Self-portrait

In 1552 Sofonisba Anguissola was about 20, the daughter of a minor nobleman in Cremona who had done something unusual: he had his daughters taught to paint. That schooling had limits. A well-born woman could not study anatomy from the nude, could not run a workshop, could not take the big church commissions that made a painter's name. What was left to her was the face, and above all her own. She painted herself again and again, plainly dressed, the brushwork careful and unshowy, and those small panels traveled as a kind of proof that a respectable young woman had truly mastered the art. Word of her reached far. Seven years after this, Philip II called her to Madrid to serve his queen. She lived past 90, and because she kept returning to her own reflection, we can follow that face across more than half a century.