The Triumph of Bacchus by Michaelina Wautier
Michaelina Wautier, a previously overlooked female painter from the Flemish Baroque period, is now getting a moment in the spotlight with her own exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Very little is known about Wautier’s life. She was born in 1604 in the city of Mons, now in Belgium. She had an older brother named Charles, who also worked as an artist. Some suspect that, since women were not allowed to study art at the prominent European academies, she likely received some artistic training from Charles. There are approximately 35 paintings attributed to her, yet only about half of them are signed or dated. A woman working professionally as an artist was rare but not entirely unheard of in the 17th century. In the Low Countries, Judith Leyster and Clara Peeters were notable, while Mary Beale became a prominent portraitist in England. And of course, arguably the most famous was Artemisia Gentileschi in Italy. At the time, most women painters were confined to specific types, primarily still-life and genre paintings. Artemisia is somewhat of an exception to this convention, painting biblical and history scenes on very large canvases. However, as art historians learn more about Wautier, the more they learn about her importance to Flemish Baroque art. Her largest and most important work is The Triumph of Bacchus, painted in the early 1650s. It had previously been in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, governor of the Habsburg Netherlands and brother of the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand III.
Despite the lack of documentary evidence on the details of Wautier’s life, some of her paintings tell us a great deal. For example, The Triumph of Bacchus tells us many things about Wautier’s work and her degree of fame. Because most female painters worked primarily in still-life and genre works, their paintings tended to be relatively small, allowing them to work without a studio. However, The Triumph of Bacchus measures just over 9 by 11 ½ feet. Furthermore, art historians can infer that, given the amount of exposed skin on display in the painting, she was also able to work from live nude models, something that was not often done without a dedicated studio. The best guess is that Wautier shared one with her brother Charles. This also would have made Wautier the first female painter to have depicted the nude male body on a life-size scale. Analysis of her other paintings reveals that she was successful and wealthy enough to afford and use ultramarine pigment, an incredibly rare and expensive form of blue made from lapis lazuli. Some of her work also shows that she had no shortage of commissions. This is clearly evident in the portraits she painted. Also, one of the highlights of the Vienna exhibition is a series called The Five Senses. Each painting depicts a young boy in a situation that allegorically represents sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch. According to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, all five paintings were likely made to hang together. This implies “a significant amount of space to display together. Therefore, it is probable that the series was a commission, rather than painted for the market.”
As an indicator of her popularity and success as a painter, Wautier must have been sufficiently established for her to subvert or defy some artistic conventions in her work. For example, in The Five Senses, another artist would have likely shown young female subjects, since they were more popular for allegory. Furthermore, some of the actions being performed are actually rather unpleasant. For smell, a boy grimaces and pinches his nose at the smell of a rotten egg. And for touch, the boy has cut his finger while whittling a piece of wood. Even when the boys’ actions are not explicitly unpleasant, the predominant color scheme of brown and gray starkly contrasts with other Baroque allegorical paintings, like the collaborations between Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Back to The Triumph of Bacchus, Wautier did something here that is rather rare for female artists in most periods of art history: self-insertion. It is believed that the female figure on the right side of the canvas facing the viewer, possibly representing Ariadne, is in fact a self-portrait of the artist. Not only was this rare for female artists, but even more rare and somewhat shocking is her robe coming down across her torso to expose her left breast. University of Antwerp art historian Kirsten Derks commented, “I don’t know of any other artist who would dare to do that.”
The push for greater recognition of Wautier can be traced back to 1993, when the Belgian art historian Katlijne Van der Stighelen found The Triumph of Bacchus in storage at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. At the time, many of Wautier’s paintings were misattributed to other artists, including her brother. So when she saw this monumental work of a mythological subject, she became incredibly puzzled because she could not recognize the artist by their style. “For female baroque artists to work on this scale and with this variety of subjects is completely unseen”. Van der Stighelen began researching the artist and, eventually, searched for a suitable venue for an exhibition. In 2018, she curated Michaelina Wautier: Baroque’s Leading Lady at Antwerp’s Museum aan de Stroom. Since then, Wautier has only gained more and more recognition. Christie’s Old Masters specialist Maja Markovic called Wautier’s rise in prominence “nothing short of meteoric”. Her paintings also command impressive prices on the secondary market. However, this is mainly because there are so few of her works in private hands. Only three verified Wautier paintings have appeared at auction in the last five years.
In Vienna, twenty-nine of her thirty-five known existing paintings, 82% of her surviving oeuvre, are now assembled in one place. The exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum now seems like a crowning achievement for art historians and other advocates of increased attention and scholarship on Wautier’s life and work. The Vienna exhibition will travel to the Royal Academy in London in March 2026.