Retrato de Minerva Anguissola

Sofonisba Anguissola was something the 16th century barely had a place for: a noblewoman who was also a serious painter. Her father, a minor nobleman in Cremona, gave his daughters a full humanist education, unusual for the day, and several of them learned to paint. Within a few years Sofonisba's reputation would carry her all the way to Madrid, to the court of the king of Spain. This is her sister Minerva, painted at home around 1560, though a few historians suspect the face is really Sofonisba's own. Either way, look at the medallion at the sitter's neck. It shows a woman in a helmet holding a spear, the goddess Minerva, a quiet pun on the name that the educated Anguissola household would have caught in an instant.