Branding, Renaissance Style

“A certain prudent affability … a placid and honest demeanor … a quick wit” and “besides this, having knowledge of letters, music, and painting”: these were the characteristics of the donna di palazzo, or Woman of the Palace, as described by Baldassare Castiglione in his Book of the Courtier, published a few years before Sofonisba Anguissola’s birth in Cremona. In her many self-portraits, the young artist meant to convey precisely Castiglione’s profile of the donna di palazzo: cultured, possessing those same qualities and breadth of knowledge, yet discreet and unadorned. Therefore, she depicted herself with a book or a paintbrush in hand, or perhaps while playing the spinet. In short, she was making selfies in the service of self-promotion. They did their job: Sofonisba became famous. Recently widowed, she sailed from Sicily to Tuscany and fell in love with the ship’s captain, fifteen years her junior. Reader: she married him. Sofonisba was a woman of determination and appetites (dying in her mid-nineties, clear-minded to the end). Her fame, justifiably, is continuing to grow.