VIENNA.- Repressed, forgotten, celebrated: the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is presenting the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the Flemish Baroque painter Michaelina Wautier (c.1614–1689) – one of the most important rediscoveries in recent art history. Following in the tradition of Rubens and Van Dyck, she is rightly celebrated for her brilliant brushwork, her versatility, her wide range of pictorial themes, and the self-assurance with which she depicted male bodies and their anatomy, which was extraordinary for a female painter of her time.

‘Michaelina Wautier is one of the most significant rediscoveries in art history. The Kunsthistorisches Museum is showing work that has been overlooked or misattributed to others for centuries’, says Jonathan Fine, Director General of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Almost all of Wautier’s surviving works are now being presented in Vienna for the first time, including paintings that have never before been shown in public.

An unusual case in art history

Michaelina Wautier was an exceptional artist of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, her work was underestimated, forgotten, or attributed to male colleagues for centuries. At a time when women artists were mainly engaged in still life or genre painting, Wautier confidently excelled in the demanding field of history painting. Her monumental The Triumph of Bacchus, for example, was mistakenly attributed to Rubens’s pupils or even Luca Giordano until the 1960s – too large, too powerful, too many nude male bodies for it to have been painted by a woman, as women were generally barred from art classes where nude drawing was taught. Today, the work is considered an icon and a centrepiece of the Picture Gallery at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Wautier’s portraits, altarpieces, and allegories not only exceed the expectations of women artists at the time, but also testify to her extraordinary originality, subtle humour, and remarkable courage.

Art history as a journey of discovery

Much of Wautier’s life remains a mystery. Presumably born into an educated and financially independent family from Mons, the painter lived in an age of political unrest and social restrictions for women. Despite not having access to formal training or the backing of a well- established family of artists, she nevertheless managed to make her way into the intellectual and artistic circles of the Habsburg court in Brussels.

There, she lived with her older brother Charles Wautier, who was also a painter. It seems likely that they shared a studio, but whether they collaborated – on large-scale works, for example – remains a subject of research. The fact that she never married may well have been a deliberate choice – for the sake of art.

‘We hardly have any biographical data, documents, or letters, but we do have her paintings. That is enough to bring one of the most powerful women artists of her age back into the spotlight’, says curator Gerlinde Gruber.

The Habsburg governor of Brussels and great art collector Archduke Leopold Wilhelm acquired her works. Yet there is no contemporary commentary on her art. Nor are there any letters or other documents written in her own hand. What we do know about Michaelina Wautier comes almost exclusively from her paintings – and from her signatures. Unlike many women artists of her day, she signed with her full name: Michaelina Wautier – not Michelle, but in its Latinised form – which may have been a way of emphasising both her education and her independence. In two of her works, she went even further: with the rare signature invenit et fecit – ‘conceived and executed’ – she actively countered the prejudice of the time that women lacked creative imagination.

Michaelina Wautier’s work is exemplary of many women artists whose achievements have been ignored for centuries.

Largest survey of her work in Vienna

The exhibition was developed in cooperation with the Royal Academy of Arts in London. It makes Wautier’s extraordinary skill and the artistic quality of her paintings evident. With 29 paintings, one signed drawing, and a print based on a lost work, the Kunsthistorisches Museum is presenting the most comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s oeuvre to date. Her works are reassessed and placed in dialogue with antiquity, Rubens, Van Dyck, and other masters of her time.

Altogether, the exhibition brings together around 80 high-calibre works and realia. Thanks to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s collecting activities, the Kunsthistorisches Museum now holds the world’s largest museum collection of Wautier paintings. In addition to The Triumph of Bacchus, these include the paintings St. Joachim Reading, St. Joseph, and St. Joachim. They are complemented by loans from major Austrian and international institutions as well as private collections.

Highlights include Wautier’s famous series The Five Senses, which is being shown in its entirety for the first time in Europe (Rose-Marie and Eijk Van Otterloo Collection), her Self- Portrait (private collection), Flower Garland with Butterfly (Het Noordbrabants Museum, ’s- Hertogenbosch, on permanent loan from a private collection), Two Girls as St. Agnes and St. Dorothy (Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp – Flemish Community), Boys Blowing Bubbles (Seattle Art Museum, gift of Mr. Floyd Naramore), The Education of the Virgin (private collection, courtesy of the Hoogsteder Museum Foundation), and Portrait of Martino Martini (The Klesch Collection). Other important loans come from the Austrian National Library in Vienna, the University Library of Vienna, The Phoebus Foundation, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, the Royal Collection Trust in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and private lenders.

After its premiere in Vienna, the exhibition will be shown in an adapted form at the Royal Academy of Arts in London from 27 March to 21 June 2026.

The exhibition was curated by Gerlinde Gruber, Curator of Flemish Painting at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

The exhibition design is by Viola Stifter.

A richly illustrated catalogue will be published in German (Belser Verlag) and English (Hannibal Books) to accompany the special exhibition.