Michaelina Wautier

Born in Mons, Wautier was the youngest daughter of a family of eight children, including six boys. She shared her life with her brother, the painter Charles Wautier. Shortly after 1640, they settled in a mansion near the Chapel Church in Brussels.[2]

Michaelina Wautier painted in small formats as well as more ambitious canvases with as main subjects history, religion and mythology. At the time, large format paintings were still considered a preserve of male painters. Wautier multiplied representations of genre scenes, historical paintings, as well as more detailed representations of flower garlands.[3] Her works also include a series of portraits. She was distinguished from other women painters by the diversity of her subjects and formats.[4]

Her first self-portrait, painted in 1649, was long mistakenly associated with the Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi. It remains one of Wautier's most famous paintings.[5] The painting is included in the 1905 book Women Painters of the World.[6] It was not until 1672 that the painter Elisabeth-Sophie Chéron produced what is considered the first female self-portrait in France.[7]

The painting named The Triumph of Bacchus (1650, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna) is often cited as one of the most representative of her works. She was familiar with masculine anatomy and painted it without shame, becoming one of the first female painters to expose a naked man.[7] The artist depicted herself in the middle of the colourful crowd. She is the only character to look at the viewer.[2]

Unlike many other women painters of this period, Wautier received recognition while alive. In particular, she sold four paintings to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria for his painting gallery. The paintings are mentioned in the inventory of the collection drawn up in 1659.[8] However, her work fell into oblivion after her death. Some art historians link this absence to the attribution of her paintings to Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert, Jacob van Oost or her brother Charles Wautier.[9]

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  The Triumph of Bacchus (1650), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
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  Portrait of Martino Martini (1654), Private collection
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  St Joseph holding white lilies (1650), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
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  Two Boys Blowing Bubbles (between 1640 and 1650), Seattle Art Museum, Seattle.
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  Two Girls as Saint Agnes and Saint Dorothea, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp.
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  Elk zijn meug, The Phoebus Foundation
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  A youth smoking a pipe (circa 1659), Private collection
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  Flower garland with dragonfly, Private collection

From June to September 2018, the first complete retrospective on Michaelina Wautier was shown at the Museum aan de Stroom in Antwerp (MAS) (who organised the exhibition along with the Rubenshuis). It was curated by the art historian Katlijne Van der Stighelen.[2][10]

• Media related to Michaelina Wautier at Wikimedia Commons