17th century Spanish, active in Portugal

Josefa de Ayala y Figueira, better known as Josefa de Óbidos, was born in Seville in 1630. She was the daughter of Catalina de Ayala Camacho and Baltasar Gómez Figueira, a Portuguese painter who had moved to Seville around 1626 to work in the studio of Francisco Herrera the Elder (ca. 1590-ca. 1654).

Little is known for sure about Josefa’s early training as a painter, but bearing in mind her father’s connection with the art world of the time and the active role played by many women in workshops during the period, one can assume that, from an early age, she was exposed to and able to gain valuable insights into the trade.

Her parents returned to Óbidos (Portugal) sometime before 1644, and there is documentary evidence that Josefa entered the Convent of Santa Ana in Coimbra that same year. It is worth underscoring that this fact was probably instrumental in her later production, given that her works conveyed a marked religious conception within the baroque aesthetic.

It is not known exactly when she left Coimbra, but it would have to be after 1653, the year when an engraving she made for the statutes of the University of Coimbra is dated. After leaving the city she moved to her parents’ home in Óbidos, where she would spend the rest of her life—the reason why she came to be known as Josefa de Óbidos. This is when she decided to dedicate herself to painting, something rather unusual for a woman at that time.

Over the course of her career, she worked in portraiture and in religious and history painting but specialized above all in still life, in which she developed a distinctive style all of her own, close to Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664).

Josefa died on 22 July 1684 at the age of fifty-four and is buried in the Church of St Peter in Óbidos.

The artist and her work then fell into relative obscurity until the mid-twentieth century, when her life and work became the focus of serious academic research. As a result, she is now regarded as one of the maximum exponents of Portuguese baroque naturalism.