Maria Kusche (1928 in Malaga – 2012) was a Spanish art historian of German descent, a specialist on painters at the royal court of Philip II of Spain, in particular Sofonisba Anguissola, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, and Alonso Sánchez Coello.
In 1992 she identified the Prado's Portrait of Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, currently held at the Spanish embassy in Paris [fr], as being painted by Anguissola.
Kusche successfully questioned the traditional attribution to El Greco of the Lady in a Fur Wrap, an iconic portrait formerly at Louis Philippe I's Spanish gallery at the Louvre and held since 1853 at Pollok House in Glasgow.
In a 1990 lecture at the Museo del Prado, she identified it instead as a portrait of Catalina Micaela of Spain by Anguissola, developing earlier arguments made by Elías Tormo in 1913 and Carmen Bernis Madrazo [es] in 1986.
[2][5][6] A later radiography analysis confirmed her stylistic arguments against El Greco's authorship, even though its authors opted to attribute the painting to Alonso Sánchez Coello.