Sofonisba Anguissola (circa 1532 to 1625) was an Italian Renaissance painter from Cremona who achieved considerable fame during her lifetime as the first widely-known female artist. She was invited by the Habsburg King Philip II of Spain (reign 1556 to 1598) to become the painting instructor and lady-in-waiting to his third wife, Elisabeth of Valois (1546 to 1568).

In 1573, she married an Italian nobleman, Fabrizio Moncada, and moved to Paternò, Sicily, where she remained until Moncada's death in 1578. She then planned to return to Cremona, but sailing back north from Palermo in 1579, she fell in love with the ship's captain, Orazio Lomellini, and they married and lived together in Genoa for the next 35 years. In 1615, the couple moved to Palermo, where Sofonisba lived out the next 10 years of her life.

A specialist in portraiture, Sofonisba was renowned for her pioneering ability to present uniquely lifelike, psychologically astute depictions of her subjects.

Sofonisba was the first of seven children (six daughters and one son) of Amilcare Anguissola (1494 to 1573) and Bianca Ponzoni (circa 1515 to circa 1600), minor Cremonese nobility. In 1546, Sofonisba and her sister Elena began to receive formal artistic training from the rising young Cremonese artist Bernardino Campi (1522 to 1591). They worked with Campi for about four years until he left Cremona for Milan, whereupon they continued their artistic education with another well-established local painter, Bernardino Gatti (1495 to 1576).

At some point shortly thereafter, Elena entered a convent – Sofonisba's presumed portrait of her as a nun is often considered to be her first surviving work – while Sofonisba began to rapidly produce a spectrum of compelling portraits.

As Sofonisba's artistic skills developed, her father, Amilcare, began to aggressively promote her reputation by sending her works as gifts to influential people.

In her early years, Sofonisba focused primarily on creating a diverse array of self-portraits and depictions of family members. Having rapidly established herself as a celebrated artistic talent, increasing numbers of people of influence began visiting her Cremona house to have their portrait painted, such as the famed manuscript illustrator and miniaturist Giulio Clovio (1498 to 1578), friend of both El Greco and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and the poet and engraver Giovanni Battista Caselli.

As part of his continual promotional efforts, Amilcare sent Michelangelo (1475 to 1564) one of Sofonisba's sketches of a laughing girl, which impressed the master sufficiently to lead him to challenge her to draw a weeping boy instead, which he maintained would be much harder. Sofonisba's response to this challenge is widely believed to be her drawing Boy Bitten by a Crayfish, now in the Museo Capodimonte in Naples.

Likely the most widely known of Sofonisba's work from this early period is her Chess Game of 1555, a work glowingly commented upon by Giorgio Vasari, who saw the painting during his visit to the Anguissola family home in Cremona in the mid-1560s.

A compelling group portrait of three of the artist's sisters (Lucia, Minerva, and Europa) and a maid around a game of chess in an outdoor setting, the work combines Sofonisba's strong command of portraiture with her trademark attention to detail (through the intricate design of the girls' clothing, jewellery, and tablecloth upon which the chess board sits) while exhibiting clear Leonardesque influences through its repeated use of chiaroscuro and bluish background landscape. Given its unique depiction of exclusively female characters involved in a demonstrably intellectual activity, the painting is considered by many to be a founding work of feminist art.

While producing an array of captivating portraits during those initial years in Cremona, Sofonisba also involved herself in teaching art to her younger siblings, Lucia (circa 1537 to 1565), Minerva (circa 1543 to 1564), and Europa (circa 1548 to 1578), all of whom were believed to have become highly accomplished artists in their own right. While no paintings of Minerva have survived, several works attributed to Europa are currently displayed in major international galleries, while Lucia is widely viewed as by far the most talented of all the other Anguissola sisters, whose artistic career might well have rivalled Sofonisba's had she not died in her twenties. Giorgio Vasari, whose aforementioned visit to the Anguissola home occurred after Lucia had already died, also saw Lucia's celebrated Portrait of Pietro Manna and later poignantly wrote, "in dying, Lucia had left of herself no less fame than that of Sofonisba" (quoted in Gamberini, 57).

Given the strong resemblances between the Anguissola daughters and their commonly acquired artistic techniques, it is often difficult today for experts to clearly determine not only which sister is being depicted, but which one created the work – with vigorous debates of attribution, particularly between Sofonisba and Lucia, occurring throughout the Sofonisba literature.

Sofonisba's youngest sister, Anna Maria (circa 1554 to 1611), also became a successful artist, but as she was only five years old when Sofonisba left for Spain, it is presumed that she, in turn, was trained by her elder sisters, Lucia, Minerva, and Europa.

While Sofonisba was never, as is sometimes maintained, an official 'court painter' of Philip II, her artistic abilities were clearly held in high esteem by all. In addition to her duties as lady-in-waiting and personal art teacher to Elisabeth of Valois, whose portrait she painted several times, she also painted the likeness of key figures in Philip's court (including Philip himself) and was clearly viewed as being on equal terms with Alonso Sánchez Coello, Philip's official court painter (circa 1531 to 1588). In one surviving document, Coello is asked to make no fewer than 13 copies of a portrait of Philip's son Don Carlos (1545 to 1568) that Sofonisba had painted the year before.

When in Spain, Sofonisba significantly adapted her style to fit in with the dominant tradition of Spanish court portraiture, concentrating primarily on single figures, typically standing in full-length pose, and no longer signed her work. While this doubtless resulted in a positive reception of her paintings throughout Philip's court, it also makes it particularly difficult today to distinguish between works by Sofonisba and those of others, particularly Coello. Attributional evaluations of such court portraits have fluctuated intensely over the years and are still actively debated.

Many of the works most widely believed to have been painted by Sofonisba from this period are currently in Madrid's Museo del Prado, such as her portraits of Elisabeth of Valois holding a miniature of Philip II, Philip II, and Anne of Austria. Other broadly accepted Sofonisba paintings from her Spanish period include the portraits of Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia (in Turin's Galleria Sabauda), Juana of Austria with a child (in Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), and Alessandro Farnese (in the National Gallery of Ireland).

Despite the fact that Sofonisba lived for over 50 more years after leaving Spain, and a great many contemporary and near-contemporary commentators (Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Pedro Pablo di Ribera, Raffaele Soprani, Filippo Baldinucci) maintain that she was consistently active artistically throughout, there are only a handful of paintings (nearly all religious works) clearly attributable to her from the years after she returned to Italy in 1573 to her death in 1625. This frustratingly large absence of key artistic information is, however, slightly compensated for by one particularly well-documented encounter we have of Sofonisba with the young Anthony van Dyck (1599 to 1641), who was visiting Palermo in 1624 to paint the portrait of the viceroy, Emmanuel Philibert (1588 to 1624). Van Dyck recorded his meeting with Sofonisba in great detail in his Italian Sketchbook, writing:

When I did her portrait, she gave me several pieces of advice on not to raise the light too high so that the shadows should not accentuate the wrinkles of old age and many other good suggestions, and she also told me about parts of her life, from which it is apparent that she was a miraculous painter from life, and her greatest torment was not being able to paint anymore because of her failing sight, though her hand was still steady and untrembling.

(quoted in Gamberini, 121)

His portrait of Sofonisba is currently hanging in Knole House, Kent, and is notable for its lack of shadows on Sofonisba's face, precisely as she suggested. According to several sources (i.e., Raffaele Soprani and Filippo Baldinucci), Van Dyck, who went on to become one of the greatest portraitists in the history of art, later declared that he learned more from his discussion with Sofonisba than from all his time studying the works of more famous painters.

Sofonisba's artistic legacy is twofold. Firstly, as a keenly sensitive and technically astute artist, her uniquely vivid, highly astute style contributed strongly to the ongoing development of psychological portraiture that culminated in the likes of Van Dyck and Rembrandt. Secondly, as a renowned female painter, she served as an inspiration for future generations by tangibly demonstrating that it was now possible for a woman to achieve wide renown simply through her level of artistic and cultural accomplishment. The most prominent examples of women artists who enthusiastically followed in her footsteps include: Irene di Spilembergo (1538 to 1559), Fede Galizia (circa 1578 to 1630), Marietta Robusti (1560 to 1590), Lavinia Fontana (1552 to 1614), and Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 to 1653).