Sofonisba's Lesson: A Renaissance Artist and Her Work. Michael W. Cole. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. 308 pp. $60

• Published in: Renaissance quarterly Vol. 74; no. 2; pp. 582 - 583
• Main Author: Jacobs, Fredrika
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.07.2021
• Subjects: Careers; Women
• ISSN: 0034-4338; 1935-0236
• DOI: 10.1017/rqx.2021.13

Nonetheless, the Cremonese painter who went on to become a favored artist in the Habsburg court of Philip II and Isabel de Valois has never suffered from a lack of attention, having first been mentioned in “a text [of 1550] that predates any known painting” by her hand (85). Gender is, of course, a circumstance of consequence and as such informs Sofonisba's Lesson from page 1, just as it informed the artist's career from its beginning: “No Renaissance woman could learn to paint without the consent of the man who headed the house. [...]few Renaissance women could learn to paint without a professional agreeing to teach them” (15). Cole's discussion of Sofonisba's images on paper that feature a broadly smiling young girl and an old woman, who is quite possibly the artist's mother, is especially rich.