The sitter in this painting is usually identified as Sofonoisba’s eldest sister Elena (d.1584) who became a Dominican nun of the convent of San Vincenzo in Mantua. Doubt has recently been cast on this traditional identification as the sitter is shown wearing what appears to be an Augustinian habit. This doubt maybe unfounded however, when we consider that at the time the picture was made, the novices of both religious orders wore white.

Along the bottom edge of the picture, the now illegible inscription, which is considered authentic, identified the picture as the artist’s earliest dated work. The dark, dull green background is the result of over painting, which in places reveals an originally much lighter background tone beneath, that is more typical of the artist’s early works. In this small masterpiece the restrained sensitivity of the sitter is emphasised by the monochrome treatment of her dress while the lively inner life of her religious vocation is draw to our attention by the red and gilt prayer book she carries.

Sofonoisba Anguissola (1532-1625) was from a noble family of Cremona in northern Italy. She was the eldest of six sisters, all of whom became painters, and became highly esteemed as a portraitist of distinction. Vasari, the biographer of Italian Renaissance artists, recalls that: §Anguissola has shown greater application and better grace than many other women of our age in her endeavours at drawing; she has thus succeeded not only in drawing, colouring and painting from nature, and copying excellently from others, but by herself has created rare and very beautiful paintings.§ In her home town Sofonoisba trained first with the Bernardino Campi (1522-1591), from whom she learnt the art of portraiture, and later with Bernardino Gatti (1495-1576), whose influence introduced elements of delicacy and charm, reminiscent of Correggio (1489-1534), into her work.

Sofonoisba’s status as a woman meant she was forbidden from studying anatomy or life drawing and consequently was unable to undertake the complex multi-figure compositions required for religious and historical paintings; instead she concentrated on portraiture, developing a new approach, placing sitters in informal domestic settings. Sofonoisba’s fame for such works grew steadily and in 1559, through the agency of one of her master’s principal patrons, the powerful Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo (1508-82), Duke of Alba and Sessa and Governor of Milan, she was invited to the Royal Court at Madrid. At Madrid she was chosen by Philip II to be an attendant to the Infanta Isabella (1566-1633) and a lady in waiting to the queen, Elizabeth of Valois (1545-68). In 1571 she married the nobleman Fabrizio de Moncada, the brother of the Viceroy of Sicily, Francesco II, settling at Palermo in Sicily until 1584 when, after his death she married the nobleman Orazio Lomellino and moved to his native city of Genoa. In 1599 she was visited in Genoa by the Spanish Infanta and in 1624, one year before her death, aged 93, Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) drew her portrait in Palermo in his ‘Italian Sketchbook’; he also made a small painting of her.