Josefa de Óbidos 1630 – 22 July 1684 was a Spanish-born Portuguese painter.
n the course of her career, Josefa de Óbidos received many important public commissions for altarpieces and other paintings to be displayed in churches and monasteries throughout central Portugal. Examples include the six canvases for the Saint Catherine altarpiece for the church of Santa Maria de Óbidos in 1661, six paintings representing Saint Theresa of Ávila (1672–1673) for the Carmelite Convent of Cascais, an Adoration of the Shepherds for the convent of Santa Madalena in Alcobaça (1669), and four paintings for the Casa de Misericórdia of Peniche (1679).
Many of her still-life paintings, considered her specialty, are now preserved in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon.
Her best known portrait is that of Faustino das Neves, dated c.1670, which is in the Municipal Museum of Óbidos.
It is her still lifes that have made Josefa famous, yet her great distinguishing mark was in fact the creation of a religious imagery that enabled her to respond to the aspirations of a Baroque idiom that Portugal was to shape in its own way, bringing to its exaggerated and festive decorativism a strong theatrical component. One of the aims of this exhibition is to correct the idea that Josefa is a curious, but ultimately provincial painter, and instead to show her as a cultivated artist who clearly reflected the spirituality of her time.