Due fanciulle come sant'Agnese e santa Dorotea

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.