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The engraving from this picture, in Dibdin's Ædes Althorpianæ, lies before us. We think the better of kings and queens who prized a woman with eyes so clear, and an expression of such honesty and truth. The original is said to be masterly in its drawing and execution. Sofonisba is represented in a simple black dress, and wears no jewels.
Lie on mother's knee, my own, Dance your heels about me! Apples leave the tree, my own. Soon you'll live without me." <b>AMEN, MADAME J.</b> Honorable mention, Paris, 1901. <b>ANGUISCIOLA, LUCIA.</b> A pupil of her sister Sofonisba, painted a life-size portrait of Piermaria, a physician of Cremona. It is in the gallery of the Prado, Madrid, and is signed, "Lucia Angvisola Amilcares.
F. Adolescens." Lucia's portrait of her sister Europa is at Brescia. Some authorities believe that the small portrait in the Borghese Gallery is by Lucia, although it has been attributed to Sofonisba. Vasari relates that Europa and a younger sister, Anna Maria, were artists.
His lives of the early Italian painters and sculptors up to his own time, the sixteenth century, though full of traditional gossip, are invaluable as graphic chronicles of much interesting information which would otherwise have been lost. Sofonisba Anguisciola, born 1535, died about 1620, was a pupil of Bernardino Campi about the close of the sixteenth century at Cremona.
The various starts or attempts of these modern tragedians, among which the 'Sofonisba' of Trissino was the most celebrated, belong in the history of literature. The same may be said of genteel comedy, modelled on Plautus and Terence. Even Ariosto could do nothing of the first order in this style.
Sofonisba soon gained the approval of the serious and solemn King, for while Philip was jealous of the French ladies of the court and desired Isabella to be wholly under Spanish influence, he proposed to the artist a marriage with one of his nobles, by which means she would remain permanently in the Queen's household.
Of all the people with whom he painted, he most valued the knowledge he got from a blind woman painter of Sicily, called Sofonisba Anguisciola, and he often said that he had learned more from a blind woman than from all the open-eyed men he ever knew. This woman artist was over ninety years old at the time he learned from her.
Daughter of the patrician, Amilcare Anguisciola, whose only fame rests on the fact that he was the father of six daughters, all of whom were distinguished by unusual talents in music and painting. Dear old Vasari was so charmed by his visit to their palace that he pronounced it "the very home of painting and of all other accomplishments." Sofonisba was the second daughter.
To the same Giulio Campo have been disciples not only his two above-named brothers, but also Lattanzio Gambara and others; but most excellent in painting, doing him more honour than any of the rest, has been Sofonisba Anguisciuola of Cremona, with her three sisters, which most gifted maidens are the daughters of Signor Amilcare Anguisciuola and Signora Bianca Punzona, both of whom belong to the most noble families in Cremona.
She contributed largely to the restoration of art and literature to the importance that had been accorded them in the most brilliant days of Genoese power. We have not space to recount all the honors conferred on Sofonisba, both as a woman and an artist. She lived to an extreme old age, and, although she lost her sight, her intellect was undimmed by time or blindness.
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