Here's Looking at Me: Sofonisba Anguissola and the Problem of the Woman Artist*

An Unusual Portrait by Sofonisba Anguissola has gained new prominence from its illustration in color in a recent publication. In herWomen, Art, and Society(1990), Whitney Chadwick claims of the portrait in question,Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola(fig. 1), that in presenting herself in the guise of a portrait being painted by her teacher, Anguissola produced “the first historical example of the woman artist consciously collapsing the subject-object position.” Chadwick's succinct observation opens up the possibility of understanding the painting in a new way, for she points to the peculiar conflation of subject and object that uniquely befell women artists in the Renaissance and complicates their art, especially their self-portraits. From this starting point, I will here explore the form of self-presentation offered by Anguissola in the Siena portrait and several other works in the context of what was a fundamental problem for the Renaissance female artist: the differentiation of herself as artist (the subject position) from her self as trope and theme for the male artist (the object position).