Four Forgotten Sisters of the Renaissance Get Their First Major Spotlight in Oslo
A family of six daughters, born in Cremona in northern Italy between roughly 1532 and 1555, produced five painters — and this autumn the National Museum in Oslo is putting them and their peers front and centre. The exhibition, titled "[Woman] Painter" and listed on the museum's Norwegian-language site as "Malerinnene" (The Women Painters), opens in autumn 2026 and features 19 women artists from the Renaissance who were largely written out of the story (Artnet; National Museum, Oslo).
At the heart of the show are the Anguissola sisters. The best known, Sofonisba, won the admiration of Michelangelo and was painted by Anthony van Dyck when she was in her late nineties. Giorgio Vasari, the 16th-century biographer whose Lives of the Artists remains a foundational art-history text, praised Sofonisba's talents "as a miracle." Her younger sisters — Elena, Lucia, Europa and Anna Maria — have no such fame. They are the exhibition's quiet revelation (Artnet).
Their father, Amilcare Anguissola, could not afford dowries for six daughters, so he invested in education instead. Sofonisba and Elena became apprentices to Bernardino Campi, a local Cremona painter — an unusual path for women at the time. Sofonisba then trained Lucia, Europa and Anna Maria herself. The sisters' lives diverged sharply from there. Elena became a nun. Lucia died young. Europa and Anna Maria married. A sixth sister, Minerva, pursued classical studies rather than art (Artnet).
The National Museum's exhibition page describes the show as exploring how women artists found their way into the profession and carved out positions for themselves (National Museum, Oslo). Among the works featured on the museum's Norwegian-language page is Sofonisba's Family Portrait with the Artist's Father Amilcare Anguissola and Her Siblings Minerva and Asdrubale (National Museum, Oslo).
After Oslo, an adapted version of the exhibition will travel to the Galleria Borghese in Rome (Artnet).
The Anguissola sisters are drawing attention elsewhere this year, too. The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. is presenting "Sofonisba Anguissola: A Renaissance Woman," with twenty paintings by Sofonisba drawn from major collections in Europe and America alongside works by her younger sister (NMWA). Rijksmuseum Twenthe in the Netherlands is staging its own 2026 exhibition tracing Sofonisba's career through three chapters, beginning with her training in Cremona (Rijksmuseum Twenthe).
What makes the Oslo show stand out is its scope. Where the Washington and Enschede exhibitions focus on Sofonisba, the National Museum in Oslo widens the lens to the whole family and to 19 women painters in total — bringing the sisters who trained beside her, and the world they worked in, out of the margins.
