This week’s artist is Sofonisba Anguissola (1532 – 1625), an Italian painter who set a precedent for women being accepted as students of art. She was born into an aristocratic family of Cremona, and her father made sure that she received a well-rounded education that included the fine arts.
Her most famous work is ‘The Chess Game’, which she painted aged 20. We see, left to right, her sisters Lucia, Minerva, and Europa playing chess, under the supervision of their nurse or servant. The work is most notable for two reasons. First of all, the figures are presented playing chess, a highly intellectual activity requiring logic and strategic skills, which at the time was felt appropriate for men only. However, art historians note that in this period new rules of chess were introduced, whereby the queen became the most powerful piece on the board, now capable of moving an unlimited number of spaces, horizontally, vertically, diagonally. The sisters can thus be considered a statement about the role of women, who can partake in the same intellectual activities as men.
The second aspect that makes this work monumental is that it innovates the genre of family portraits. In the painting, we are presented with a domestic and informal scene. The characters’ gazes intertwine dynamically, going from the servant to cheeky Minerva (second from right) to dumbfounded Europa (right) to confident Lucia (left) to the viewer, whom we can imagine to be Anguissola herself, the culmination of the sequence. The gazes tell us about what’s going on in the game; they make it clear that Minerva is smiling in anticipation of Lucia’s next move, which is going to make her the winner of the game, leaving Europa surprised and almost upset with the result. The intensity of facial expressions gives the painting genuine humanity and conveys a sense of intimacy among the characters. This is an innovation in Italian painting of the period, where works focusing on the aristocracy were generally impersonal. But Anguissola does not fail to acknowledge the status of her family, as she depicts her sisters in exquisite clothes. The painting is the first example of the combination between family portraiture and a quasi-narrative scene.
The repercussions of this work on the history of art are ‘monumental’: it brings women into the picture by portraying them as engaging in masculine activities, innovating artistic genres as no male painter had previously done.
