Catherine Maria Fisher was famous for being a prostitute. She was charming. She was seductive. And at one time she was ‘kept’ by the members of a London gentlemen’s club called Arthur’s Club.

She was rich as well as extravagant. She wore more than 1,000 crowns worth of diamonds when she met Casanova in 1764. And once, when she was handed a 20-pound note, she slapped it into a bread-and-butter sandwich and ate it.

She would have been snubbed by high society. But in his paintings, Joshua Reynolds enjoyed transforming his subjects into those with an elite pedigree.

So this portrait shows the famous courtesan as none other than Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt. She’s pictured at a banquet where, the story goes, she impressed Mark Antony by removing a pearl earring, dissolving it into wine, and drinking it.

Like Cleopatra, Kitty Fisher was seductive. Gossip at the time also suggested she and the painter had more than just a working relationship. She died in her mid-twenties, reportedly from using too much white lead face makeup.