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 portrait in fancy dress, depicting the sitter as Spenser's virtuous heroine. Such literary portraits combined classical learning with fashionable portraiture. Stubbs's oil technique was grounded in exhaustive anatomical study—he spent eighteen months dissecting horses at a Lincolnshire farmhouse before painting the plates for his Anatomy of the Horse (1766)—producing an exactitude of musculature...

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