We come now to the six wonderful sisters Anguisciola: Helena, Sofonisba, Minerva, Europa, Lucia, and Anna Maria, all gifted in music and painting. Vasari describes his visit “to the house of Amilcare Anguisciola, the happy father of an honorable and distinguished family; the very home of painting, as well as of all other accomplishments.” In Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, we read: “Le Donne son venute in eccellenza Di ciascun’ arte, ov’ hanno posto cura.” The best known of these amiable and distinguished sisters was the second; though Lucia, who died young, acquired celebrity, and produced beautiful and valuable works. SOFONISBA ANGUISCIOLA was born in Cremona, some time between 1530 and 1540, being descended from a family of high rank. At ten years of age she knew how to draw, and she soon became the best pupil of Bernadino Campi, an excellent Cremonese painter. One of her early sketches, representing a boy with his hand caught in a lobster’s claw, and a little girl laughing at his plight, was in the possession of Vasari, and esteemed by him worthy of a place in a volume which he had filled with drawings by the most famous masters of that great age. Portraits became her favorite study. Vasari commends a picture he saw at her father’s, representing three of the sisters and an ancient housekeeper, chess-playing, as a work “painted with so much skill and care that the figures wanted only voice to be alive.” He also praises a portrait of herself, which she presented to Pope Julius III.