Woman's Capacity to Create: The Unusual Case of Sofonisba Anguissola

Among the more than 160 uomitti valenti whose lives and works are included in the second edition of Giorgio Vasari's Le vite de’ più eccellentipittori, scultori et architettori, 1568, are several women: Properzia De’ Rossi (c. 1490-1530), Suor Plautilla Nelli (1532-1587/88), Lucrezia Quistelli, who was “taught by Alessandro Allori,” Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1532-1625), and her sisters Lucia (c. 1540-c. 1565) and Europa (1542/43-78). Although De' Rossi was the only one of these women distinguished by her own vita, it was Sofonisba Anguissola who accrued the greatest amount of literary adulation during her lifetime (fig. 1). If contemporaneous sources are to be believed, this acclaim may be attributed to her excellence as a portrait painter.