An internationally respected Renaissance portrait and genre artist, Sofonisba Anguissola (1535"-1625) thrived as a professional painter in a male-dominated milieu. As court painter to Philip II of Spain and art instructor to Queen Isabella of Valois, Anguissola took seriously her pursuit of the liberal arts. On numerous canvases, she demonstrated the development of realistic domestic scenarios, original studies that did not emulate the concepts of contemporary male painters.

Sofonisba was the daughter of Blanca Ponzone and Amilcare Anguissola, a minor noble and land owner in partnership with his father-in-law as a dealer in books, leather, silk, and art supplies. She was born around 1535 or a little earlier in Cremona, Lombardy, a north-central Italian province then under Spanish control. She and her five younger sisters and one brother lived in a comfortable palazzo on the Via Tibaldi two blocks from the city center and enjoyed an inherited family estate...