Castled

And here is Sofonisba in her later black, a new lady-in-waiting and court painter to Elisabeth of Valois.  As a noblewoman, she is not merely an artist-servant (like Shakespeare) but a courtier.  Her gaze is confident, her dress discreetly sumptuous:  not only adornment but a warrant of her skill.  See how I paint lace!

I’ve been reading about "The Chess Game."  Vasari praised it:

"I have this year [1566] seen a picture in her father's house at Cremona, most carefully finished, representing her three sisters playing at chess, in the company of an old lady of the house, making them appear alive and lacking speech only.* In another she has portrayed her father between his daughter Minerva, distinguished in painting and letters, and his son Asdrubale, also breathing likenesses."



 


In Sofonisba Anguissola: A Renaissance Woman, Sylvia Ferini-Pagden writes “The linking of the observation of nature with storia, action—the activity being being a fictional one that takes place on the chess board—demonstrates the young artist’s intellectual demands of her medium.”

Chess, she says, was traditionally “the game of the amazons or of maidens in general, as confirmed later by Torquato Tasso, since the queens in the game are allowed the greatest freedom of movement ... In Sofonisba’s painting, two maidens playing a game that is appropriate to their social status are engaged in a debate, on intellectual terrain in which they enjoy equality with men.”

Girl gamers!  In play, they can project themselves onto a field of battle or into an academy.

“The disagreement may be about the black queen, gleefully held by Lucia in her left hand, which she has just taken but which perhaps, as in a play written by Marco Gerolamo Vida, Scacchia ludus, in the end will be victorious over the white king.”

Does that make sense, O nightspore ?

And in looking up Scacchia Ludus, I have discovered Caïssa, the goddess of chess.  Fortune smiles.

Nine

* "...pare che spirimo e sieno vivissimi.”