From financing expeditions in the New World to founding hospitals and schools, these women were incredibly influential—and granted more power than their counterparts back home.

For many years The Lady in a Fur Wrap was thought to have been painted by 16th Century master El Greco ... that it was actually painted by Spanish artist Alonso Sánchez Coello.

In 16th-century Florence, however, the supplemental information that creeps into later portraits functions less ... with an ancient pedigree. The Spanish empire that helped install Cosimo in ...