Double Portrait of a Boy and Girl of the Attavanti Family

Sofonisba Anguissola is one of only a few known female artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Born into a noble family in Cremona, she was encouraged in her artistic pursuits by her father (who corresponded with Michelangelo to procure a drawing that his daughter could use to copy). She studied with local painters before traveling to Rome where she met with and was instructed by Michelangelo. In 1559, Anguissola traveled to Milan and then Spain at the invitation of King Philip II, joining his court as a painter and lady-in-waiting to the queen; she spent over twenty years in Madrid, primarily painting portraits. She later married and settled in Genoa and Palermo, where she was visited in 1624 by the painter Van Dyck, dying the following year in her nineties. Her work was important enough in her lifetime to be mentioned by Giorgio Vasari, who noted in his Lives of the Artists that Anguissola had "worked with deeper study and greater grace than any woman of our times."

The tondo (or "round") format of Double Portrait is believed to derive from several sources, including depictions of heroes on ancient Roman shields or circular images on Greek vases-such as that found in the center of the AMAM's kylix by Epiktetus (no. 8). The tondo was revived in Renaissance Italy and was used for figural works and portraits, as well as smaller designs for portrait medals, medallions, and miniatures. Although the round shape can have sepulchral overtones-many ancient sarcophagi feature tondi portraits-there is nothing to indicate that the boy and girl in Double Portrait were deceased at the time it was created. Far fewer large-scale portrait tondi exist, as opposed to religious and devotional tondi, which makes the AMAM painting relatively rare.

The Attavanti were a prominent Florentine family, and although the inscription on the painting is only partially legible, enough remains to indicate that the work likely depicts two children from that family. Depicted with sensitivity and a great sense of realism, the young boy looks up from reading a small book, and the girl, likely his sister, affectionately holds him close.