Personal Life
After the death of Elisabeth of Valois, Philip II took a special interest in Anguissola's future. He had wished to marry her to one of the nobles in the Spanish Court, yet soon discovered she was already engaged. Nevertheless, he paid a dowry of twelve thousand pounds for her impending marriage to Don Francisco de Moncada, son of the Prince of Paterno, Viceroy of Sicily, whom she married in 1571. Don Francisco was said to be supportive of her painting. After eight years with the Spanish court, Anguissola and her husband left Spain with the king's permission sometime in 1578. The couple settled in Palermo, where Anguissola's husband died in 1579.
At the age of forty-seven, while traveling home to Cremona, Anguissola met the considerably younger Orazio Lomellino, the captain of the ship on which she was traveling. They were married in Pisa in January of 1580.
Lomellino supported Anguissola's career and they had a long and happy marriage. They settled in Genoa, where her husband's family lived in a large home. Anguissola was given her own quarters, studio, and time to paint and draw.
Read more about this topic: Sofonisba Anguissola
Famous quotes related to personal life:
“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters ‘woman’s peculiar sphere,’ her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)