Theory and Criticism of Literature and Arts
Issue 10, Nr. 2 – 2026
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Archiving and Accessibility Statement
The full PDF of this issue is archived on Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18471321), and linked to the respective authors’ ORCID IDs to ensure persistent metadata, and academic attribution.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Title: 1532–1629: le date di nascita e di morte di Sofonisba Anguissola, “pittora de natura et miraculata”, tra la peste di Palermo e il culto di Santa Rosalia
10-38
Author : Carla Rossi, ORCID: 0000-0001-6557-3684
Abstract: The article reconsiders Sofonisba Anguissola’s dates of birth and death through a renewed examination of Antoon van Dyck’s Italian Sketchbook. The correct reading of the entry dated 12 July 1629 — long misinterpreted as 1624 — places the painter’s birth in 1532 and confirms her meeting with van Dyck at the age of ninety-six, as recorded by the Flemish artist. The expression pittora de natura et miraculata is interpreted within the devotional language that developed in Palermo after the plague. Giovanni Mendola’s discovery of a notarial deed dated 26 November 1630, which records Orazio Lomellini as already remarried, makes it possible to place Sofonisba’s death between the summer of 1629 and that of 1630. The study further examines Lomellini’s post-mortem inventory, notable for its unusually rich group of paintings. The reappearance on the art market of a Saint Charles Borromeo and of works attributable to Sofonisba’s milieu suggests new avenues for attribution and provides concrete evidence regarding the painter’s material legacy.
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​Title: La peste, una santa, una pittora. L’ultima Rosalia e la seconda volta di Van Dyck a Palermo
39-55
Author : Giuseppe Abbita
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18471591.
Abstract: The dating of Antoon van Dyck’s Saint Rosalia in Glory Interceding for Palermo (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) is here reconsidered in light of its innovative iconography, which departs from traditional models, and of a newly Venetian-oriented chromatic language. The Flemish painter is hypothesised to have returned to Palermo for a second stay, four years after his departure, and to have executed the Metropolitan painting on that occasion. This proposal is supported by recent findings concerning the correct transcription of the date of van Dyck’s meeting with Sofonisba Anguissola in Palermo on 12 July 1629, as clarified by Carla Rossi’s documentary reassessment. Read within this revised chronological framework, the work emerges as the product of a renewed encounter between the artist and the devotional climate of the city, shaped by the memory of the plague and by the consolidation of the cult of Saint Rosalia.
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​​​​Title: Appunti sulla produzione pittorica di Sofonisba Anguissola
56-76
Author : Cecilia Gamberini, ORCID: 0009-0004-7339-2364
Abstract: This article reconstructs the cultural, familial and religious environment in which Sofonisba Anguissola’s training took shape, highlighting her role among the leading portraitists of the sixteenth century and her early recognition within the “Europe of the courts”. Drawing on archival sources, literary testimonies and stylistic analysis, the study examines portraits of ecclesiastical figures attributable to her early Cremonese period, with particular attention to the Portrait of a Lateran Canon recently acquired by the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. The paper critically reassesses the identification of the sitters, relating them to the milieu of the canons of San Pietro al Po and to local patronage networks. These works are shown to reflect strategies of familial self-representation, aristocratic dynamics and the religious tensions of sixteenth-century Cremona, offering a new documentary and historical reading of the painter’s early activity.
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Title: Un antecedente del Cinquecento: Giovanni Paolo Fonduli, pittore cremonese in Sicilia
77-92
Author : Gaetano Bongiovanni, ORCID: 0009-0008-3357-3362
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Abstract: The article examines a painting depicting Christ Carrying the Cross that appeared on the Palermo art market approximately a decade ago, proposing an initial historical and artistic contextualisation. Executed in oil on panel, the work displays formal and stylistic features that point to a Po Valley cultural sphere, and more specifically to the Cremonese area. The analysis focuses on the vivid colouring of Christ’s garment, the tightly structured composition and the cross’s dominant formal role—elements that suggest the painting originally belonged to a larger ensemble, most likely a now-dismembered polyptych. Without advancing a definitive attribution, the study situates the work within early sixteenth-century Cremonese production and assesses its significance in relation to the circulation of artistic models and objects between northern Italy and Sicily.
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Title: Sofonisba Anguissola e la Madonna dell’Itria. Problemi attributivi e prospettive di catalogazione critica
93-102
Author : Alfio Nicotra, ORCID: 0009-0003-5778-3077
Abstract: This contribution offers a new reading of the Madonna dell’Itria, preserved in the church of the Santissima Annunziata in Paternò (Catania), in light of the author’s recent attributional hypothesis involving Sofonisba Anguissola and Domenikos Theotokópoulos, known as El Greco. The study seeks to decipher the symbolic stratification of this complex Marian image as a reflection of the artistic experience of both painters. The painting is interpreted as a liminal space in which the biographical and stylistic trajectories of Anguissola and Theotokópoulos intersect, generating a visual synthesis of remarkable symbolic density. Within this iconographic crossroads, the encounter between the two artists is understood as both transformative and generative, reshaping their respective expressive identities.
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Appendix Edizione critica commentata dell’atto di donazione della tavola della Madonna dell’Itria da parte di Sofonisba Anguissola e proposta di identificazione dei motteti raffigurati nella tavola
103-120
Author : Carla Rossi, ORCID: 0000-0001-6557-3684
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18471363,
Abstract: This article presents a critical and annotated edition of the notarial deed recording Sofonisba Anguissola’s donation of the Madonna dell’Itria panel. Previously subject to partial and sometimes misleading interpretations, the document is here re-examined through a new semi-diplomatic transcription based on rigorous palaeographical and linguistic criteria, with systematic expansion of abbreviations, faithful preservation of notarial formulae and a clear distinction between documentary evidence and interpretation. The analysis demonstrates that the deed contains no statement of authorship of the painting, but rather records a votive donation accompanied by specific liturgical obligations for the celebration of Masses in memory of Don Fabrizio Moncada.
Alongside the documentary study, the article investigates the two choirbooks depicted in the painting. Close observation reveals five-line staves, white mensural notation, hollow semibreves, stemmed minims, ligatures and the probable use of the C clef, features that exclude plainchant and instead attest to measured polyphonic writing. The large-format layout intended for collective reading, together with the vertical alignment of rhythmic figures, indicates a homorhythmic performance practice consistent with syllabic devotional repertories rather than complex contrapuntal forms. The legible textual fragments correspond to verses of the Benedicta et venerabilis, a Marian gradual widely reworked in late medieval and Renaissance motet traditions. On the basis of the iconographic evidence alone, however, only a typological identification of the repertory is possible, not the reconstruction of a specific melody or modal version.