STOCKHOLM.- Nationalmuseum has purchased a portrait painted by the Italian Renaissance artist Sofonisba Anguissola. This is the first work by a celebrated fifteenth-century woman painter to enter the museum’s collections. The portrait, which represents a man in priestly garb, will be on view in the galleries from September 16th.

Sofonisba Anguissola (1532–1625) became famous as a portraitist during her lifetime, as much for her sharp observation of reality as her ability to portray human emotions. Raised in a noble family in the northern Italian town of Cremona, she received a well-rounded education and, unprecedented at the time, she was sent outside the family home to study painting. Among her earliest works are several self-portraits and portraits of family members, whereby she honed her skills. The newly discovered portrait acquired by Nationalmuseum, on the other hand, depicts a so-called canon regular of the Catholic Church, a member of a cathedral chapter who has taken priestly vows and is tied to a religious order. He wears the typical white linen rochett (rochetto) trimmed with lace over his cassock. The portrait was painted in Cremona soon after Anguissola had finished her artistic training in 1551. The small-scale portrait, measuring only 19x15 cm, with its fine detail and harmonious interplay of light and shadows demonstrates the artist’s technical virtuosity as well as her artistic maturity at the outset of her career.

With quiet intensity the sitter gazes directly towards the viewer and the portrait seems to express the strong conviction and determination of the preacher. The model has been tentatively identified as Ippolito Chizzola (1521–1565), a canon of the Lateran in Rome, who visited Cremona during the years that Anguissola was active there. The artist painted several portraits of unidentified canons during the 1550s, and the sitter’s identity, therefore, remains unknown. Small portable portraits by Anguissola such as the present example were sent as gifts to potential patrons, a campaign that achieved its ultimate success when, in 1559, King Philip II invited the ambitious young artist to the Spanish court. The acquisition, made possible by a donation from the Sophia Giesecke Fund, is part of the strategy of Nationalmuseum to add works by women artists to the collections.