The most amazing fact about Galizia's Portrait of Paolo Morigia is that she began work on the masterpiece at the age of fourteen.

Paul Klee, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Albrecht Dürer also completed great pieces around the same age, but these early artworks are not usually considered by writers to be a major part of their overall life's work. By contrast, the Portrait of Paolo Morigia is as essential to studying Galizia as an insurance policy is to a missile manufacturer. As a fourteen-year-old, living over four hundred years ago, she was already a master of oil painting, and speaking in a singular and profound voice. Certainly Milan in those days was a brutally repressive place for women. So, it is remarkable that Galizia was able to establish an art practice which left an impression for centuries afterward. 

The sitter, Paolo Morigia, was a Jesuit historian - a fact Galizia makes reference to by surrounding her subject by very important leather-bound books, and placing in his hand a pair of reading glasses. Morigia loved the painting, remarking on its likeness: "It bears such a resemblance to nature that for more one could not ask." You can find Morigia gushing with praise for the teenage artist in the first volume of his book La nobilta di milano. If you can read Italian, you can find the entire passage for free on the internet, and it is worth seeing how Morigia draws upon every rhetorical special effect to convince you that Galizia is the real McCoy. "One must give great praise to this most gentle and virtuous little girl," Morigia writes, who has "poured" herself into painting, already producing many "beautiful and accurate drawings in this delicate stage of her youth." Calling her portraits so rare as to be "miraculous," Morigia also highlights two other Galizia portraits,  those of Donna Maria Giron de Velasco, Duchess of Frias, and Mrs. Camilla Ferraro.

It seems Galizia was also pleased with her portrait of Morigia. Afterall, she worked on it for four years. When signing the portrait at its completion the artist pointed out another of her virtues by adding: "virgo pudiciss" or "most humble virgin." To really hammer the point home she even used an alternate spelling of her first name: Fides, meaning faith or fidelity.