A sensitive portrait of a dignified boy graces the galleries of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.
Depicted in full length, the boy stands straight, with one arm resting gently on a stately white column decorated with marble inlays. Other than the fine lace that peeks out at the collar and the cuffs, he is clad entirely in a black satin fabric, fashionable in Italian Renaissance courts. The gloves in his hand, the ring on his pinky, and the shiny metallic sword hanging around his waist signify his aristocratic status and a lifestyle defined by martial virtue and the pleasure of hunting, which is further reinforced by the faithful dog sleeping at his feet.
By all accounts, this is a traditional Renaissance court portrait, with all its characteristic traits. But what’s most incongruous with that ideal image of the solemn noble is the slightly furrowed brows on the young face, which make his stare almost hesitant, as if being prematurely forced to pose for a role more severe than his age would permit.
This indeed was the delicate situation, which the artist Sofonisba Anguissola subtly captured. After his father’s unexpected death in 1557, the young Massimiliano Stampa II became the third Marquess of Soncino, a small city in northern Italy given to his uncle some 20 years before for offering Milan to the Holy Roman Emperor in a time of political crisis.
Upon the boy’s inheritance of the title, the family commissioned this official portrait to commemorate the event. For this, they called on Anguissola—a young woman painter from nearby Cremona, who was now given her first major commission.
Anguissola the Artist
The story of Anguissola is a remarkable one. Born into a noble family of Byzantine heritage, she received a well-rounded education that included the fine arts. And she was, along with four of the six Anguissola sisters who became painters, greatly encouraged by her father to cultivate her talents. At the age of 14, Sofonisba was placed under the tutelage of a respected portraitist of the local Lombard school.
She traveled to Rome in the following decade, where her talent was immediately recognized by the great Michelangelo, who offered her his valuable guidance. Her reputation as a capable portraitist came to be gradually solidified after she successfully executed various intimate paintings of herself, her family, and particularly her younger sisters.
Two Futures
The encounter between the two was brief, but both the artist and her patron ended up having long and adventurous careers. A year later, after painting the Duke of Alba in Milan, Anguissola was recommended to the Spanish court of King Philip II, where she spent the next 14 years as an artist-courtier. She continued to paint portraits for royal personages in Spain and guided the artistic development of the queen and her two daughters.She lived comfortably in various Italian cities until the age of 93, painting and giving advice to young painters who came to see her. In 1624, the Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck visited the 92-year-old Anguissola, and he is known to have claimed that their conversation taught him more about the principles of painting than anything else in his life.
Meanwhile, Massimiliano held his title for 44 years (1557–1601), during which he fathered eight children, began a political career in the Duchy of Milan, and made generous donations to the library in Soncino and for the city to build a Capuchin monastery. After the death of his wife, he retired from public life and began a period of profound religious meditation—going on pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela and Jerusalem. He eventually became a Capuchin friar in 1596 at the monastery he had helped found.
Toward the end of his life, he was called to liberate the Christians enslaved by Ottoman and Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean. He died in Algiers, North Africa, after spending 10 months on the mission. The world that the adult Massimiliano ended up seeing, just like the one that Anguissola experienced, was much larger and more different than the small Lombard town that staged their first and only youthful meeting.
