Sofonisba anguissola paintings

Painting by Sofonisba Anguissola

Self-Portrait is a small oil-on-panel painting by the Italian artist Sofonisba Anguissola, signed and dated 1554 on the open book held by the artist.^[1][2][3] The portrait is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, in Vienna.^[4]

It was recorded as hanging in Vienna's Belvedere Gallery, already attributed to Anguissola but initially thought to be a portrait of infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia on her betrothal to her cousin Albert VII, Archduke of Austria which had therefore ended up in Vienna.^[5][6] Flavio Carioli also came to this conclusion, but in 1885 Adolfo Venturi cited a letter sent to Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara in March 1556 by Anguissola's father with two paintings by her, a self-portrait intended for the duke's daughter Lucrezia and a Cleopatra (after a drawing by Michelangelo, probably a folio now in the Casa Buonarroti).

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