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Book Details:
- Book Title: The Secret Life of Sofonisba Anguissola - the most famous woman you've never heard of by Melissa Muldoon
Category: Adult Fiction (18+)
, 345 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction, General Fiction
Publisher: Matta Press
Release date: December 2020
Book Description:
Set in the sixteenth-century, The Secret Life of Sofonisba Anguissola tells the story of a woman’s passion for painting and adventure. In a world where women painters had little to no acknowledgment, she was singled out by Michelangelo and Vasari who recognized and praised her talent. Gaining the Milanese elite’s acclaim, she went on to become court painter to Spanish King Philip II and taught his queen to paint.
One can’t live such an extraordinary life without having stories to tell, and tell them Sofonisba does to Sir Anthony Van Dyke, who comes to visit her toward the end of her life. During their meeting, she agrees to reveal her secrets but first challenges the younger painter to find the one lie hidden in her tale. In a saga filled with intrigue, jealousy, buried treasure, unrequited love, espionage, and murder, Sofonisba’s story is played out against the backdrop of Italy, Spain, and Sicily. Throughout her life, she encounters talented artists, authoritative dukes, mad princes, religious kings, spying queens, vivacious viscounts, and dashing sea captains—even a Barbary pirate. But of all the people who fell in love with Sofonisba, only one captured her heart. The painter may have many secrets but the truth of her life is crystal clear from the beginning.
Always a strong, passionate woman with a dream, she was an intelligent artist who knew her self-worth and in the end, as Michelangelo had done for her, Sofonisba passed her brush to a new generation.
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Thank you Melissa Muldoon for stopping my for this interesting interview about your books.
You first experienced Italy as a young woman studying art in Florence. The art, of course, was your passion but was this experience what led to your passion for all-things-Italian
Yes! I fell in love with Italy, her art, her people, and the language after spending a semester abroad in Florence. I am an artist and painter and went to Italy to immerse myself in Renaissance Art. While living in Italy, I was required to take a beginning language class. I didn’t consider myself very proficient in foreign languages, and when I returned home, I threw away my Italian dictionary, assuming I’d never need it again. Still, after launching a successful design career and starting a family, I realized something was missing in my life. That “thing” was the connection I’d made with Italy and the friends who I had met there. Living in Florence was indeed a life-changing event! Wanting to reconnect with Italy, I decided to start learning the language again from scratch. As if indeed possessed by an Italian muse, I bought a new Italian dictionary and began my journey to fluency—a path that has led me back to Italy many times and enriched my life in countless ways. Many dictionaries and grammar books later, I dedicate my time to promoting Italian language studies, further travels in Italy, and sharing my stories and insights about Italy with others in my novels.
You have written a novel about an obscure 16th century female artist—Sofonisba Anguissola. What made you focus your novel on her?
Sofonisba Anguissola is most famous for being one of the first critically acclaimed female portrait painters of the sixteenth century. It was highly unusual for a woman to be recognized professionally in male-dominated art circles. But due to her father’s encouragement, Sofonisba received a classical education and apprenticeships with local painting masters in her hometown of Cremona, near Milan. Her early training helped hone her sharp mind and level the playing field. Aided by her father’s social connections and his desire to see his daughter succeed, Sofonisba was introduced to Michelangelo in her early twenties. Delighted by her sketch of a boy bitten by a crayfish, Michelangelo took her under his wing, offering to critique her work and offer advice. Il Maestro then introduced her to his friend Giorgio Vasari who was so impressed with her paintings that he included her in his book, highlighting the most influential artists of the 16th-century. Sofonisba, who traveled throughout Italy in her youth, became a celebrated portrait artist in Milan and later the court painter for Philip II of Spain, where she taught his queen, Catherine de’ Medici’s daughter, to paint.
If you could go back in time, where would you go?
If I could go back in time, I would choose Renaissance Florence. I am fascinated by art and history and would love to experience firsthand what it was like to live during a period in which so much change was occurring, and the city was alive with art and artists. This is why I base my novels on the past, to live vicariously through my heroines. Like Sophia, Isabella, Artemisia, and Sofonisba, I’d like to walk the streets they walked and meet prominent Florentine citizens like Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Lorenzo de’ Medici!
“The Secret Life of Sofonisba” includes healthy doses of intrigue, romance, betrayal, love, war, politics – truly something for everyone. Which storyline did you have the most fun writing?
I enjoyed exploring all of Sofonisba’s life from a young girl to an old woman. Still, I confess I enjoyed writing the book’s middle section, which takes place in Madrid during Sofonisba’s days as court painter in Spain. Very little is known about the time the artist spent at the Spanish court, other than the fact that she spent several years there, became a lady-in-waiting and confidant to Queen Elisabeth of Valois, and taught her to paint. As I was doing my research, I was fortunate to happen upon a compilation of Queen Elisabeth's original diary entries put together by Martha Walker. It opened my eyes to the antics of court life and Philip's son Don Carlos's disturbing character. As it is well-documented that Sofonisba painted a portrait of the "mad" prince, I knew full well she would have been privy to Don Carlo's troubling behavior. It also pleased me to incorporate a bit of spy-craft into the plot, as espionage and intelligence gathering were very much a part of covert court life during the sixteenth century. The premise of spying, coverups, and unconventional lifestyles fit nicely into the theme "the secret life" of Sofonisba and untangling her life's true story.
Do you have another profession besides writing?
I have a master's degree in art history, but instead of teaching, after finishing grad school, I began my own design firm and became a graphic designer and marketer. I worked for many years as a designer, illustrator, package, book, and website designer. Ten years ago, when I began the StudentessaMatta.com Italian language blog to promote the study of Italian language and culture, I started a new chapter in my life. I now focus my attention on writing my Italian website that has grown to include a podcast,
Tutti Matti per l’Italiano, and the
Studentessa Matta, YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Instagram feed. I have also created
Matta Italian Language Immersion Programs, which I co-lead with Italian schools in Italy to learn Italian in Italy. Through my website, she also offers them opportunities to live and study in Italy through Homestay programs.
There are so many elements to your novels: art, art history, Italian history, characters both living and imagined from the past, the vivid descriptions of the Italian landscape, the food, and so much more. That’s a lot to incorporate in a book, but you’ve certainly succeeded at it! If you had to squeeze it down to one or two thoughts, what is your goal, your desire for the reader to walk away with.
My goal with all my novels is to inform, entertain, and pique the reader’s curiosity about Italian art, history, and culture. I want the reader to experience the Italy I know and love and get a glimpse into all the innumerable things that make Italy unique: the sights, sounds, and tastes, as well as the legends and cultural anecdotes. I want the reader to realize that art isn’t a “dusty” subject and that it can “speak” to them as it does to my heroines. But most of all, I want to illuminate the reader about some strong female heroines so that their unique stories my live on through future generations.
Note from Melissa. Thank you for this interview! Thanks also to those who will read my novel or have read my previous ones. I hope the adventures of my heroines, and especially those of Sofonisba, will keep you entertained. I sincerely appreciate each moment you spend turning the pages and getting to know all my characters. When you finish the novel, please consider leaving a review on Amazon and Goodreads. I check all reader comments, and they inspire me to continue writing, and they also encourage other readers to discover my novels. Look for all my stories also in print and as Audiobooks.
Find more on Melissa at melissamuldoon.com and studentessamata.com
Connect with Melissa on all her Social Media Platforms (Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, LinkedIn, etc.) on Linktree:
https://linktr.ee/MelissaMuldoon
Discover Melissa’s books on Amazon in print, epub, and audiobook: https://www.amazon.com/Melissa-Muldoon/e/B01LYC7163
You May Also Enjoy:
Book Details:
Book Title: Eternally Artemisia—some loves, like some women, are timeless by Melissa Muldoon
Category: Adult Fiction (18+)
, 305 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction, General Fiction
Publisher: Matta Press
Release date: March 2019
Content Rating: PG-13 + M. includes mature themes (suicide, adultery, sexual relations, murder)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKurWrS4TVM]
Book Description:
They say some loves travel through time and are fated to meet over and over again. For Maddie, an art therapist, who wrestles with the “peculiar feeling” she has lived previous lives and is being called to Italy by voices that have left imprints on her soul, this idea is intriguing. Despite her best efforts, however, proof of this has always eluded her. That is, until one illuminating summer in Italy when Maddie’s previous existences start to bleed through into her current
reality.
When she is introduced to the Crociani family—a noble clan with ties to the seventeenth-century Medici court that boasts of ancestors with colorful pasts—she finally meets the loves of her life. One is a romantic love, and another is a special kind of passion that only women share, strong amongst those who have suffered greatly yet have triumphed despite it. As Maddie's relationship develops with Artemisia Gentileschi—an artist who in a time when it was unheard of to denounce a man for the crime of rape, did just that—Maddie discovers a kindred spirit and a role model, and just what women are capable of when united together.
In a journey that arcs back to biblical days and moves forward in time, Maddie encounters artists, dukes, designers, and movie stars as well as baser and ignoble men. With Artemisia never far from her side, she proves that when we dare to take control of our lives and find the “thing” we are most passionate about, we are limitless and can touch the stars.
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Book Details:
Book Title: Waking Isabella—because beauty can't sleep forever by Melissa Muldoon
Category: Adult Fiction (18+)
, 271 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction, General Fiction
Publisher: Matta Press
Release date: November 2018
Format available for review: ebook (mobi for Kindle, epub), and audiobook (audible download
Tour dates: Feb 1 to Feb 26, 2021
Content Rating: PG-13 + M. includes mature themes (suicide, adultery, sexual relations, murder)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4bH6gZDKo8]
Book Description:
Waking Isabella is a story about uncovering hidden beauty that, over time, has been lost, erased, or suppressed. It also weaves together several love stories as well as a few mysteries.
Nora, an assistant researcher, is a catalyst for resolving the puzzle of a painting that has been missing for decades. Set in Arezzo, a small Tuscan town, the plot unfolds against the backdrop of the city’s antique trade and the
fanfare and pageantry of its medieval jousting festival.
While filming a documentary about Isabella de’ Medici—the Renaissance princess who was murdered by her husband—Nora begins to connect with the lives of two remarkable women from the past. Unraveling the stories of Isabella, the daughter of a fifteenth-century Tuscan duke, and Margherita, a young girl trying to survive the war in Nazi-occupied Italy, Nora begins to question the choices that have shaped her own life up to this point. As she does, hidden beauty is awakened deep inside of her, and she discovers the keys to her creativity and happiness. It is a story of
love and deceit, forgeries and masterpieces—all held together by the allure and intrigue of a beautiful Tuscan ghost.
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Meet the Author:
Melissa Muldoon is the author of four novels set in Italy: Dreaming Sophia, Waking Isabella, Eternally Artemisia, and The Secret Life of Sofonisba Anguissola. All four books tell the stories of women and their journeys of self-discovery to find love, uncover hidden truths, and follow their destinies to shape a better future for themselves.
Melissa is also the author of the Studentessa Matta website, where she promotes the study of Italian language and culture through her dual-language blog written in Italian and English (studentessamatta.com). Studentessa Matta means the “crazy linguist” and has grown to include a podcast, Tutti Matti per l’Italiano and the Studentessa Matta, YouTube channel, Facebook page and Instagram feed. Melissa also created Matta Italian Language Immersion Programs, which she co-leads with Italian schools in Italy to learn Italian in Italy.
Through her website, she also offers the opportunities to live and study in Italy through Homestay programs. Melissa has a B.A. in fine arts, art history, and European history from Knox College, a liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, as well as a master’s degree in art history from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. She has also studied painting and art history in Florence. She is an artist, designer, and illustrated the cover art for all four of her books. Melissa is the managing director of Matta Press
Connect with the author: Website ~ Facebook ~ Twitter ~Instagram ~ Pinterest ~ Goodreads
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