Portrait de l'infante Isabelle Claire Eugénie

In the summer of 1599 the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, daughter of the late Philip II of Spain, was travelling north to Brussels to govern the Spanish Netherlands alongside her new husband. Her party stopped at Genoa, and there she sat for Sofonisba Anguissola, by then a painter in her late sixties who had spent years at the Spanish court before settling in Italy. Anguissola was one of the first women to win an international reputation as a painter, and this portrait, with its stiff court dress and carefully counted jewels, was only firmly credited to her again in 1992 after centuries of uncertain attribution. Isabella would go on to rule the Low Countries for nearly three decades.