Two Girls as Saint Agnes and Saint Dorothea

For most of its life this picture had no known author. It was only after 2000 that scholars gave it back to Michaelina Wautier, a Brussels painter who managed something almost unheard of for a woman in the seventeenth century, a real career with about 30 surviving works to her name. She dressed two young girls as early Christian saints. The one on the left strokes a lamb, the sign of Saint Agnes, who was said to appear with one after her death, while the girl on the right lifts a rose from a basket, the mark of Saint Dorothea. Portraits like this let a family show off their children while wrapping them in the protection of a saint's name.