Michaelina Wautier review – an astounding lost artist steps out of her male contemporaries’ shadows

2026-03-24 - 14:20

Royal Academy, London Wautier’s mighty paintings have been misattributed to her male peers for 300 years, but now UK audiences can enjoy their first encounter with a 17th-century trailblazer Art history is currently in the process of revising the accepted white male canon by uncovering overlooked female artists. We have had the recent explosion in interest of the extraordinary work of Artemisia Gentileschi, of whom major exhibitions such as the National Gallery’s have been at pains to extricate from the violent sexual assault that tends to overshadow her biography. By contrast, we have scant documentary evidence of her direct contemporary Michaelina Wautier (about 1614–1689) other than that she was born in Mons in the Spanish Netherlands (present day Belgium) and lived with her artist brother Charles in Brussels near the royal court. Both share the commonality of being so technically accomplished – while operating in a patriarchal society that prevented women easily enjoying successful artistic careers – that their work has since automatically been misattributed to their male counterparts and thus obfuscated in art history for 300 years; for Artemisia her father Orazio, and Michaelina her brother Charles or other contemporary baroque painters. Wautier is also elusive in straddling several genres, all executed with consistent quality: portraits, history or religious painting, and decorative floral work – the latter more commonly associated with female artists – further preventing identification. Continue reading...