Self-portrait at the Spinnet

In the 1550s a woman could not enrol in a painter's workshop or study the nude, so the grand religious and mythological scenes that made a reputation were closed to her. Sofonisba Anguissola, a nobleman's daughter from Cremona, worked the one door left open, the portrait, and turned it on herself. She shows herself plainly dressed at the spinet, mid-phrase, a keyboard being one of the accomplishments a well-bred young woman was expected to master. Behind her an older woman, probably a servant or chaperone, keeps watch. Pictures like this travelled, and in 1559 Philip II of Spain called her to Madrid, where she spent about 14 years as a lady-in-waiting who painted.