Self-portrait at the easel

Painting from the collection of the Lubomirski family, former owners of Łańcut and the castle, most probably bought by Princess Izabela Lubomirska; it is a self-portrait of an Italian painter Sophonisba Anguissola living at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries (born around 1532, died in 1625), a representative of the Renaissance. She came from an aristocratic but impoverished family and had numerous siblings. Her father – Amilcare – supported her talent and sent her to study under Bernardino Campi and later under Bernardino Gatti. Her first manager was her father, who sent one of her sketches to Michelangelo, who was very complimentary about her skills. In 1559 she was invited by King Philip II to the Spanish court as court lady to the Infanta Elisabeth, as she was from a noble family and thus could not fulfil the role of court painter. She befriended the royal family and after the death of the Infanta, she took care of the upbringing of her children, to whom she also gave painting lessons. During the 14 years he spent in Madrid, she created numerous portraits of members of the royal family. These were the best years of her life. After returning to Italy, she got married, but unfortunately a few years later her husband died and she was left alone (the couple had no children). Only her second marriage to a Genoese patrician brought her happiness. She spent the last years of her life with her husband in Palermo. At the end of her life, she lost her sight (she lived to be 92), and a year before her death she was visited by Antoon van Dyck, who was her last pupil. Her self-portrait at the easel, kept in Łańcut, dating from 1554, is one of only two of her paintings in the Polish collections – the other being A Game of Chess, owned by the National Museum in Poznań. Sophonisba, as a female painter who managed to achieve European fame, was in a way a phenomenon of her time. The painting often takes part in exhibitions held around the world.