A new bequest at the Metropolitan Museum in New York highlights the role of convents in nurturing the careers of women at a time when they were all but barred from being artists

Their work has been unseen for centuries; their stories have never been told; and yet their paintings are the hottest property for galleries and museums across the world right now.

I’m talking about female Old Masters: women like Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), who was feted by the National Gallery a few months ago, and Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614) and Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1625), exhibited together last year at Madrid’s Prado. According to one curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the most exciting acquisitions of the moment are works by early women. So where should historians go to search for the women we know existed, but whom art history has failed to document?