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Sofonisba Anguissola Essay

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Many artists, architects, scientists, and writers flocked to the northern cities such as Florence, Venice, and Genoa in search of intellectual stimulation. The traders and bankers were also enthralled towards Northern Italy with the hope of making a fortune like the influential and affluent Italian families. Italy was successful in luring people with its’ rich heritage and trade opportunities. These visitors spread out word on the ongoing exciting cultural and social movements in Italy, and soon the ideas of secularism, individualism, rationality and reason were broadcasted to other parts of Europe like France, Germany, Britain, and Netherlands as if seismic waves spreading out of the epicenter that was Italy.

Located on Italy’s north-western …show more content…

She had five sisters (Elena, Lucia, Minerva, Europa, and Anna Maria) and a brother (Asdrubale), to whom she was a living role model.
At the height of the Italian Renaissance, when the gentry educated women only in courtesy, refined living, religion, and needlework, Anguissola had his girls trained in piano and painting. With Sofonisba as mentor, four of her sisters—Lucia, Europa, Elena, and Anna Maria—honed their talents well enough to interest the art community in Mantua, Urbino, Ferrara, Parma, and Rome.[ ]
In 1546, seventeen-year old Sofonisba, along with her younger sister, Elena, was sent to boarding school in the household of Bernardino Campi. Campi was a respected religious painter, frescoist, and a Cremonese portraitist who tutored the Anguissola girls in artistry for three years. Amilcare was a true humanist who firmly believed in the writings of Baldesar Castiglione, who, in his book, Book of the Courtier, published in 1528, mapped out the ideal level of education that a lady in court should be provided

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