COPENHAGEN.- The Sofonisba Anguissola exhibition at The Nivaagaard Collection has launched new research – and the mystery of an exciting Renaissance work in the collection has been solved. Sofonisba’s sister, Europa Anguissola, has now been added to the museum’s art collection. The discovery of Europa Anguissola as the artist behind the painting, until this year known as, Portrait of an Old Woman, brings Sofonisba's sister into the spotlight among the few known female Renaissance painters who created paintings of high quality. This portrait is now known as one of just three secure surviving works by Europa Anguissola. It is the only painting by the artist in a public collection, her only certain secular work and the only known work by her outside Italy - the other two are altarpieces in Italian churches.

The story behind

When The Nivaagaard Collection’s founder, Johannes Hage, bought Portrait of an Old Woman in 1912, it was believed that it was Sofonisba Anguissola’s (ca. 1532-1625) last self-portrait. In the 90s, however, scholars came to doubt that Sofonisba was the artist. The work is from the Italian Renaissance, but some details are less elaborate than Sofonisba would have painted them and the woman it shows is much older than Sofonisba was at the time it was made. The work was instead attributed to ‘the circle of the Anguissola sisters’.

The invisible inscription

In the spring of 2022, the museum’s special consultant, Professor Jørgen Wadum, found a conservation report for the work in the archives of the National Gallery of Denmark. In this report from 1972, there is a photo of a now invisible inscription on the back of the work’s original canvas which was at the time stabilised with an additional canvas on the back. This report was completely unknown to the employees at The Nivaagaard Collection, but after quite a bit of research, the leading Sofonisba expert, Art Historian Michael Cole at Columbia University in New York, was able to read the inscription as follows and thus name the old lady that is portrayed:

BLANCA. ORPHEA. P. IO.
SCHING VX ~
DI. BENBO. ~

Michael Cole wrote about his preliminary theories about the work in the catalogue for The Nivaagaard Collection’s current exhibition Sofonisba - History’s Forgotten Miracle. However, the mystery surrounding the inscription had not been completely solved when the catalogue was published, and Michael Cole continued his investigations.

The woman in the picture




Cole’s further research found that the inscription “SCHING” (which at first looked as "SOHING") is an abbreviated version of the Italian family name Schinchinelli. The likelihood of this being correct is supported by the fact that Sofonisba’s little sister, Europa Anguissola, was married to Carlo Schinchinelli (Europa also includes the name Schinchinelli in her signature for the work Calling of St. Andrew). Cole realized that this Carlo was the son of Pietro Giovanni Schinchinelli, who in Latin would be called Petrus Ioannis. This solves the mystery of the inscription “P. IO.” The woman could therefore be declared to be Carlo’s father’s widow; the inscription “VX” is a Latin abbreviation for ‘uxor’ which means wife – and she is wearing a veil. Cole proposed that 'BLANCA' must be a Latin version of the Italian name Bianca – and researcher at The University of Milan, Rossana Sacchi, was subsequently able to confirm that Pietro Giovanni had in fact married a woman named Bianca, who is Europa Anguissola’s mother-in-law. Finally, the last part of the inscription may indicate that at some point the work belonged to a person named Benbo.

Europa Anguissola - Sofonisba’s sister and pupil

The work’s stylistic characteristics support Michael Cole’s theory that the painter of the work is Sofonisba’s younger sister, Europa. The painting was clearly made by someone familiar with Sofonisba’s style, and it is in indeed a strong, personal and very rare depiction of and by a woman from the Italian Renaissance. Sofonisba and her sister Elena were both given instruction from the Cremonan painters Bernardino Campi and Bernardino Gatti, and subsequently it was Sofonisba and Elena who instructed their younger sisters in the art of painting, including Europa. It is therefore known with certainty that Europa was trained in the familiar Anguissola style. While Sofonisba, as the most acclaimed, was called to Spain to serve as a lady in waiting and to teach the young Queen Isabel of Valois to draw, the other sisters remained in Italy where several of them practiced the art of painting.

Andrea Rygg Karberg, Director of The Nivaagaard Collection:

“It is wonderful news that we can now add yet another work to Europa’s oeuvre - and to double the number of female artists in the museum’s collection, where we have so far had Sofonisba Anguissola represented with her famous “Family portrait” in Johannes Hage’s donated painting collection from 1908. It was based on this work that we began working with the current special Sofonisba exhibition four years ago, with a desire to create renewed international focus and research about the forgotten women of art history. That one of the first results turn out to be Sofonisba’s own sister appearing in our collection speaks to the unpredictable and wondrous story surrounding Sofonisba. For several decades it has been a mystery who was the artist behind this beautiful portrait - now it has been solved and the sisters are reunited with each of their works of art at The Nivaagaard Collection. This attribution increases the size of Europa Anguissola’s oeuvre by 50%. We are deeply grateful that with this new discovery we can contribute to rewriting the story of female artists in art history - and in addition learn something new about our collection."

Besides the artist’s name, Europa Anguissola, the portrait in the museum’s collection has now also been given a new rightful title: Portrait of the artist’s mother-in-law.

Experience Europa

Europa’s story is less well known, but in the current exhibition Sofonisba - History’s Forgotten Miracle there are two paintings that depict Europa: She is the little girl laughing in The Chess Game made by Sofonisba Anguissola (1555) and she is also depicted by yet another sister, Lucia Anguissola in Portrait of Europa Anguissola (1556-1558). Her Portrait of the artist’s mother-in-law can also be experienced in the current exhibition.

3 SEPTEMBER 2022 – 15 JANUARY 2023
SOFONISBA – HISTORY’S FORGOTTEN MIRACLE