Abstract
The recent surge in biofiction has seen a marked inclusion of historical women visual artists as protagonists, especially those from the culturally distant early modern period. One artist who, rather surprisingly, has been the subject of numerous contemporary novels is the lesser-known Italian Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1535–1625). Anguissola was also a frequent biographical subject in the early modern period; thus, a main question this chapter explores is how two early modern life narratives about her (by Giorgio Vasari and Raffaelle Soprani) and two contemporary biofictions (by Donna DiGiuseppe and Chiara Montani) characterise the artist. In particular, I will consider whether the attributes that Fredrika Jacob associates with the Renaissance virtuosa (such as young, beautiful, and multi-talented) are extended by novelists into the modern period, or whether these attributes are augmented or supplanted by qualities that might be more relatable to contemporary readers. Through this inquiry I also explore possible reasons for the popularity of Anguissola as a protagonist, allowing us to better comprehend how female subjects of biographical novels might be chosen, imagined, and received.
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Notes
- 1.
See further Alexandra Lapierre, “The ‘Woman Artist’ in Literature: Fiction or Non-Fiction?” in Italian Women Artists from Renaissance to Baroque, ed. Vera Fortunati, Jordana Pomeroy, and Claudio Strinati (Milan: Skira; New York: Rizzoli, 2007), 75–81.
- 2.
Biofiction works on Anguissola that I have identified to date include: Maria Muldoon, The Secret Life of Sofonisba Anguissola (San Francisco: Matta Press, 2020); Donna DiGiuseppe, Lady in Ermine: The Story of a Woman who Painted the Renaissance (Tempe AZ: Bagwyn Books, 2019); Chiara Montani, Sofonisba: Portraits of the Soul, a Novel (2016; trans. Verna Kaye, 2019; independently published); Carol Damioli, Portrait in Black and Gold, a Novel (Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2013); Lynn Cullen, The Creation of Eve, a Novel (New York: G.P. Putnam’s, 2010); Lorenzo de Medici, Il Secreto di Sofonisba (Barcelona Publications, 2007); Agnès Sautois, Le jeune fille au clavicorde … roman (Bressoux: Dricot, 2016); Giovanna Pierini, La dama con il ventaglio: romanzo (Milano: Mondatori Electa, 2018); Carmen Boullosa, La Virgen y el violin (Madrid: Ediciones Siruela, 2004); Millo Borghini, Sofonisba: una vita per la pittura e la libertà (Milano: Spirali, 2006).
- 3.
Julia Dabbs, Life Stories of Women Artists, 1550–1800: An Anthology (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 455–66.
- 4.
Some studies include (and again, limited to the genre of biofiction and women visual artists): Tina Lent, “‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’: The Fictionalization of Baroque Artist Artemesia Gentileschi in Contemporary Film and Novels,” Literature/Film Quarterly 34, no. 3 (2006):212–18; Lapierre, “The ‘Woman Artist’”; Julia Novak, “Father and Daughter Across Europe: The Journeys of Clara Wieck Schumann and Artemisia Gentileschi in Fictionalised Biographies,” The European Journal of Life-Writing 1 (2012): 41–57; Catherine Padmore, “The Tudor Paintrix in Recent Fiction,” in Recovering History through Fact and Fiction, ed. Dallas John Baker, Donna Lee Brien, and N.A. Sulway (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 158–70; and Julia Dabbs, “The Role of Art in Recent Biofiction on Sofonisba Anguissola,” in Authorizing Early Modern European Women: From Biography to Biofiction, ed. James Fitzmaurice, Naomi Miller, and Sara Jane Steen (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022).
- 5.
Patricia Rubin, “What Men Saw: Vasari’s Life of Leonardo da Vinci and the Image of the Renaissance Artist,” Art History 13 (1990): 36.
- 6.
Ibid., 34–36.
- 7.
On the fictitious elements of Vasari’s life writing, see the prolific scholarship of Paul Barolsky, one prime example being his essay “Fear of Fiction: The Fun of Reading Vasari,” in Reading Vasari, ed. Anne B. Barriault et al. (London: Philip Wilson; Athens: Georgia Museum of Art, 2005), 31–35.
- 8.
Rubin, “What Men Saw,” 40.
- 9.
Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. Gaston C. de Vere (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1568/1996), 1:860, 2:466–68.
- 10.
Katherine McIver, “Vasari’s Women,” in Reading Vasari, ed. Anne B. Barriault et al. (London: Philip Wilson; Athens: Georgia Museum of Art, 2005), 181.
- 11.
Vasari consistently refers to the artist as “Sofonisba,” and in one instance with the honorific “Signora Sofonisba”; he does refer to other women artists by their given name, but also will refer to male artists in this way, for example, “Michelangelo” or “Raffaello.”
- 12.
Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: An Historical Experiment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 50–51.
- 13.
Fredrika Jacobs, Defining the Renaissance Virtuosa: Women Artists and the Language of Art History and Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 58.
- 14.
Ibid., 123–56.
- 15.
Vasari, Lives of the Painters, 1:860.
- 16.
Jacobs, Defining the Renaissance Virtuosa, 58–59.
- 17.
McIver, “Vasari’s Women,” 182.
- 18.
Vasari, Lives of the Painters, 1:860.
- 19.
Rudolf Wittkower and Margot Wittkower, Born Under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists (New York: Random House, 1963), 93–95.
- 20.
Jacobs, Defining the Renaissance Virtuosa, 18.
- 21.
Vasari, Lives of the Painters, 2:466–68.
- 22.
Michael Cole, Sofonisba’s Lesson (New Haven: Princeton University Press, 2020), 29 and note 61.
- 23.
Vasari, Lives of the Painters, 2:466.
- 24.
Ibid., 2:467.
- 25.
Ibid., 2:468.
- 26.
Such as Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. George Bull (New York: Penguin Books, 1528/1967), 216.
- 27.
Jacobs, Defining the Renaissance Virtuosa.
- 28.
Ibid., 3.
- 29.
Raffaele Soprani, “The Life Story of Sofonisba Anguissola,” in Life Stories of Women Artists, 1550–1800: An Anthology, ed. Julia Dabbs (Farnham: Ashgate, 1674/2009), 112–18.
- 30.
Soprani, “Sofonisba Anguissola,” 117.
- 31.
Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists 1550–1950 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976), 107 note 9.
- 32.
Soprani, “Sofonisba Anguissola,” 112.
- 33.
Ibid., 113.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Ibid.
- 36.
Ibid., 115.
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Ibid., 116.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Ibid., 117. The meeting of these two artists is documented by a Van Dyck drawing and journal entry, now in the British Library: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1957-1214-207-110.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
Chiara Montani, Chiara Montani: Writer and Artist, accessed February 26, 2022, https://chiaramontani.com.
- 43.
Montani has since published Il Mistero della pittrice ribelle (Garzanti, 2021), described as a “romanzo” which features the historical Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca and an imagined female artist in a relationship with him.
- 44.
Donna DiGiuseppe, Lady in Ermine: The Story of a Woman Who Painted the Renaissance—by Donna DiGiuseppe, accessed February 26, 2022, https://ladyinermine.com/.
- 45.
Motani, Chiara Montani.
- 46.
Donna DiGiuseppe, Lady in Ermine: The Story of a Woman Who Painted the Renaissance; a Biographical Novel (Tempe, AZ: Bagwyn Books, 2019), 364.
- 47.
DiGiuseppe, Lady in Ermine, https://ladyinermine.com/.
- 48.
Padmore, “The Tudor Paintrix,” 160.
- 49.
Recent art historical scholarship (see, e.g., Cole, Sofonisba’s Lesson, 191) generally agrees that the subject seen in the “Lady in Ermine” is unknown. In addition, the painting may not even be by Anguissola, although it has been attributed to her in the past. The institution owning the painting (Pollok House, Glasgow, Scotland) believes it is a work by El Greco, whereas curator Leticia Ruiz of the Prado Museum argues that it is by Anguissola’s chief rival at the court of Philip II, Alonso Sánchez Coello (Natividad Pulido, “‘La dama del armiño’: ni del Greco, ni de Sofonisba Anguissola; su autor es Sánchez Coello,” ABC, October 22, 2019, https://www.abc.es/cultura/arte/abci-dama-armino-greco-sofonisba-anguissola-autor-sanchez-coello-201910211241_noticia.html). Interestingly, DiGiuseppe changed the cover image to a self-portrait of Anguissola in a slightly later, self-published edition of the book (Lady in Ermine: The Story of a Woman Who Painted the Renaissance; a Biographical Novel, rev. ed. [n.p.: A Lady in Ermine Press, 2020]).
- 50.
DiGiuseppe, Lady in Ermine, 364.
- 51.
Chiara Montani, email message to author, March 2, 2020.
- 52.
Chiara Montani, Sofonisba: Portraits of the Soul, trans. Verna Kaye (independently published, 2019), 263.
- 53.
Ibid., 75.
- 54.
Ibid., 65.
- 55.
Ibid., 232.
- 56.
Rafaelle Soprani, “Proemio” to Le Vite de’ pittori, scoltori et architetti genovesi (1674), n. pag.
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Dabbs, J. (2022). Re-visiting the Renaissance Virtuosa in Biofiction on Sofonisba Anguissola. In: Novak, J., Ní Dhúill, C. (eds) Imagining Gender in Biographical Fiction. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09019-6_11
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