Virtuosa: Sofonisba Anguissola
Caroline Campbell, 10 September 2020
‘The Chess Game’ (1555)
In July 1624, two artists met in Palermo during an outbreak of plague which killed thousands of people, including the city’s ruler. The younger artist, Anthony Van Dyck, made a quick pen and ink drawing and wrote down his impressions of Sofonisba Anguissola, then apparently 96 years old and almost blind. He was struck by her intellectual...