Maria Antonia Walpurgis of Bavaria

She is here as a painter, though that was the least of her gifts. Maria Antonia Walpurgis, born a Bavarian princess in 1724 and married into the ruling house of Saxony, was above all a composer: she wrote her own operas, words and music alike, had them staged at the Dresden court, and sang the leading roles herself. She trained under Italian masters and joined Rome's Arcadian Academy, a famous literary society, under a pen name.

When her husband, the Elector of Saxony, died in 1763, she governed the state as regent for their young son. Painting ran quietly alongside the music and the politics. The self-portrait now in the Uffizi, dated 1772, took its place among the gallery's celebrated collection of artists' self-portraits, setting this princess-composer among the professional painters she had spent her life supporting.