Portrait of Elisabeth of Valois

Sofonisba Anguissola was something the Spanish court had rarely seen: a woman from Cremona, in Italy, invited to Madrid to serve the young queen and to teach her to paint. The queen was Elisabeth of Valois, a French princess married as a teenager to Philip the Second of Spain, and the two women were close in age and grew close in fact. Here Elisabeth holds a small portrait of her husband, the king, in one hand. Her gown is heavy black with a high collar, the severe fashion Philip's court expected even of a girl raised in a brighter French one. Anguissola was paid as a lady-in-waiting rather than a court painter, so the picture went unsigned, and for centuries it was credited to men.