The Secret Life of Sofonisba Anguissola
The Secret Life of Sofonisba Anguissola

Author: Melissa Muldoon

Publisher:

Published: 2020-11

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 9781735176413

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Set in the sixteenth-century, The Secret Life of Sofonisba Anguissola tells the story of a woman's passion for painting and adventure. In a world where women painters had little to no acknowledgment, she was singled out by Michelangelo and Vasari who recognized and praised her talent. Gaining the Milanese elite's acclaim, she went on to become court painter to Spanish King Philip II and taught his queen to paint. One can't live such an extraordinary life without having stories to tell, and tell them Sofonisba does to Sir Anthony Van Dyke, who comes to visit her toward the end of her life. During their meeting, she agrees to reveal her secrets but first challenges the younger painter to find the one lie hidden in her tale. In a saga filled with intrigue, jealousy, buried treasure, unrequited love, espionage, and murder, Sofonisba's story is played out against the backdrop of Italy, Spain, and Sicily. Throughout her life, she encounters talented artists, authoritative dukes, mad princes, religious kings, spying queens, vivacious viscounts, and dashing sea captains-even a Barbary pirate. But of all the people who fell in love with Sofonisba, only one captured her heart. The painter may have many secrets but the truth of her life is crystal clear from the beginning. Always a strong, passionate woman with a dream, she was an intelligent artist who knew her self-worth and in the end, as Michelangelo had done for her, Sofonisba passed her brush to a new generation.

Imagining Gender in Biographical Fiction
Imagining Gender in Biographical Fiction

Author: Julia Novak

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-12-15

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 3031090195

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This volume addresses the current boom in biographical fictions across the globe, examining the ways in which gendered lives of the past become re-imagined as gendered narratives in fiction. Building on this research, this book is the first to address questions of gender in a sustained and systematic manner that is also sensitive to cultural and historical differences in both raw material and fictional reworking. It develops a critical lens through which to approach biofictions as ‘fictions of gender’, drawing on theories of biofiction and historical fiction, life-writing studies, feminist criticism, queer feminist readings, postcolonial studies, feminist art history, and trans studies. Attentive to various approaches to fictionalisation that reclaim, appropriate or re-invent their ‘raw material’, the volume assesses the critical, revisionist and deconstructive potential of biographical fictions while acknowledging the effects of cliché, gender norms and established narratives in many of the texts under investigation. The introduction of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Sofonisba Anguissola
Sofonisba Anguissola

Author: Cecilia Gamberini

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2024-04-02

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1606069071

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Sofonisba Anguissola (ca. 1532–1625), an Italian Renaissance painter born in Cremona to a relatively poor noble family, was one of the first women artists to establish an international reputation during her lifetime. This stunningly illustrated monograph explores the evolution of Anguissola’s art from her youth in Cremona through her service as a lady-in-waiting to the Spanish queen Elisabeth of Valois to her later years as a married woman in Sicily and Genoa. Alongside discussions of Anguissola and her work, author Cecilia Gamberini offers a tantalizing exploration of Renaissance court life, detailing how the circles of influence and power operated. This volume highlights the social, political, and cultural preconditions surrounding Anguissola’s role in the court of King Philip II of Spain and her ascent to becoming an internationally acclaimed painter. Gamberini draws on archival documentation, as well as her own original research, to shine a new light on Anguissola’s life, career, and work in this tribute to a truly groundbreaking artist.

Sofonisba Anguissola
Sofonisba Anguissola

Author: Ilya Sandra Perlingieri

Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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Traces the life of the Italian artist who was an apprentice to Michelangelo and court painter to King Philip II of Spain, and discusses her major paintings.

Alicia's Secret
Alicia's Secret

Author: David Osborn

Publisher: Dagmar Miura

Published: 2017-07-16

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1942267371

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Alicia, a young American girl in England, visits an old churchyard and evokes Elvira, a sprightly, mischievous young ghost who in turn introduces her to three extraordinary women from three critical moments in history, when each triumphed in a male-dominated society. Considered the greatest English queen, Matilda of Flanders came from Normandy with William the Conqueror and was at the forefront of politics and culture in her era. Sofonisba Anguissola was an accomplished Renaissance artist who studied with Michelangelo and became his protégé, and Lucie Dillon, once a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette at Versailles, survived the Terror, living in the new United States as a farmer for a time before returning to France to aid Napoleon and Josephine build the social connections they needed to manage their political power. In their own words, these ghostly women describe their widely different lives and loves, and the three periods in which they lived—the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the French Revolution.

The Making of Juana of Austria
The Making of Juana of Austria

Author: Noelia García Pérez

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2021-12-08

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 0807176885

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Edited by art historian Noelia García Pérez, this first-ever collection of essays on Juana of Austria, the younger daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and sister to Philip II of Spain, offers an interdisciplinary study of the Habsburg princess that addresses her political, religious, and artistic dimensions. The volume’s contextual framework shows her sharing agency with other women of her dynastic family who governed in the sixteenth century and developed an outstanding reputation for promoting artists and works of art. The Making of Juana of Austria demonstrates how Juana’s role as a leading patron of the arts offered her a means of creating her own image, which she then promulgated through the objects she collected and her crowning architectural endeavor, the Monastery-Palace of the Descalzas Reales. Drawing on early modern literature, archival documents, and artworks, the essays in this volume delineate a new portrait of Juana of Austria. Contributors not only highlight her multiple facets—princess of Portugal, regent of Castile, and the only female Jesuit in history—but also show her as a discerning art patron and collector who pursued an active role of patronage, through which she constructed her own art collection and used it to articulate a visual statement of her lineage, power, and religious convictions. Her role as an art promoter culminated with the foundation of the Descalzas Reales and the works of art she collected and displayed within its walls. The Making of Juana of Austria offers a new perspective on female rule and patronage, exploring the achievements of a crucial figure in the history of art, court, and gender in early modern Europe.

Women Artists in Paris, 1850-1900
Women Artists in Paris, 1850-1900

Author: Laurence Madeline

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2017-01-01

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0300223935

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Paris was the epicenter of art during the latter half of the nineteenth century, luring artists from around the world with its academies, museums, salons, and galleries. Despite the city's cosmopolitanism and its cultural stature, Parisian society remained strikingly conservative, particularly with respect to gender. Nonetheless, many women painters chose to work and study in Paris at this time, overcoming immense obstacles to access the city's resources. 'Women Artists in Paris, 1850-1900' showcases the remarkable artistic production of women during this period of great cultural change, revealing the breadth and strength of their creative achievements. Guest Curator Laurence Madeline (Chief Curator at Musées d'art et d'histoire, Geneva) has selected close to seventy compelling paintings by women of varied nationalities, ranging from well-known artists such as Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, and Rosa Bonheur, to lesser-known figures such as Kitty Kielland, Louise Breslau, and Anna Ancher.

The Women I Think About at Night
The Women I Think About at Night

Author: Mia Kankimäki

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-12-07

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1982129204

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In this “thought-provoking blend of history, biography, women’s studies, and travelogue” (Library Journal) Mia Kankimäki recounts her enchanting travels in Japan, Kenya, and Italy while retracing the steps of ten remarkable female pioneers from history. What can a forty-something childless woman do? Bored with her life and feeling stuck, Mia Kankimäki leaves her job, sells her apartment, and decides to travel the world, following the paths of the female explorers and artists from history who have long inspired her. She flies to Tanzania and then to Kenya to see where Karen Blixen—of Out of Africa fame—lived in the 1920s. In Japan, Mia attempts to cure her depression while researching Yayoi Kusama, the contemporary artist who has voluntarily lived in a psychiatric hospital for decades. In Italy, Mia spends her days looking for the works of forgotten Renaissance women painters of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and finally finds her heroines in the portraits of Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Atremisia Gentileschi. If these women could make it in the world hundreds of years ago, why can’t Mia? The Women I Think About at Night is “an astute, entertaining…[and] insightful” (Publishers Weekly) exploration of the lost women adventurers of history who defied expectations in order to see—and change—the world.

The Emerging Female Citizen
The Emerging Female Citizen

Author: Theresa Ann Smith

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2006-05-15

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780520932227

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Eighteenth-century Spanish women were not idle bystanders during one of Europe's most dynamic eras. As Theresa Ann Smith skillfully demonstrates in this lively and absorbing book, Spanish intellectuals, calling for Spain to modernize its political, social, and economic institutions, brought the question of women's place to the forefront, as did women themselves. In explaining how both discourse and women's actions worked together to define women's roles in the nation, The Emerging Female Citizen not only illustrates the rising visibility of women, but also reveals the complex processes that led to women's relatively swift exit from most public institutions in the early 1800s. As artists, writers, and reformers, Spanish women took up pens, joined academies and economic societies, formed tertulias—similar to French salons—and became active in the burgeoning public discourse of Enlightenment. In analyzing the meaning of women's presence in diverse centers of Enlightenment, Smith offers a new interpretation of the dynamics among political discourse, social action, and gender ideologies.