First published on the occasion of the exhibitions
‘Michaelina Wautier, Painter’ Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 30 September 2025 – 22 February 2026
Sponsored at the Kunsthistorisches Museum by
Partner
‘Michaelina Wautier’
Royal Academy of Arts, London 27 March – 21 June 2026
In London, this exhibition has been made possible as a result of the Government Indemnity Scheme. The Royal Academy of Arts would like to thank HM Government for providing indemnity and the Department for Culture, Media & Sport and Arts Council England for arranging the indemnity.
Director General, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Jonathan Fine
Director of Exhibitions, Royal Academy
Andrea Tarsia
Exhibition Curators
Gerlinde Gruber, Kunsthistorisches Museum
assisted by Charlotte Roosen, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Julien Domercq, Royal Academy assisted by Rose Thompson, Royal Academy
Exhibition Organisation
Ulrike Becker, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Joanna Weston, Royal Academy assisted by Grace Frazer, Royal Academy
Photographic and Copyright Co-ordination
Caroline Arno, Royal Academy
Susana Vázquez Fernández, Royal Academy
Exhibition Catalogue
Kunsthistorisches Museum Publications
Annette Van der Vyver, Editor
Benjamin Mayr, Head of Research Services
Royal Academy Publications
Florence Dassonville, Production and Distribution Co-ordinator
Carola Krueger, Production and Distribution Manager
Peter Sawbridge, Head of Publishing and Editorial Director
Text co-ordination of the English edition: Barbara Costermans, Tijdsbeeld
Publishing
Translation Dutch, German and French to English: Ted Alkins
Copy-editing and proofreading: Irene Schaudies
Design: Michaela Noll, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Colour origination: Jakob Gsöllpointner, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Any copy of this book issued by the publisher is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including these words being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
KHM-Museumsverband Burgring 5 1010 Wien Austria www.khm.at
Royal Academy of Arts Burlington House Piccadilly London W1J 0BD United Kingdom www.royalacademy.org.uk
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-915815-20-0
Distributed outside the United States and Canada by ACC Art Books Ltd, Riverside House, Dock Lane, Melton, Woodbridge, IP12 1PE
Distributed in the United States and Canada by ACC Art Books, 6 West 18th Street, Suite 4B, New York, NY 10011
Editorial Note
Dimensions of all paintings, sculpture and other objects are given in centimetres; dimensions of works on paper are given in millimetres. Height comes before width (before depth).
Illustrations
Cover: details of fig. 106 / cat. 22
Page 2: detail of fig. 7 / cat. 29
Page 9: detail of fig. 12 / cat. 2
Page 11: detail of fig. 10 / cat. 25
Page 26: detail of fig. 106 / cat. 22
Page 27: detail of fig. 34 / cat. 3
Page 28: detail of fig. 16 / cat. 4
Pages 44–5: detail of fig. 20
Page 60: detail of fig. 106 / cat. 22
Page 70: detail of fig. 49
Page 88: detail of fig. 75 / cat. 12
Page 106: Charles and Michelle (‘Michiele’) Wautier authorise their attorney, Master Abraham vande Kerckhove, in a lawsuit. Deed executed before notary Judocus Lemmens in Brussels on 16 November 1682, signed by both of them.
State Archives of Belgium, Vorst, Notariaat Generaal van Brabant 1754/1 (16 November 1682)
Page 122: detail of fig. 103 / cat. 18
Page 134: detail of fig. 6 / cat. 27
Pages 144–5: detail of fig. 18 / cat. 24
Page 161: detail of fig. 22 / cat. 14
Pages 170–1: detail of fig. 106 / cat. 22
Page 179: detail of fig. 22 / cat. 14
Page 180: detail of fig. 27 / cat. 5
Page 183: detail of fig. 106 / cat. 22
Page 184: detail of fig. 17 / cat. 23
Pages 188–9: detail of fig. 22 / cat. 14
Table of Contents
Foreword Acknowledgements
Michaelina Wautier: The Challenges of Reconstruction
Gerlinde Gruber and Julien Domercq
Michaelina Wautier: A Chronology
Charlotte Roosen
Michaelina’s Style: Blended Brilliance
Katlijne Van der Stighelen
Michaelina Herself: From Face to Phenomenon
Katlijne Van der Stighelen
Charles Wautier: Status quaestionis
Anne Delvingt and Pierre-Yves Kairis
Michaelina Wautier and Artistic Brussels
Sabine van Sprang and Lara de Merode
A Revised Biography of Michaelina Wautier
Jean Bastiaensen
Michaelina Wautier’s Paintings in the Habsburg Collections
Gerlinde Gruber
The Materials and Techniques of Michaelina Wautier’s The Five Senses
Kirsten Derks and Alice Limb
List of Works compiled by Charlotte Roosen
Gerlinde Gruber and Julien Domercq
The Challenges of Reconstruction Michaelina Wautier
Michaelina Wautier was a trailblazer. Active in Brussels in the middle of the seventeenth century, she worked in an unusually varied range of genres: from flower pieces, portraiture and religious scenes all the way to the grand genre of history painting. Yet only tantalisingly few details relating to her life and work have come down to us. Her monumental Triumph of Bacchus, from the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, is now appreciated as one of the highlights of the paintings collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum and stands as a testament to a profusely gifted, learned and well-connected artist. She ‘signed’ The Triumph of Bacchus (fig. 106) not with her name, but by painting herself as a bacchante, the only figure in this scene of pagan debauchery to meet the viewer’s gaze—at a time when women artists were usually restricted to painting flowers and domestic subjects. Such was the unusual potency of her work that for centuries, The Triumph of Bacchus was thought to be the work of a male painter.1
Despite her obvious gifts and unique position, surveys of the history of women artists still neglect to mention her name, and for centuries her work did not receive the level of recognition it deserves.2 This may be in part because reconstruction of Michaelina
Wautier’s life and career remains a work in progress. While important advances have been made over the last decades, researchers are still confronted with essential questions lacking definitive answers. The exhibition curated by Katlijne Van der Stighelen in Antwerp in 2018, ‘Michaelina—Baroque’s Leading Lady’, was a milestone in the rediscovery of her oeuvre. Combined with the much overdue reappraisal of the work of women artists in museums, private collections, galleries and auction rooms worldwide, the exhibition laid the foundation for the subsequent unearthing of Michaelina’s series of The Five Senses (figs 6–10), now considered to be one of her most important works.3 In recent years, research has been driven forward by Jahel Sanzsalazar, Katlijne Van der Stighelen, and Jeffrey Muller and his team, among others.4 Like the first exhibitions of old master paintings staged in the late nineteenth century—of which the Royal Academy of Arts was one of the pioneers—this exhibition seeks to reunite her oeuvre under one roof in order to better define it, but also in the hope of enabling further discoveries.
It was thanks to Eduard Ritter von Engerth, director of the Viennese painting collection, that two paintings by Michaelina Wautier—Saint Joseph
Katlijne Van der Stighelen
Michaelina’s Blended Brilliance Style
AN IDEAL STARTING POINT
Thanks to recent archival research, we now know considerably more about Michaelina Wautier’s biography than we did at the time of the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to her in 2018 in Antwerp. The new information is extremely important to our understanding of her as an artist. It has been established, for instance, that she was born into an intellectually cultivated, partially aristocratic milieu, that she was relatively wealthy and might have travelled to Italy.1 We still know regrettably little, however, regarding her artistic training.
A BROTHER AND SISTER
Assuming that Michaelina Wautier was born in Mons like her siblings, there is little evidence to suggest that she received her artistic training there too.2 It is important to stress in this context that as far as we can make out, no artists were previously active on either the Wautier side or that of her mother, Jenne George. Since Michaelina’s brother Charles was roughly five years older than her, he is assumed to have been the first member of the family with artistic aspirations. How he translated this inclination into a professional career, however, remains unclear. What we do know
for certain is that he was active as a painter in Brussels in 1642, albeit without enrolling in the local guild, much to the latter’s annoyance. He was 33 at the time, and none of his work from that period has been identified thus far. When he did finally register with the Brussels guild in 1651, incidentally, it was recorded that he had trained ‘abroad’.3 Given his age, it is possible that he undertook a Grand Tour to southern Europe sometime between 1630 and 1640.4 Decorum would have prevented a woman from travelling alone, so it is plausible that Michaelina made the journey to Italy with her brother.5 Since she would not have done so until she was at least twenty, this would suggest that Charles and Michaelina Wautier crossed the Alps together between around 1634/35 and 1640/42. A journey of this kind was fraught with risk and will certainly have been an adventure.6 It is impossible to tell whether Charles had already trained as an artist when he set off or whether he received any basic or additional instruction during his time abroad.
Reconstructing the beginning of Michaelina’s career is equally complex. Given that she was younger than her brother, he might have instructed her, although it is also possible that the two of them trained together in the studio of an as yet unidentified painter.
TWO FLOWER GARLANDS
Two painted garlands of flowers are signed Michaelina Wautier fecit. 1652 (figs 17, 18).19 They are Wautier’s least typical creations and would almost certainly never have been attributed to her had they not been signed. Flower still-lifes were considered a specialist genre in seventeenthcentury Antwerp, and the artists who created them did not ordinarily venture into history paintings or portraits.20 Moreover, it was often viewed historically as a gender-specific field, as women supposedly lacked the imagination to pursue other themes. A number of women artists—Rachel Ruysch among them—did indeed devote themselves exclusively to flower still-lifes with considerable success.21 Wautier’s garlands are suspended from blue ribbons in the upper corners, a new motif that was applied around the same time (1650) by Michaelina, Daniel Seghers and Jan Davidsz. de Heem, who turned it into a fashionable composition.22 The two paintings by Wautier were conceived as a pair, creating a highly varied and colourful ensemble. The way she links the ephemeral splendour of the flowers to the vanitas motif represented by the classical bucranium (ox skull) motif is entirely unique and offers a further illustration of her exceptional originality and erudition.23
Michaelina Wautier, Flower Garland with a Dragonfly, 1652. Oil on panel, 41.1 x 57.4 cm. Private collection, Connecticut, USA (cat. 23)
Michaelina Wautier, The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, 1649. Oil on canvas, 157 x 218 cm. Séminaire de Namur (cat. 11)
Anthony van Dyck, The Virgin and Child with Saints Rosalie, Peter and Paul, 1629. Oil on canvas, 275 x 210 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Picture Gallery, inv. 482 (cat. 59)
Jean
Bastiaensen
A Revised Biograp hy
of Michaelina Wautier
NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE LIFE
AND NETWORK OF A VERSATILE ARTIST
Little is known about Michaelina Wautier’s family.
The comprehensive genealogy published in 1852 by Félix-Victor Goethals drew on an earlier version from 1699, which can no longer be traced. It was compiled when a nephew of Michaelina’s was pursuing an aristocratic title and is therefore not always entirely accurate. Although the family tree thus contains a number of errors, it nevertheless served as the starting point for the current archival research, which has led to fresh insights into the family backgrounds and networks that might have influenced the careers of Michaelina and her brother Charles.1 The aim of this essay is threefold: to rewrite the biography of Michaelina and Charles Wautier based on these new findings; to explore the social and professional networks that could have supported their progress in the art world; and to present a new identification of a portrait by Charles.
A FAMILY WITH AMBITIONS
As far as is known, there were no painters in the Wautier family before Michaelina and Charles. Their father, also called Charles, was a son of Jean Wautier
of Mons and Germaine Motte, and probably related to the de Houst family from Ath.2 Their mother, Jenne George, was a daughter of Jacques George and Jenne Marie Enault, who married Jean Mauregnault after Jacques’s death.3
Michaelina’s father Charles served as a page to the Count of Fuentes. The genealogy states that Charles bore the title ‘Lord of Ham-sur-Heure’, but this is incorrect, since the title in question had been held by the de Merode family since 1487. It was a misreading that led to the confusion in Goethals’s publication.4
An until recently untraced genealogy from 1792 (fig. 88), the text of which derived in turn from a 1741 version, specifies that Charles Wautier was ‘Lord in Ham-sur-Heure’.5 ‘In’ and ‘of’ were used to draw a subtle distinction between legal and administrative power (‘of’), and more limited influence or holdings in the village (‘in’). Correspondence from the de Merode family archives confirms that subordinate feudal estates (‘fiefs’) existed in Ham-sur-Heure.6 This nuance of status suggests links between the Wautiers and the de Merode family, a connection that persisted into the eighteenth century, given that Michaelina’s brother Pierre and his descendants continued to be ‘Lords in Ham-sur-Heure’.7
Kirsten Derks and Alice Limb
The Materials and Techn iques The Five Senses of Michaelina Wautie r’s
INTRODUCTION
The Five Senses represents a rare intact set of paintings by Michaelina Wautier’s hand (figs 6–10). The series was rediscovered in 2020 when they were acquired by Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo. This rediscovery provided the impetus for a 2022 exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which centred around the series.1 All five paintings are signed and dated by the artist: Michaelina Wautier fecit. 1650. The paintings show five different young boys, each representing one of the senses. The models were probably boys from Wautier’s environment. She depicted them frequently: the same boys can be found in Two Boys Squabbling Over an Egg (fig. 20) and Boys Blowing Bubbles (fig. 19), for instance.2
Although more archival sources have been retraced,3 scant documentary evidence of Wautier as an artist has survived. This means that her paintings provide key sources of information about her life and work. By examining her work thoroughly, we can learn more about her as an artist. The Five Senses underwent technical examination alongside their recent conservation treatment. The technical research included microscopic examinations, photography in different lighting conditions (including raking light,
ultraviolet and infrared radiation), X-ray radiography and X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) analysis.4 Small paint samples were set as cross-sections and analysed using optical microscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy equipped with Energy Dispersive X-ray spectrometry (SEM-EDX).5
SUPPORT AND GROUNDS
All of The Five Senses are painted on plain (tabby) weave linen canvas.6 The majority of Wautier’s surviving works are on canvas, although she did paint a few works on panel (notable examples include the two Flower Garlands7 and Study of a Bearded Man; figs 17, 18 and 30, respectively). Each of Wautier’s canvases for The Five Senses has similar dimensions, measuring approximately 69.5 x 61 cm. Within her oeuvre, there are many more paintings made on canvases of very similar sizes. These include Young Man Smoking a Pipe, Portrait of Martino Martini, Study of a Youth, Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist (figs 24, 27, 23, 21, 29). This recurrence could suggest that Wautier often worked on standardised canvases which were bought from an artists’ supplier, a common practice in this period.8 However, the presence of cusping along all edges of The Five Senses as well as an
