The Spinet, The Black Dress, and The Maid: How Sofonisba Anguissola Subverts Male Gaze

The Black Dress

Another crucial element to examine is Anguissola’s clothing. She wears a modest black dress, her white-collar extends out and is followed by her cuffs which are frilled. Tassels fasten themselves together and hide her chest. No jewelry. Bluntly, her wardrobe is not glamorous, mostly, it is devoid of anything special. Anguissola is careful to position herself in a way that she cannot be eroticized, refusing to show the viewer any extra flesh. She is not a sexual creature, inviting the audience to engage with her. Ultimately, the way that Anguissola is dressed relates to the “virgo” or virgin, something Anguissola often identified and highlighted in her self-portraits.

In Self-Portrait, 1554, Anguissola writes “Sofonisba Anguissola virgo seipsum fecit 1554” which translates to “the virgin Sofonisba Anguissola made this herself in 1554”. (1) She veritably spells out that she is a chaste woman, full of virtue. Anguissola is determined to ensure the viewer, who is presumed male (an idea reaffirmed later by both Linda Nochlin's "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" (1971) and Laura Mulvey’s "Male Gaze Theory" (1973)) that she is not a threat, even though she is capable of such detailed paintings, and particularly succeed in crafting clean linear lines and perspectives, which would require education in math. (2), (3)
(1) Mary D. Garrard, “Here's Looking at Me: Sofonisba Anguissola and the Problem of the Woman Artist.” Renaissance Quarterly 47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994, 580-2.
2) Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no. 4 (1975): 6-18
3) Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society. New York: Thames and Hudson Inc., 1997, 72.

This page has paths:

This page references: