Isabella Saltonstall as Una in Spenser's 'Faerie Queene'

Isabella Saltonstall as Una in Spenser's Faerie Queene from 1782 by George Stubbs is a literary fancy-dress portrait depicting the sitter as Spenser's virtuous heroine from the great Elizabethan allegorical epic. Such literary portraits, which placed contemporary sitters in the roles of famous fictional or classical characters, were fashionable in late eighteenth-century England as a vehicle combining flattery with cultural display. The subject gave Stubbs an unusual opportunity to blend his equestrian expertise with literary portraiture: Una in the poem rides a white palfrey, allowing him to render the horse with his characteristic precision alongside the figure dressed in Elizabethan costume. The work is held at the Fitzwilliam Museum. It represents a strand of Stubbs's work—literary, fanciful, culturally elevated—that coexisted with his sporting commissions.

The literary-costume portrait demonstrates Stubbs's ability to combine figure painting with his equestrian expertise, the white palfrey rendered with characteristic precision.