Experiences As A Female Artist
Although Anguissola enjoyed significantly more encouragement and support than the average woman of her day, her social class did not allow her to transcend the constraints of her sex. Without the possibility of studying anatomy or drawing from life (it was considered unacceptable for a lady to view nudes), she could not undertake the complex multi-figure compositions required for large-scale religious or history paintings.
Instead, she experimented with new styles of portraiture, setting subjects informally. Self-portraits and family members were her most frequent subjects, as seen in such paintings as Self-Portrait (1554, Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna), The Chess Game (1555, Muzeum Narodowe, Poznań), which depicted her sisters Lucia, Minerva and Europa, and Portrait of Amilcare, Minerva and Asdrubale Anguissola (c. 1557-1558, Nivaagaards Malerisambling, Niva, Denmark).
Read more about this topic: Sofonisba Anguissola
Famous quotes containing the words experiences, female and/or artist:
“Nonwhite and working-class women, if they are ever to identify with the organized women’s movement, must see their own diverse experiences reflected in the practice and policy statements of these predominantly white middle-class groups.”
—Kimberly Crenshaw (b. 1959)
“The same polarity of the male and female principle exists in nature; not only, as is obvious in animals and plants, but in the polarity of the two fundamental functions, that of receiving and penetrating. It is the polarity of earth and rain, of the river and the ocean, of night and day, of darkness and light, of matter and spirit.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“Every artist writes his own autobiography.”
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939)