This year's Traditional Holiday stamp is the first to depict the work of a woman artist. Elisabetta Sirani's Virgin & Child was chosen for the stamp. An artist of international renown, Sirani created 190 pieces during the 1660s, a time when there were very few women artists. She established a painting school for women in her early twenties and was so beloved in her native Bologna that the entire city went into mourning when she died at age twenty-seven. Her depiction of the Virgin and child has been admired both for its technical mastery and for its tenderness.