As a young woman, Anguissola traveled to Rome where she was introduced to Michelangelo, who immediately recognized her talent, and to Milan, where she painted the Duke of Alba.

The Spanish queen, Elizabeth of Valois, was a keen amateur painter and in 1559 Anguissola was recruited to go to Madrid as her tutor, with the rank of lady-in-waiting.

[6] In 717, Galvano served in the army of the Byzantine emperor Leo III the Isaurian, and "with an ingenious artificial fire, contributed to liberate the city of Constantinople from the Saracens who had kept it besieged by land and sea".

Sofonisba Anguissola was born into a poor but ancient Italian noble family in Cremona, Lombardy in 1532, the oldest of seven children, six of whom were girls.

[13] Amilcare Anguissola, inspired by Baldassare Castiglione's book Il Cortigiano, encouraged all his daughters (Sofonisba, Elena, Lucia, Europa, Minerva and Anna Maria) to cultivate and perfect their talents.

Four of the sisters (Elena, Lucia, Europa and Anna Maria) became painters, but Sofonisba was by far the most accomplished and renowned and taught her younger siblings.

Both Anna Maria and Europa gave up art upon marrying, while Lucia Anguissola (1536 or 1538 – c. 1565–1568), the best painter of Sophonisba's sisters, died young.

Anguissola was fourteen when her father sent her and her sister Elena to study with Bernardino Campi, a respected portrait and religious painter of the Lombard school.

[12] When Campi moved to another city, Anguissola continued her studies with painter Bernardino Gatti (known as Il Sojaro), a pupil of Correggio's.

[18] Although Anguissola enjoyed significantly more encouragement and support than the average woman of her day, her social class did not allow her to transcend the constraints of her sex.

Without the possibility of studying anatomy or drawing from life (it was considered unacceptable for a lady to view nudes), she could not undertake the complex multi-figure compositions required for large-scale religious or history paintings.

Self-portraits and family members were her most frequent subjects, as seen in such paintings as Self-Portrait (1554, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), Portrait of Amilcare, Minerva and Asdrubale Anguissola (c. 1557–1558, Nivaagaards Malerisambling, Nivå, Denmark), and her most famous picture, The Chess Game (1555, Muzeum Narodowe, Poznań), which depicted her sisters Lucia, Minerva and Europa.

Painted when Anguissola was 23 years old, The Chess Game is an intimate representation of an everyday family scene, combining elaborate formal clothing with very informal facial expressions, which was unusual for Italian art at this time.

[22] She became well known outside of Italy, and in 1559 King Philip II of Spain asked her to be lady-in-waiting and art teacher to Queen Elisabeth of Valois, who was only 14 at the time.

In the winter of 1559–1560, she arrived in Madrid to serve as a court painter and lady-in-waiting to the new queen, Elisabeth of Valois, Philip's third wife, who was herself an amateur portraitist.

Anguissola soon gained Elisabeth's admiration and confidence and spent the following years painting many official portraits for the court, including Philip II's sister, Joanna, and his son, Don Carlos.

These types of painting were far more demanding than the informal portraits upon which Anguissola had based her early reputation, as it took a tremendous amount of time and energy to render the many intricate designs of the fine fabrics and elaborate jewelry associated with royal subjects.

Yet despite the challenge, Anguissola's paintings of Elisabeth of Valois – and later of Anne of Austria, Philip II's fourth wife – were vibrant and full of life.

During her 14-year residence, she guided the artistic development of Queen Elisabeth, and influenced the art made by her two daughters, Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catherine Michaela.

With the gifts and a dowry of 12,000 scudi she earned along with her salary as court painter and lady-in-waiting to the queen, she amassed an admirable return from her craft.

So closely in fact, that the famous painting of the middle-aged King Philip II was long attributed to Coello or Juan Pantoja de la Cruz.

[13] Philip II paid a dowry of 12,000 scudi for her marriage to Fabrizio Moncada Pignatelli, son of the Prince of Paternò, Viceroy of Sicily.

Anguissola's adoring second husband, who described her as small of frame, yet "great among mortals", buried her with honor in Palermo at the Church of San Giorgio dei Genovesi.

Seven years later, on the anniversary of what would have been her 100th birthday, her husband placed an inscription on her tomb that read in part: To Sofonisba, my wife, who is recorded among the illustrious women of the world, outstanding in portraying the images of man.

Her portrait of Queen Elisabeth of Valois with a zibellino (the pelt of a marten set with a head and feet of jewelled gold) was widely copied by many of the finest artists of the time, such as Peter Paul Rubens, while Caravaggio allegedly took inspiration from Anguissola's work for his Boy Bitten by a Lizard.

Although there has never been a period in Western history in which women were completely absent in the visual arts, Anguissola's great success opened the way for larger numbers of women to pursue serious careers as artists; Lavinia Fontana expressed in a letter written in 1579 that she and another woman, Irene di Spilimbergo, had "set [their] heart[s] on learning how to paint" after seeing one of Anguissola's portraits.