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).

Hugo van der Goes: A Strange and Melancholy Genius

Hugo van der Goes - Monforte Altarpiece - c. 1470 - Oil on wood, 150 x 247 cm - Staatliche Museen, Berlin) (click photo for larger image)Early Netherlandish painting refers to the work of artists, sometimes known as the Flemish Primitives, active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance; especially in the flourishing cities of Bruges, Ghent, Tournai and Brussels. One of its great masters was Hugo van der Goes ( c. 1440-1482).

The most brilliant work from the early period of Van der Goes is the Monforte Altarpiece, named after the town in which it was housed, in a college belonging to a group of Spanish Jesuits. It was subsequently transferred to the Berlin museum. It is a large-scale triptych, of which only the central panel, a long horizontal rectangle, has survived to the present day. A group of hovering angels have been amputated from the top of the panel, and the two wings have disappeared. The theme of the surviving picture is the adoration of the Magi.

The Three Kings and their followers come upon the Virgin, the Holy Infant and Joseph amid the ruins of a palace. A group of villagers observe this extraordinary scene through a gap in the wall. The figures, both actors and witnesses, are all shown on the same scale, whether humble or magnificent. They are neither reticent nor exalted, but react to the event in their various ways, surprised or self-conscious. In the background we can see a few women, some cottages and a river besides which the Kings' horses are waiting. In the foreground, symbolic flowers - the lily and columbine - and a pottery vessel are depicted with great care. A tiny squirrel is running along one of the beams above the opening through which the villagers observe the scene. Van der Goes has given free rein to his imagination, both in the composition and in his handling of paint, deploying the splendidly rich colors that are so characteristic of his art, mixing blazing reds with the most delicately nuanced shades.

You can read more about Hugo van der Goes right HERE on What About Art?

Jean Clouet: Delicacy and Depth of Characterization

Jean Clouet - Guillaume Budé - ca. 1536 - Oil on Wood - 15 5/8 x 13 1/2 in. (39.7 x 34.3 cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (click photo for larger image)Although he lived in France for most of his life, records show that Jean Clouet (c. 1485-1541) was not French by origin and was never naturalized. He was one of the chief painters to Francis I as early as 1516 and was appointed groom of the chamber from 1523 forward. As such, he enjoyed the salary and social position granted to the most prominent poets and scholars of the time. In the early 1520s he lived in Tours and from 1529 in Paris. He painted chiefly portraits, but, at least iIn the earlier part of his career, he produced religious subjects.

“Painter to King Francis I, Jean Clouet played a key role in establishing the Renaissance portraiture tradition in France, yet this is his only extant painted portrait. It depicts Guillaume Budé, librarian to Francis I and the leading humanist of sixteenth-century France…. Budé’s fingers hold his page, as if interrupted. With the quill in his right hand, he has written in Greek, ‘While it seems to be good to get what one desires, the greatest good is not to desire what one does not need’ (Joannes Stobaeus, 3.5.18).” (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC)

Properzia de’Rossi: A “Life”

Properzia de’Rossi - Joseph and Potiphar's Wife - 1520s - Marble - Museo de San Petronio, Bologna (click photo for larger image)Properzia de’Rossi (ca. 1490-1530) was an Italian sculptor, and one of the few recorded women artists in the 16th century. She is the only woman to whom Giorgio Vasari ( 1511-1574) gives a "life" in his  Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, considered the ideological foundation of art historical writing. 

Her inclusion in that work indicates that she was an exceptional artist. Unfortunately, she died young and the only sure work in marble by her hand is a relief for the portal of the Cathedral of Bologna representing the Old Testament story of the Chastity of Joseph. This relief emphasizes the contrast between the voluptuous, eager wife of Potiphar and Joseph's determination to escape her and remain true to his beliefs. This marble relief was commissioned by the Fabbrica of San Petronio for the façade of San Petronio in Bologna.

According to Vasari, Properzia began her career by carving peach stones. One of them, which he described as engraved with the entire Passion, has been identified as forming part of a necklace (Pesaro, Palazzo Bonamini-Pepoli). An engraved cherry stone (Florence, Uffizi) has been attributed to her, as well as 11 carved peach stones set in a device of filigree silver (Bologna, Museo Civico).

To learn more about Properzia and other women artists, I recommend watching “The Story of Women and Art” hosted by Amanda Vickery. She’ll show you some of those peach stones Properzia carved!

Maniera — Style!

Sebastiano del Piombo - Portrait of Cardinal Reginald Pole - 1540s - Oil on canvas, 112 x 95 cm - The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (click photo for larger image)Mannerism, the artistic style which gained popularity in the period following the High Renaissance, takes as its ideals the work of Raphael and Michelangelo. Mannerist Art is typically characterized by a complex composition, with muscular and elongated figures in intricate, sometimes convoluted poses, and a “pushing” of color boundaries. 

Michelangelo (1475-1564), who is covered extensively on this website is widely credited with beginning the Mannerist movement (thought not formally). Other leading Mannerist artists included Rosso Fiorentino, Pontormo, and Parmigiano.

By the late 16th century, there were several anti-Mannerist attempts to reinvigorate art with greater naturalism and emotionalism. These developed into the grand Baroque style, which dominated the 17th century and coincided with the Counter-Reformation. It was Mannerism, however, that was indeed much more modern and forward thinking. While the public loved the style however, the Church did not. And the Church, continued to be art’s greatest patron during this era.

A perhaps lesser known but nevertheless important Mannerist was Sebastiano del Piombo (c. 1485-1547). An Italian painter of the Venetian School (who actually began his professional life as a musician) he was the only major artist of the period to combine the coloring of the Venetian School with the monumental forms of the Roman school.

The subject of the painting featured here—Reginald Pole (1500-1558)—was an English prelate, a Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, and the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury during the Counter Reformation against the Church of England. You’ll notice that his pose is somewhat awkward—that there is nothing in the space behind him—and that the colors are somewhat “bumped up” in this work. This is all typical of Mannerism.