Caption: "Bernardino Campo painting the portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola"
Self portrait with her teacher Bernardino Campi [1558-59]
Paintress: Sofonisba Anguissola [1532-1625]
Location: Siena; Pinacoteca Nazionale
high resolution photo
The composition of this painting is rather sophisticated: The paintress Sofonisba Anguissola paints her teacher Bernardino Campi, whilst he is portraying her. What we see is the painter Bernardino Campi in action, whereas Sofonisba Anguissola is looking from the canvas on the easel to the spectator.
In the late 1550s, Sofonisba painted an intriguing self-portrait of her teacher Bernardino Campi painting her. The image calls to mind the subject-object relationship evident in Renaissance art as most famously illustrated by Albrecht Dürer's illustration of a draftsman drawing a nude. This work, that has been much discussed in recent criticism, identifies the male artist as the active subject and the female model as the passive object. As defined in Barbara Freedman's discussion of the image, "we [the observer of the image] usually identify with the male as the appropriate bearer of the look, the female as the proper object of that look; we identify with reason against sexuality, activity over passivity, and seeing instead of showing." Sofonisba complicates this relationship by having Campi look out of the painting at us. In this context we become Sofonisba herself, the active maker of this painting. Sofonisba thus plays both the role of the subject and object, the viewer and the viewed, in this painting. The heads and hands of Campi and Sofonisba stand out starkly against the dark background and clothing of the two figures. This calls attention to the conception of painting as being the interconnection between the intellectual and manual. The hand of Campi actively painting is set directly above the relaxed, inactive hand of Sofonisba. Just as Campi constructs Sofonisba's image in the painting, Campi also trained Sofonisba's artistic hand. Considering that Sofonisba employed a mirror in creating her image, the prominent hand in the painting would be her right hand. Mary Garrard in her discussion of the painting [reprinted in Reclaiming Female Agency, p.28] calls attention to a 1554 letter from Francesco Salviati to Bernardino Campi where he characterizes Sofonisba as "the beautiful Cremonese painter, your creation" and that her work is a product of Bernardino's "beautiful intellect." Sofonisba painted this work after she had left Bernardino Campi's workshop. It thus can be seen as an homage by Sofonisba to her old teacher in the role he played in fashioning her as an artist.
Caption: "Bernardino Campo painting the portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola"
Self portrait with her teacher Bernardino Campi [1558-59]
Paintress: Sofonisba Anguissola [1532-1625]
Location: Siena; Pinacoteca Nazionale
high resolution photo
The composition of this painting is rather sophisticated: The paintress Sofonisba Anguissola paints her teacher Bernardino Campi, whilst he is portraying her. What we see is the painter Bernardino Campi in action, whereas Sofonisba Anguissola is looking from the canvas on the easel to the spectator.
In the late 1550s, Sofonisba painted an intriguing self-portrait of her teacher Bernardino Campi painting her. The image calls to mind the subject-object relationship evident in Renaissance art as most famously illustrated by Albrecht Dürer's illustration of a draftsman drawing a nude. This work, that has been much discussed in recent criticism, identifies the male artist as the active subject and the female model as the passive object. As defined in Barbara Freedman's discussion of the image, "we [the observer of the image] usually identify with the male as the appropriate bearer of the look, the female as the proper object of that look; we identify with reason against sexuality, activity over passivity, and seeing instead of showing." Sofonisba complicates this relationship by having Campi look out of the painting at us. In this context we become Sofonisba herself, the active maker of this painting. Sofonisba thus plays both the role of the subject and object, the viewer and the viewed, in this painting. The heads and hands of Campi and Sofonisba stand out starkly against the dark background and clothing of the two figures. This calls attention to the conception of painting as being the interconnection between the intellectual and manual. The hand of Campi actively painting is set directly above the relaxed, inactive hand of Sofonisba. Just as Campi constructs Sofonisba's image in the painting, Campi also trained Sofonisba's artistic hand. Considering that Sofonisba employed a mirror in creating her image, the prominent hand in the painting would be her right hand. Mary Garrard in her discussion of the painting [reprinted in Reclaiming Female Agency, p.28] calls attention to a 1554 letter from Francesco Salviati to Bernardino Campi where he characterizes Sofonisba as "the beautiful Cremonese painter, your creation" and that her work is a product of Bernardino's "beautiful intellect." Sofonisba painted this work after she had left Bernardino Campi's workshop. It thus can be seen as an homage by Sofonisba to her old teacher in the role he played in fashioning her as an artist.