She smiled. ‘And then it does.’ She beckoned me forward into the first display area. ‘Every room in the exhibition has been designed to reflect a different geographic location – Delft, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Leiden, Middleburg, The Hague. Art dealers didn’t really exist in Europe until the 16th century, not in any way we would recognise today. Before then, fine art was indistinguishable from the craft market. Guilds did not differentiate, for example, between house painters and artists. They were considered competitors, on par with one another. The 17th century changed all that. You said you wanted to know more about Catharina van Shurman. Have you seen a self-portrait of her yet?’

She led me over to an illustrated artwork no bigger than an A4 sheet of paper. The parchment was faded and the piece had been damaged during its journey through the centuries. A careless brown splotch stained one corner and there were very faint creases, indicating the drawing had once been folded into thirds. Yet for all its flaws, the child’s face staring out of the drawing was unmistakably vibrant. Dressed in a long-sleeved Dutch dress trimmed with a fussy lace collar, typical of the era, the little girl’s gleeful expression invited the viewer to guess what – or who – might have amused her.

‘Catharina sketched it for her twin brother’s eighth birthday,’ Jeanette said. ‘They were inseparable. I’ve no doubt he was just out of frame, probably making funny faces. His name was Crispijn. He became an art dealer, one of the few who dared to go up against the likes of Hendrick van Ulyenburgh and Johannes de Renialme. He gave up his dream of becoming an inventor to sell his sister’s artwork, which must have made financial sense because Catharina didn’t just paint. She also carved wax miniatures and etched glass wine goblets. She was an incredibly gifted polymath with an immense intellect and capacity for remembering things. At age eleven, her father gave her a book by Seneca and paid for her to be tutored in Latin, which, as I’m sure you know, was unusual at the time. Girls weren’t generally given what we would term a classical education. They most certainly weren’t encouraged to read Seneca! Catharina was a great advocate for women’s education and published, during her early twenties, a treatise about the importance of teaching young women to read and write. The pamphlet was hugely popular – and hugely controversial. In the end, her father and his high-powered friends rallied to support her. That was how things worked back then. You had to be endorsed by the fraternity in order to have any chance of succeeding professionally. They began calling her the Tenth Muse.’

‘It sounds as if you adore her.’