India, Aug. 30 -- Her journey into art was encouraged avidly by her father, the ambitious and progressive nobleman and merchant Amilcare Anguissola. Sofonisba Anguissola (see image 3) began artistic training as a teenager in Cremona. Her early work was even praised by Michelangelo, who frequently corresponded with her father. Her father initially showed him a drawing she had done, of a laughing child. Sorrow is harder to draw, Michelangelo reportedly said. So she drew her brother crying. It was a piece that deeply impressed the master artist. His encouragement proved transformative. Anguissola gained access to formal workshops and anatomical study. Sadly, she had to restrict herself to portraiture because of the circles she moved in; she was at one point lady-in-waiting to Queen Isabel of Spain, says Aldeheid Gealt, director emerita of the Indiana Univer- sity museum of art, and co-founder of A Space of their Own, an online database that showcases overlooked women artists from the 15th to 19th centuries. In Portrait of a Canon Regular (1552), painted when she was just 20, critics see signs of what she could have done, if she hadn't been thus restricted. Here, she shows an unidentified clergyman mid-lecture, hand resting on an open Bible, as an eagle rises behind him, reinforcing his spiritual authority. The clergyman's face is rendered with gentle brushstrokes to resemble flesh, and the canvas is considered exceptional for its use of negative spaces and shadows. (Scan the QR code alongside to see this and other such works.) Her fame led to her being called, in later years, the first female master of the Renaissance. She died, aged 93, in Palermo....