Portrait of the Artist's Sisters Playing Chess

Sofonisba Anguissola was about 23 when she painted this in 1555, and as a woman she was barred from the usual training, no life studies of nude models, no big commissioned altarpieces. So she painted what was in front of her, her own family. Here three of her sisters gather over a chessboard, with an old servant looking on. Lucia has just won a move and glances out at us; Minerva raises a hand in mock protest; the youngest simply grins. It is an ordinary afternoon, but showing girls absorbed in a game of pure strategy was itself a quiet argument about what women's minds could do. Along the edge of the board Anguissola signed it in Latin, naming herself the virgin daughter of Amilcare and recording that she painted her three sisters from life.