the Artist’s Sisters Playing Chess, 1555; Family Portrait of Minerva, Amilcare and Asdrubale Anguissola, 1558–1559) and her youthful, simply constructed self-portraits illustrate an ability to render expression and physical appearance (Self-Portrait, 1554).

S. Anguissola’s father soon made her talent known to the court of the Estes in Ferrara and the Gonzagas in Mantua, and in Parma and Rome. Some of the artist’s drawings (Asdrubale Bitten by a Crawfish, around 1554) were sent to Michelangelo: the old master encouraged her to pursue this artistic activity generally reserved for men. In 1559, S. Anguissola was invited to join the court of Philip II of Spain as a lady-in-waiting to Élisabeth de Valois, charged with instructing the Queen in drawing and painting. Once there, she took the advice of the Spanish monarchy’s official painter Alonso Sánchez Coello (around 1531–1588) and executed numerous portraits, adapting her Italian style to the codified principles of court portraits of the time (Philip II, around 1573; Elisabeth de Valois holding a portrait of Philip II, around 1561–1562).

Following the Queen’s death in 1568, S. Anguissola continued to be highly regarded for her portraiture in the Spanish court. In 1573 the King married her to a Sicilian nobleman, Fabrizio de Moncada, and the couple returned to Italy after her fourteen-year absence to settle in Sicily between Palermo and Paternò. She was widowed in 1578 and, after calling upon her brother Asdrubale to help settle conflicting financial interests between herself and her deceased husband’s family, she decided to leave Sicily. On the return voyage to Cremona, S. Anguissola met the naval captain Orazio Lomellino, and in 1580, against the advice of her brother, married him. The couple moved first to Genoa, where the artist was influenced by the work of Luca Cambiaso (1527–1585). Her painting The Holy Family with Saint Anne and the young Saint John the Baptist (1592) shows her growing interest in dramatic lighting effects inspired by the Genoese painter’s chromatic contrasts.

From 1615, S. Anguissola and her husband lived in Palermo. It was here that, sometime between 1624 and 1625, she was visited by a young painter named Antoon van Dyck (1599–1641). The Flemish artist sketched a portrait of her, and gave an account of a ninety-six year old woman, of bright spirit and sharp memory who, though blind, was still eager to impart her advice on painting.