On the Importance of Subtlety

   Painting by Sofonisba Anguissola depicting Bernardino Campi painting a portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola, ca. late 1550s.

Sofonisba Anguissola: First Great Woman Renaissance Artist

At the time, women were not allowed to be as brazen as their male counterparts on showing off their talent. So in this image, Sofonisba Anguissola, shows herself to be the better of her instructor, through this subtle, backhanded compliment. See if you can guess what it was, no peeking.

Source... In the stunningly innovative double portrait of Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola (Fig. 3) we can see that Sofonisba either consciously or unconsciously grasped the irony of her status as both a noblewoman and a working female artist. Whitney Chadwick claims this painting “suggests that not only was she aware of her own image as an exemplar of female achievement, but also that she understood the importance of the artistic lineage between pupil and master, and her unique role as a producer of images of women” (Chadwick, 78). While this statement has truth to it, there is an even bigger message staring the viewer right in the face. Sofonisba has made herself central, higher and larger than her master teacher who is somewhat marginalized to the side of the picture plane. ...

Why would she choose to depict herself and her teacher in this fashion? This painting has been dated to the late 1550’s which was a full ten years after her apprenticeship with Campi had ended and he had long since moved away from Cremona to Milan and other north Italian courts (24). He went on to paint portraits for moderately distinguished North Italian princesses while she went on to work at the court of the most powerful monarch in Europe (25). Her contemporaries may have seen a two-fold reason for praise in this double portrait with her master. First, she introduced a new compositional device for a self-portrait: a teacher painting his student, which was painted by the student. This demonstrated her gift for invenzione. Second, it was probably read as a female artist’s acknowledgement of her master being the one who ‘created’ her, a self-effacing way to ascribe to Campi the responsibility for her own widely acknowledged talent. But surely there is more than a mere recognition of artistic lineage going on here. As noted earlier she is visibly more important than her instructor in her size, height, and centrality. Whether she intentionally hid meaning in a manner that introduced a new type of portrait composition that would be read by her contemporaries as an homage to her teacher, or her subconscious did it for her, it is difficult for a modern viewer to escape the irony of this painting. The fact of her life was that her worth as a painter, when calculated by the prestige of her patrons, became greater than that of her master, Bernardino Campi, a man, not to mention a man of lesser social rank than she.