From the Old World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an unquiet chorus of women singing from the wings edges onto the public stage: artists, scientists, philosophers and travellers, the overture to a European Enlightenment.

The themes of women’s health, education and social justice, and the intrepidity of the restlessly creative, resonate with the lives of Egeria and Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir, with Trota the Salernitan medic and with Christine de Pizan. Their stories are absolutely relevant in the modern world; and none more so than that of the Italian Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi, whose Caravaggesque mastery of shade and colour, startlingly original compositions and overtly feminised subject matter are markers for a new era in women’s self-imagery.