Roll up, there’s a new old master in town. Or a new old mistress, if you prefer. Michaelina Wautier (1614-89) is revealed here as a painter who excelled within the genres of her time: flower painting, portraiture, emblematic tronies, and, if the scholars are right, classical epic, too. The new Royal Academy show cracks open the received idea of what a Flemish woman operating in the decades immediately after Rubens and Van Dyck could achieve.

Her c.1650 self-portrait at the easel is a confident statement. She is enthroned under a mantel of lusciously painted black velvet, which looks restrictive, but emerging from it comes her agile, three-dimensional painting hand. Her beauty is incidental, an aspect of her concentration and skill. We feel she has already achieved a lot, secure in her position.

Europe is finally standing up to Trump

Donald Trump would regret leaving Nato

I was hers after seeing this –  though I’ll admit to being thrown when I later discovered that it had been believed for 80 years or so to depict Artemisia Gentileschi, then was thought to be the philosopher and artist Anna Maria van Schurman. But the present........

© The Spectator