Sofonisba Anguissola on her deathbed

On 12 July 1624, in Palermo, the young van Dyck drew the painter Sofonisba Anguissola from life in his Italian sketchbook, now in the British Museum. Beside the drawing he noted that at 96 she still had a very sharp memory and mind, an age greater than the one she most probably had. She died in Palermo the following year.

Here she lies against a white pillow, in the same kind of dark dress and white veil, with her long fingers caught by the light. The museum dates the canvas to 1624 or 1625. Another reading has van Dyck, on hearing of her death, using his sketch and an earlier portrait of her as the basis for a deathbed commemoration of an artist he admired. He would paint a woman on her deathbed again in London in 1633, Venetia, Lady Digby. In 1930 the Turin industrialist Riccardo Gualino, whose business empire was collapsing, handed his collection to the state, and this portrait came with it.