Woman, Artist, Michaelina Wautier: The Rediscovery of an Old Master
Until 22 February, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is hosting a special retrospective devoted to the work of the Belgian Baroque artist Michaelina Wautier. For centuries, her name remained largely overlooked, but today she is finally recognised as the extraordinary artist she always was. Through Wautier’s rediscovery, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), too, has gained an old master. The museum has lent three works to the exhibition, including Two Girls as Saint Agnes and Saint Dorothy. But what makes Wautier so exceptional, and why is this painting from the KMSKA collection so representative of her artistic style?
A Herald of Charles II - Karel Wautier
Head Study of a Young Man - Michaelina Wautier
Against the Tide
In the seventeenth century, female artists enjoyed little freedom of movement. Their work was mainly confined to still lifes and portraits, partly because they were rarely entrusted with complex compositions, and partly due to a structural lack of access to training and resources. However, in-depth research over the past 25 years increasingly demonstrates that Wautier, who was born in Mons, pursued a markedly different path. Her oeuvre encompasses a remarkable range of genres, including history paintings, altarpieces and mythological compositions, alongside everyday scenes, still lifes, portraits, and head studies.
Wautier was ambitious and experimental, deliberately deviating from established norms in both subject matter and technique. Her personal circumstances, however, also enabled this artistic independence. She shared a studio in Brussels with her brother Charles, who was a painter as well, and in addition to their artistic practice they derived income from real estate, which afforded them a considerable degree of financial autonomy.
Moreover, as a woman, Michaelina was barred from membership of the Brussels Guild of Saint Luke. While this limited her contact with other artists, it also freed her from many of the guild’s constraints. She took full advantage of this freedom: she painted nude male models and worked on large, studio-scale formats. Her portraiture is equally daring, characterised by powerful, confident and immediately recognisable brushwork. Unconventional as her approach may have been at the time, it is clear that her work was nonetheless highly valued by several prominent patrons of the period.
A Fundamental Loan
For centuries, Wautier’s legacy remained in obscurity, with her paintings frequently misattributed to male contemporaries such as Jacob van Oost or even to her own brother. It was only in the twenty-first century that her work began to receive renewed scholarly attention. In connection with the special exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) has loaned three works from its own collection.
The most significant of these is Two Girls as Saint Agnes and Saint Dorothy, a masterful example of a portrait historié, a genre that combines portraiture with a historical or, in this case, religious subject. The two girls are depicted as the early Christian martyrs Agnes and Dorothy. While formally a portrait, the painting is marked by Wautier’s distinctive technique: through warm tones and thick, narrative brushwork, she evokes an atmosphere of intimacy underpinned by a subtle melancholy that hangs over the girls like a veil.
Old Master
The exhibition in Vienna marks a significant step towards the long-overdue recognition of Michaelina Wautier. The Kunsthistorisches Museum houses her most monumental painting, The Triumph of Bacchus, executed on commission for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. The rediscovery of this work proved pivotal, sparking renewed interest in Wautier and gradually restoring her to her rightful place in art history.
Today, with the exception of a few paintings, the museum is able to present almost her entire known oeuvre, positioning her alongside great contemporaries such as Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck. In doing so, one could say that the exhibition brings her artistic legacy full circle.
