Sofonisba Anguissola and the Virgin Hodegetria

Sofonisba Anguissola and the Virgin Hodegetria is drawing to an end. 10 July at the Ala Ponzone Museum in Cremona will see the end of an interesting exhibition that will be continuing from 12 August to 4 December at the Diocesan Museum in Catania. A Cremona-based painter from the late Renaissance period, Anguissola soon became one of the most interesting women on the artistic scene.
The painting on display expresses and provides a new interpretation of the iconographic transformations of the Virgin Hodegetria, a model passed on from the Byzantine world. The most well-known icon initially presented the Virgin painted as a half-figure, holding the Child Jesus, who has his hand raised in the act of blessing. However, from the 16th century onwards, the icon became more complex. The Virgin is standing on a wooden box carried on the shoulders of two Basilian monks, an explicit reference to the legends regarding the purloining and the hiding in a box of the miraculous icon that legend narrates was painted by Saint Luke and was considered to offer protection to the people of Constantinople before its definitive fall in 1453.

In furthering the concept, the exhibition presents a series of works that provide an understanding of the iconographic evolution of the Virgin. It is an interesting exhibition that not only displays spectacular works of art, but also examines their history and their artistic language, in order to allow the general public to understand a not-so-well-known artist in terms of a particularly complex matter.