Portrait of Paolo Morigia

Fede Galizia, one of the earliest female professional painters in Italy, completed this portrait of the historian Paolo Morigia in 1593, when she was just seventeen years old. Morigia, a Jesuit historian of Milan, was so impressed by the young artist that he praised her in his written works. Galizia went on to become an important still-life and portrait painter, though much of her work has been lost or misattributed to male contemporaries.

The portrait demonstrates remarkable technical maturity for a seventeen-year-old artist, with precise rendering of the elderly historian's features and scholarly attributes. The dark background and limited palette follow the conventions of Lombard portraiture, focusing attention on the sitter's expressive face.