Sofonisba Anguissola Commemorative Journal

Still relevant after 400 years

Though we don’t know with certainty in what year sixteenth-century painter Sofonisba Anguissola was born, we know her death date: November 16, 1625. Thus November 2025 marks a significant anniversary, the 400th since the departure from this mortal sphere of an important Renaissance woman artist. Art Herstory commemorates this important historic moment with a limited edition hard cover journal featuring one of the artist’s iconic early self-portraits.

We present more details below about the new commemorative journal. But first, we survey the ways in which Sofonisba is, even after 400 years, still relevant.

About the artist

Sofonisba Anguissola, an Italian noblewoman, was an artistic prodigy. In her lifetime, Michelangelo, Giorgio Vasari and Anthony Van Dyck recognized her talent. Her father was a humanist with forward-thinking ideas about educating and training his daughters. So, unusually for women at that time, she had the opportunity to train as a painter. Her surviving works, which museums all over the world hold, include at least 16 self-portraits, from all stages of her life—from young to quite old. According to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website, she “executed more self-portraits than any other artist in the period between Dürer and Rembrandt.”

*Self-portrait*, 1610, by Sofonisba Anguissola; Gottfried Keller Foundation

Recognition and revival

Sofonisba’s fame—like that of many historic women artists—waned in the centuries after her death. But today, she is receiving recognition in a variety of forms. In September 2025, Stockholm’s Nationalmuseum put the artist in the news by purchasing her painting Portrait of a Canon Regular. Four centuries on, she is also gaining presence in museum exhibitions, fiction and non-fiction books, and films.

*Portrait of a Canon Regular*, mid 1550s, by Sofonisba Anguissola; Nationalmuseum

Museum shows

Since 2019, the art of Sofonisba Anguissola has appeared in several high-profile museum exhibitions. Madrid’s Prado Museum featured her work alongside that of Lavinia Fontana in A Tale of Two Women Painters: Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana. In 2022–23, Nivaagaards Malerisamling and Rijksmuseum Twenthe collaborated to host a solo exhibition about the portrait painter.

And Sofonisba’s work has been included in several survey exhibitions, among them:

Women Artists 1300–1900 at Prague’s National Gallery;

Ingenious Women: Women Artists and their Companions at Bucerius Kunstforum and Kunstmuseum Basel (2023–2024);

Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400–1800 at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Art Gallery of Ontario (2023–24).

By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500–1800 at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts (2021–22); and

Le Signore dell’Arte. Storie di donne tra ’500 e ’600 /The Ladies of Art: Stories of Women from the 16th and 17th Centuries at Milan’s Palazzo Reale (2021).

Installation photo of family portraits in *Sofonisba Anguissola: Portraitist of the Renaissance* at Rijksmuseum Twenthe; author photo

Book publications

Sofonisba Anguissola is the protagonist in at least three novels published in just the last six years: Lady in Ermine: The Story of a Woman who Painted the Renaissance; The Lone Snake: The Story of Sofonisba Anguissola; and The Secret Life of Sofonisba Anguissola. In the same timeframe, at least three adult non-fiction books about the artist have appeared.

A Tale of Two Women Painters: Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana is the exhibition catalog for the Prado show mentioned above.
Sofonisba’s Lesson: A Renaissance Artist and Her Work explores Sofonisba’s art through the central themes of teaching and learning. It also includes a “complete illustrated catalog of the more than 200 known paintings and drawings that writers have associated with Sofonisba over the past 450 years, with a full accounting of modern scholarly opinion on each.” (The pace of scholarship on the artist is such that an updated and revised version of this book is forthcoming in 2026.)
And Sofonisba Anguissola is an accessibly written, beautifully illustrated narrative that explores the evolution of the painter’s art from her training in Cremona to her later years as a married woman in Sicily and Genoa. It focuses especially on her service at the court of Philip II in Madrid. This volume is published in the book series Illuminating Women Artists; it is available to North American readers here.

Films

Based on the novel mentioned above, the Lady in Ermine short film portrays the day that Sofonisba realizes her calling. It serves as a proof of concept for a feature film adaptation. Another short film about the artist, Four Chambers to the Heart, depicts her in 1624, at quite an advanced age. This animated film uses her letters to tell the story of her life, her art, and her legacy. And Sofonisba’s Chess Game examines the painter’s iconic masterpiece as a window into her full oeuvre. This documentary presents a detailed picture of the world she lived in, and of her journey to become a celebrated portrait artist.

About Art Herstory’s Sofonisba journal

The cover of the new Art Herstory commemorative Sofonisba journal features a reproduction, against a black background, of the artist’s iconic miniature self-portrait from the mid 1550s. She portrays herself holding a gold medallion that contains a monogram. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston holds the original painting.

The journal’s back cover is olive green; its format is 6 x 8-1/4 x 5/8 inches. Weighing 13 ounces, the journal contains 100 pages of lined paper. The soft-touch laminate finish gives the journal a silky smooth, high-end feel. As a special feature, the journal includes an attached black ribbon bookmark.

Other Art Herstory products featuring the artist’s work

Art Herstory has issued two note cards that reproduce paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola. The first is our Family Portrait card, which reproduces a painting that Nivaagaards Malerisamling owns. The second is our Chess Game card. In this case, the institution that holds the work is the Raczyński Foundation, National Museum, Poznań.

The cards are available individually, and also in an attractive 8-card, self-packaged wallet. In honor of the important anniversary this year, all Sofonisba note card products are on sale at a 25% discount.