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Middle Ages before 1500
Signed a 10th-century Apocalypse as its painter. Her name comes first.
Key work: Hell (from the Girona Beatus) (975)
Open her card →Abbess, composer, scientist — and she drew her visions.
Key work: Hildegard receives a vision (from Scivias) (c. 1151–1179)
Open her card →Painted herself inside a letter — and signed it.
Key work: Self-portrait in an initial (Guda Homiliary) (c. 1150–1200)
Open her card →Ran a Paris book business in the 1300s, under oath to the university.
Key work: Jean de Vignay presents his book to King Philip VI (c. 1333–1340)
Open her card →Painted flags for the city of Ghent. One may still survive.
Key work: War banner with the Maid of Ghent and the lion (Late 1400s)
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Renaissance 1500–1599
Painted her sisters mid-game and ended up at the Spanish court.
Key work: The Chess Game (1555)
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The 1600s 1600–1699
Hid tiny self-portraits in shiny cups. Look closer.
Key work: Still Life with Cheeses, Artichoke, and Cherries (c. 1625)
Open her card →Dramatic light, fierce heroines, no apologies.
Key work: Judith Slaying Holofernes (c. 1614–1620)
Open her card →Her paintings were sold as Frans Hals for 200 years.
Key work: Self-Portrait (c. 1630)
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The 1700s 1700–1799
Flowers so precise a botanist could name them — and she outpriced Rembrandt.
Key work: Flowers in a Vase (c. 1685)
Open her card →Marie Antoinette's portraitist, who fled a revolution and kept painting.
Key work: Self-Portrait with Her Daughter Julie (1789)
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The 1800s 1800–1899
Hokusai's daughter — a master of light and shadow in her own right.
Key work: Night Scene in the Yoshiwara (c. 1818–1844)
Open her card →Seaweed, sunlight and blue paper: a photo book before almost anyone.
Key work: Cystoseira ericoides (1843–1853)
Open her card →Got her first camera at 48 and broke all the rules on purpose.
Key work: John Herschel (1867)
Open her card →A founding Impressionist, painting the life men weren't allowed to see.
Key work: The Cradle (1872)
Open her card →Carved marble in Rome; her Cleopatra once marked a racehorse's grave.
Key work: The Death of Cleopatra (1876)
Open her card →The American who joined the Impressionists in Paris.
Key work: The Child's Bath (1893)
Open her card →Told Bible stories and falling stars in stitched cotton.
Key work: Pictorial Quilt (1895–1898)
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The 1900s 1900–1950
Bold, flat, frank — modern painting before it was cool.
Key work: Self-Portrait with Amber Necklace (1906)
Open her card →Abstract before 'abstract art' had a name. She asked us to wait.
Key work: The Ten Largest, No. 7, Adulthood (1907)
Open her card →From circus acrobat to model to the painter everyone posed for.
Key work: The Seamstress (1914)
Open her card →Trained in Paris, found her voice in India, gone at 28.
Key work: Self-Portrait (1927)
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