A painting by Rachel Ruysch and Michiel van Musscher for the Metropolitan Museum of Art

18/5/23 - Acquisition - New York, Metropolitan Museum - At a time when American and European museums have made the acquisition of female artists a top priority, the European Paintings department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art can point with pride to their holdings by female old masters, most of them gifted or bequeathed. Among them is a major Artemisia Gentileschi of Esther Swooning before Ahasueras, three recently bequeathed pictures by the seventeenth century nun Orsola Maddalena Caccia (see the news item of 15/1/21), a small portrait by Lavinia Fontana, a sumptuous floral still life by the rare Margareta Haverman, part of the museums first painting purchase of 1871, a small flower-piece by Anne-Vallayer Coster, The Interior of the Studio of a Female Painter by Marie-Victoire…