Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-05-12
Source: The Conversation – France (in French)– By Gabriele Neher, Associate Professor in History of Art, University of Nottingham
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) in London is currently hosting the most comprehensive retrospective of Michaelina Wautier’s work to date. This is a historic exhibition that allows us to rediscover an artist who, in her time, enjoyed great success and was cherished by the court and Brussels elite, but who then almost disappeared from the public scene and from the attention of specialists for nearly 300 years.
The first modern mention of the Flemish painter Michaelina Wautier (1614-1689) presents us with an artist who defies all expectations. Evoking her monumentalTriumph of Bacchus(1655–1659), Gustav Glück, the first art historian to hold the position of curator at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, wrote in 1903: “Even in the era of female emancipation, it would be difficult to attribute this painting, which shows a very vigorous, almost coarse conception, to the hand of a woman.”
And that is where Wautier’s success lies: she could have painted “like a man,” but in most of her works, she does not feel the need to. On the contrary, Michaelina Wautier asserts herself as aartistendowed with a style that is its own.
Restoring Wautier’s place in the artistic canonThrough an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Artsseems particularly appropriate for an artist who defied the expectations of her time. The RA was the first institution to offer professional training to artists in Great Britain. Wautier’s work and the way the RA presents it clearly testify to the type of training that at the time was the exclusive privilege of male artists.
Wautier and Gentileschi
His education is immediately highlighted by the image that opens the exhibition, a graceful and assured work entitledStudy of the Bust of Ganymede by the Medicis(1654). The drawing depicts the famous ancient Roman sculpture, which was located in Rome at the time. Knowing how to draw was a highly valued skill, and this Ganymede demonstrates not only the mastery of an artist who received meticulous training, but also a work that is in line with its time and reflects contemporary trends.
Many will wonder where she stands in relation to the great star of Baroque painting who was her contemporary, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1654) — a favorite subject in thehistory of feminist art. The two women disappear from the scene after the 1650s, both having worked with relatives (Wautier with her brother, Gentileschi with her father), and both were supported by high-ranking patrons. But that is where the similarities end.
Gentileschi’s violent personal history has often overshadowed debates about her talent and mastery of her art. For example, works like theBeheading of Holofernes(1612) are frequently interpreted as direct responses to her experience of sexual violence.
Of Wautier’s personal life, however, little is known except the identity of her parents, the fact that she shared a studio with her brother in Brussels, and that she never married. This lack of information is partly due to the fact that the artist’s will was destroyed in the flames during theFrench bombardment of Brussels in 1695.
If in the case of Gentileschi, one has the impression of not being able to separate art from biography, for Wautier, we have nothing other than her art. A marvelous art, moreover.
Wautier excelled in portraiture, thanks to her elegant palette and mastery of textures, whether hair or fabrics. In her portraits, particularly in the depiction of children, she appears lively and full of life, and very attentive to eccentricities and little quirks. This is notably seen in her series The Five Senses (1650). For example, “Smell” depicts a little blond boy squeezing a rotten egg in one hand and pinching his nose with the other, repulsed by the stench of the egg.
However, she never signed her portraits. But she signed two large religious paintings, oneMystical Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandriaand an intriguing and unusual sign depictingThe education of the Virgin. These two panels depict cultured, confident, and elegant female protagonists, defined by their actions.
These paintings defy thecontemporary ideasaccording to which women artists excelled at imitation but did not have the ability to imagine and create a subject from nothing. Wautier signs these paintings “invenit et fecit,” which translates to “invented and executed.” She thus claims her ability to demonstrate imagination to create significant large-scale works. She asserts herself in full mastery of her art, and this is nowhere more evident than in the masterpiece of the Royal Academy exhibition, her immenseTriumph of Bacchus.
Here, Wautier tackles the quintessence of artistic mastery: a large-scale mythological subject that featured in the work of his most important contemporaries, such asAndrea Mantegna,Titianand of course the artist who dominated the market in Flanders and the Netherlands,Peter Paul Rubens.
The Triumph of Bacchusde Wautier’s work is more imposing than that of her male competitors, and she manages to depict the central male nude, very fleshy, with the grace and elegance of a Titian. She presents the viewer with the powerful image of a Bacchus reclining in a wheelbarrow, surrounded by his disciples. Wautier paints a great variety of male nudes in diverse poses with natural ease, and this Bacchus definitively places her in the history of art; this masterpiece seems designed to defy the idea that a woman cannot paint like a man.
Michaelina Wautier raises the challenge by a notch by intriguingly including a self-portrait. She depicts herself as an elegant bacchante with bare breasts, a disciple of Bacchus, dressed in a salmon-pink dress, looking at the viewer; she is the only one to do so among the multitude of depicted characters. Wautier’s bacchante stands upright and proud, inviting the viewer to look at her. But it is Wautier who controls this gaze; in the painting, a yellowish-skinned faun tries to grab this confident woman, who ignores his lascivious look and pays no attention to his hands grabbing her hair. She leads the dance.
Michaelina Wautieris showing at the Royal Academy of London until June 21, 2026
Gabriele Neher does not work for, advise, own shares in, or receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and has declared no affiliations other than her research institution.
–ref. Michaelina Wautier: a Flemish Baroque painter with breathtaking talent –https://theconversation.com/michaelina-wautier-a-flemish-baroque-painter-with-stunning-talent-282185