Sofonisba Anguissola: The Challenge

Sofonisba Anguissola - Asdrubale Bitten by a Crawfish - c. 1554 - Black chalk and charcoal on brown paper, 13 x 15 in. - Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples (click photo for larger image)Obviously self-aware and politely subversive, Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1625) seems to have been willing to challenge Michelangelo in both craft and wit. Her father had arranged to for the most famous artist of the age to show one of his daughter's drawings of a laughing child. - an obvious ploy to certify her talent for undertaking a task that Leonardo had described in his notebooks as requiring rare talent and nuance in order that the figure not appear pained or angered instead. 

Michelangelo begrudgingly admitted its proficiency and perversely claimed that showing a crying child would be even more difficult. Anguissola responded with a presentation drawing (featured here now heavily damaged). The scene seems a logical enough response to Michelangelo's remark. One of Anguissola's younger sisters calms their only brother Asdrubale who is being bitten by a crawfish.

Anguissola was the first female artist to gain an international reputation. She was classically educated and became a lady-in-waiting to the queen of Spain, Elizabeth of Valois (1454-68).

Prospero Fontana: A Mannerist

Prospero Fontana - Portrait of a Cardinal - Oil on canvas - 48-1/2 x 43 in. (123.2 x 109.2 cm) - The Norton Simon Museum - Pasadena, CAMannerism refers to an artistic style that gained popularity following the High Renaissance. It is considered to be a period of technical accomplishment but also of formulaic, theatrical and overly stylized work. It was initially inspired by a fascination—almost an obsession—with Michelangelo.

Mannerist Art is characterized by somewhat incomprehensible compositions, featuring muscular and elongated figures in complex poses. It is regarded by many scholars to be the first modern art movement. However, although it was very much liked by the public, it was not appreciated by the Church. Because the Counter-Reformation was heavily patronized by the Church, Mannerism was replaced by the Baroque, which represented a return to standards set in the Renaissance.

By the 1540s, Italian painter Prospero Fontana (1512-1597) was an established artist and worked frequently in Rome, often with Giorgio Vasari.

“In 1550 Pope Julius III formally recognized Fontana’s privileged position at the papal court. The Pope commissioned a portrait from the artist and extended him a principal role in the development of artistic policies. As a portraitist, Fontana favored the formal traditions of this genre as practiced in Florence over the naturalistic representations of Northern Italy.

The unidentified cardinal featured in the painting here sits in a room of indeterminate space with a view beyond into a series of salons. His large body boldly occupies the foreground. The cardinal’s relationship to the room and the connection between the foreground and background is ambiguous, a stylistic convention popular among Mannerist painters.” (Norton Simon Museum)

Amico Aspertini: Eccentricity

Amico Aspertini - Heroic Head - c. 1496 - Tempera on wood, 37,5 x 36,5 cm - Christian Museum, Esztergom (click photo for larger image)Italian painter Amico Aspertini (c. 1475-1552) was an Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor whose complex, eccentric, and eclectic style anticipates Mannerism. He is considered one of the leading exponents of the Bolognese School of painting. From Bologna, he was a pupil of Francesco Francia, and was considered a prodigy. Giorgio Vasari describes Aspertini as having an eccentric personality, and this characteristic emerges from his paintings, which are often bizarre in expression. 

The monochrome painting featured here, with the stone-like frame, resembles a relief. However, it is interesting to note that the bust is not in the painted frame…but before it.

Pontormo: Melancholy and Introspective

Jacopo Pontormo - Alessandro de' Medici - 1534-35 - Oil on panel - 101 x 82 cm - Museum of Art, Philadelphia (click photo for larger image)Jacopo Pontormo (1494-1557) was a Florentine painter (originally named Jacopo Carrucci), who broke away from High Renaissance classicism to create a more personal, anti-traditional style. He is among the most important figures of the first generation of Mannerists. “Mannerism launched a highly imaginative period in art following the climax of perfection that naturalistic painting had reached in Renaissance Italy. Artists in 16th century Florence and Rome started to veer from classical influences and move toward a more intellectual and expressive approach.” (The Art Story)

In the portrait featured here, Duke Alessandro de' Medici is shown making a drawing in metal point of a woman in profile. In the latter part of the fifteenth century artists such as Verrocchio (Leonardo’s teacher) and Leonardo began to draw idealized female heads, often in profile. Michelangelo continued this practice, Alessandro's drawing seems to relate to it. It’s possible that Pontormo was teaching the duke to draw.

The melancholy that saturates this portrait is characteristic of much of Pontormo's paintings.

Amico Aspertini; A “Half-Insane Master”

Amico Aspertini - Nude Male Figure Seated on the Ground - ca. 1535-40 - Black chalk, brush and brown wash, highlighted with white gouache, on brown-washed paper - 9 3/4 x 14 5/16in. (24.8 x 36.4cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (click photo for larger image)Italian Mannerist Painter Amico Aspertini (ca. 1474-1552) was a forerunner of Mannerism from the Bolognese School of Painting. He was described by the biographer of the Italian Renaissance, Giorgio Vasari, “as a half-insane master who produced works rapidly in an eccentric style. Vasari had said he produced so quickly that Chiaroscuro, a bold contrast between light and dark, was spilt with chiaro (clear) in one hand and scuro (dark) in the other.” (Uffizi Gallery)

In the work featured here,“[t]he figure, posed on a shelf like projection ornamented with a scalloped valance, may be studied for one of the many monochrome façade decorations that Aspertini is said to have executed, above all in Bologna (Vasari 1568, vol. 5, pp. 179-180). The reeds or long grasses indicated in the background are possibly intended to identify the figure as a river god.” (Metropolitan Museum of Art)