Abiti in bianco e nero - two Italian boys of the Renaissance

Portrait of the marchese Massimiliano Stampa, by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1557.

Portrait of a Boy of the Bracciforte Family of Piacenza, attributed to Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli (formerly to Niccolò dell’Abate), circa 1560.

 

Isabel de Valois, by Juan Pantoja de La Cruz, circa 1605

Isabel (Élisabeth) de Valois (2 April 1545, Fontainebleau – 3 October 1568, Madrid), the eldest daughter of Henry II of France and Catherine de Medici, became the third wife of Philip II of Spain in 1559, shortly after the death of his second wife, Queen Mary I of England. She had originally been betrothed to Philip's son, Carlos, Prince of Asturias, but for political reasons ended marrying the father instead. (After her marriage, she had a warm relationship with her troubled stepson, until his mental state deteriorated to such a degree that his father had to lock him away.) The king and his fourteen year old bride were quite pleased with each other, despite the eighteen year age difference, and Isabel even came to be an important political adviser to her husband. Her first pregnancy ended with the miscarriage of twin daughters. She later had two more daughters, both of whom survived to adulthood. Isabel became pregnant once again in 1568, but late in the year she miscarried and died at the age of twenty-three.

This painting is thought to be a copy after an original by Sofonisba Anguisola, who was the protégée of the Queen.  (And her teacher; Isabel was an enthusiastic amateur artist.)  Certainly, it wasn't painted in her lifetime, as the presumed date of its execution is a full thirty-seven years after the Queen's death. 

The fictionalized story of Isabel, Philip, and his son Carlos inspired plays by Otway and Schiller and, most famously, Verdi's opera Don Carlos.

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Juan Pantoja de La Cruz (1553, Valladolid – 26 October 1608, Madrid), Spanish painter, one of the great representatives of the Spanish Late Renaissance Mannerist school of court painters. He worked for Philip II and Philip III.

Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1561

Alessandro Farnese was sixteen in the year this portrait was painted.

Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1532, Cremona – 16 November 1625, Palermo), Italian Renaissance painter. Born into the minor nobility, she was given an excellent education and was able to train with local artists in Cremona, both things being very unusual for a female of her time. She later traveled to Rome - where she studied, informally, with Michelangelo for two years - and Milan, by which time she was well established as an artist.

Isabel de Valois, the queen of Philip II of Spain, was a keen amateur painter, and Anguissola was invited to come to Madrid to be her tutor; she was also given the rank of lady-in-waiting. She later became official court painter to the king, and remained in Spain for fourteen years. After the queen's death, Philip arranged an aristocratic marriage for Anguissola, and she moved to Palermo, and later Pisa and Genoa, where she continued to practice as a leading portrait painter. Outliving her first husband, she married again. Wealthy and famous, as her sight deteriorated, she became a great patron of the arts. She died at the age of ninety-three.

A portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola at the age of ninety-two - the year before her death - by van Dyck, 1624.

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Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza (27 August 1545, Rome – 3 December 1592, Arras), Governor of the Spanish Netherlands from 1578 to 1592, he is best known for his successful campaign of 1578-1592 against the Dutch Revolt, in which he captured the main cities of the south (in what is now Belgium) and returned them to the control of Catholic Spain. His mother was the half-sister of Philip II of Spain, and he was brought up with his Spanish cousins.