From Sept. 30, 2025 to Feb. 22, 2026, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna will host an exhibition devoted to Flemish Baroque painter Michaelina Wautier (Mons, 1617 - Brussels, 1689). Entitled Michaelina Wautier. Painter, the exhibition is curated by Gerlinde Gruber and is produced in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
The exhibition will present for the first time in Vienna almost all of the artist’s surviving works, giving visitors an opportunity to learn about the depth and originality of the production of an artist who has long remained in the shadows but is now considered one of the most significant discoveries in the history of art in recent decades. Active in the 17th century and often compared to the great masters Rubens and van Dyck, Wautier stood out for her exceptional talent and boldness of expression.
At a time when women artists were usually confined to still life or genre painting, Wautier ventured with confidence and mastery into history painting, a field usually dominated by men. The authorship of her monumental Bacchanal, for example, was long questioned precisely because of its grandeur and complexity, deemed irreconcilable with female authorship.
Her canvases reveal remarkable inventiveness, a subtle ironic streak, and uncommon courage. However, the figure of Michaelina Wautier still remains enigmatic: we do not know with certainty either her date of birth or where she received her artistic training. It is assumed that her brother Charles initiated her into painting. It is known that Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, a passionate art collector of the time, acquired several of her works, but there are no coeval documents directly commenting on her work. It is thanks to the archduke’s collection that today the Kunsthistorisches Museum possesses the largest nucleus of Wautier’s paintings, including the famous Bacchanal, considered his masterpiece.
The exhibition aims to highlight Wautier’s exceptional mastery and the artistic quality of his paintings, on par with contemporaries such as Peter Paul Rubens and Antoon van Dyck. Among the most anticipated highlights, the exhibition presents for the first time in Europe the series The Five Senses, which allows us to appreciate the artist’s ability to represent human perceptions with elegance and depth.
The exhibition thus aims to invite the public to rediscover Michaelina Wautier as an important voice in Baroque painting, as well as a master of the senses, whose work deserves a prominent place in the history of European art.
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| The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna dedicates an exhibition to Baroque painter Michaelina Wautier |
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