Lot 11: * LUCIA ANGUISSOLA CREMONA CIRCA 1538-1565

oval, oil on panel

4 3/4 by 3 1/2 in.; 12.2 by 9.1cm

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION

Simon sale, Amsterdam, October 25-26, 1927, lot 56 (as Bronzino);
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, July 9, 1998, lot 71;
There purchased by the present owner.

The present painting was formerly attributed to Sofonisba Anguissola and was considered to be a self portrait by George Holmes (Witt Library mount). Profssa. Mina Gregori has proposed, on the basis of photographs, that this is indeed a self-portrait by Sofonisba dating from the end of her activity in Cremona, before her move to Spain. Dottssa. Rossana Sacchi, however, believes like Maria Kusche (see below) that this painting is by Lucia Anguissola and, on the basis of photographs, has tentatively suggested that it represents Sofonisba a memoria, once absent from Cremona, thus dating it to the first half of the 1560s.

This painting is, in the opinion of Kusche, a portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola by her younger sister, Lucia, showing the painter in her early twenties and, on the basis of her costume, datable to circa 1555, when she was still in Cremona. Sofonisba's physiognomy is well known from her numerous self portraits; the closest in date being the Self-portrait Playing the Virginals in Earl Spencer's collection, Althorp, of circa 1557/8 and that in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan (where she wears an almost identical costume as in the present work), also from the end of her Cremonese period of the late 1550s. Her most recognisable features are an oval face, wide cheekbones and high forehead, reddish hair and large, slightly protuberant eyes.

Sofonisba had one brother and five younger sisters, three of whom also painted: of the others Elena was only one or two years Sofonisba's junior and became a nun, Minerva was a good scholar, remembered by Vasari as "in pittura e lettere fu rara." The three who also painted were Lucia, who died prematurely aged 27, Europa, who became a talented portraitist in her own right, and Anna Maria, who showed a penchant and talent for drawing from an early age (for a deeper study on the Anguissola sisters, see the exhibition catalogue, Cremona, Centro Culturale, Sofonisba e le sue sorelle, 1994, in particular p. 75 ff.). If Lucia is the girl on the left in Sofonisba's signed and dated Chessgame in the Muzeum Narodowe, Poznan, of 1555, she must have been between 16 and 18 years of age when she painted the present portrait of her eldest sister. Lucia's first securely dated work is the Madonna and Child, also of 1555, and her activity as a portraitist, most charming and technically accomplished on a small scale (such as her Portrait of Europa in the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia), is datable to the second half of the 1550s. It is clear that, as women painters, the Anguissola sisters turned to each other for inspiration and for their subjects: so one finds Lucia painting not only Europa (circa 1557) but also Minerva (Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, circa 1557-58, considered to be of Sofonisba by Dr. Maria Kusche), the first also being in tondo format and on a very small scale. Sofonisba herself also used her sisters as models and a drawing of Lucia, in black and white chalk on blue paper (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence) representing the younger sister in a rather magnanimous pose, indicates a reciprocal respect between artist and model.

Only six works by Lucia were previously known, three of them signed, thus making this an important addition to the oeuvre of one of the lesser known Anguissola sisters, whose premature death in 1565 cut short an artistic career which in Dr. Kusche's opinion was as promising as that of Sofonisba herself.

We are grateful to Dr. Maria Kusche for her help in cataloguing this lot.