‘Old masters too’: Ghent exhibition celebrates female artists of the baroque

Show in part a rediscovery of more than 40 mostly forgotten women who plied their trade in the Low Countries

Judith Leyster, an artist of the Dutch golden age, was thought to be about 21 when she painted her self-portrait in 1630. In the picture she presented to the world, Leyster exudes cheerful confidence. Clad in shimmering silks and a stiffly starched lace collar, she leans back in her chair, palette and brushes in hand, a painting by her side.

This work, completed in the year she was admitted to a painters' guild in Haarlem, proclaimed her arrival as an established artist. It was one of the first self-portraits by an artist in the Dutch republic, a device most male painters did not adopt until years later.