Another highlight is a recently rediscovered signed portrait by Lavinia Fontana, one of the earliest professional female painters in Europe. Trained in Bologna by her father Prospero Fontana, she established herself by the late 1570s as one of the city’s leading portraitists, supporting a large family through her practice before relocating to Rome at the invitation of Pope Clement VIII. The sitter, Isabella Ruini Angelelli, a Bolognese noblewoman known for her beauty and intellect, sat for Fontana on at least three other occasions, including Venus and Cupid (1592, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen) and Portrait of Isabella Ruini Angelelli (1593, Palazzo Pitti, Florence). The present work expands the oeuvre of one of the most significant women painters of the late sixteenth century and further illuminates Fontana’s elite Bolognese clientele and her role within the city’s aristocratic circles.