The first time that Katljine von der Stighelen cast her eyes over The Triumph of Bacchus, it made her question her own judgement.
In 1993, the Dutch art historian and Rubens expert was visiting Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches museum for a conference and had asked to see a van Dyck in the archives. On her way out, she caught a glimpse of a vast, 2.7 metre x 3.5 metre oil painting of a wild and drunken parade writhing with naked bodies young and old.
Self portrait, Michaelina Wautier, 1649. Photograph: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” von der Stighelen recalled. “I really know my way around Flemish paintings from the 17th century, but when I saw this picture, I could not match it with anything I knew.” The archivist informed her of an intriguing fact: it was believed to be the work of a woman.
Three decades later, The Triumph of Bacchus is no longer hidden away in the Kunsthistorisches’ archives but given top billing as the centrepiece of a new show, and its creator is no longer nameless. Opening on 30 September, the exhibition Michaelina Wautier, Painter for the first time gathers into one show all known works by an artist who is belatedly coming to be recognised as one of the old masters of her age.
It includes monumental history paintings, portraits and still lives as well as allegorical treatments such as The Five Senses, a series of five paintings showing boys experiencing sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. The latter, assigned to Wautier only after a first retrospective in Antwerp in 2018, will be on display in Europe for the first time since Wautier’s rediscovery. Two studies – of a saint and a boy with a white cravat – will be shown for the first time carrying her name.
The Five Senses: Taste, Michaelina Wautier, 1650. Photograph: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
“For female baroque artists to work on this scale and with this variety of subjects is completely unseen,” said von der Stighelen.
“You had excellent women artists at the time painting flowers or still lives, but in general they were much smaller than those produced by men, largely due to the fact that they didn’t have their own workshops. Wautier is a complete exception to the rule.”
Little is known of Wautier’s biography beyond the fact that she was born in Mons in 1604, now the capital of Hainaut province in Belgium’s Walloon region, and that she had a brother five years her senior, Charles, who worked as a professional artist and was posthumously presumed to be the author of some of her paintings.
Two Girls as Saint Agnes and Saint Dorothea, Michaelina Wautier, 1655. Photograph: Rik Klein Gotink/Kunsthistorisches Museum
“We know practically nothing about her from historical documents,” said Jonathan Fine, director general of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. “Most of what we know, we know from her paintings”.
Of the 35 works that are attributed to her, around half are dated and signed “Michaelina Wautier”, but the spellings of her name in inventories varies, including “Michelle”, “Wouteers” and “Votier”. A large number of these works ended up in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, one of the great art patrons of his age, pointing to the Wautiers having some links to aristocratic circles.
While women at the time were not allowed to study at academies, the dexterity with which she wielded a brush makes it unimaginable that Wautier did not undergo some formal training, possibly at the hands of her brother, experts say.
Education of the Virgin, Michaelina Wautier, 1656. Photograph: Kunsthistorisches Museum
The very existence of The Triumph of Bacchus also suggests that Michaelina was able to use Charles’ studio, and to study naked male models in the flesh there.
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“When you look at Wautier’s paintings, it’s immediately evident that she knew what the body was,” said von der Stighelen. “When you look at the variety of ages, skin colours and hair textures in the Bacchus painting, it’s impossible that she worked purely off plaster copies. She must have had the opportunity to draw and paint from life.”
She was not the only woman to attain such mastery in Europe at her time: others, such as Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), have in recent years been re-assigned a seat at the old master table for their contributions to baroque art. But The Triumph of Bacchus makes Wautier the first known female artist to draw the naked male body on a life-sized scale.
Portrait of Martino Martini, Michaelina Wautier, 1664. Photograph: Courtesy of The Klesch Collection
Mastery of technique, at any rate, was not the only attribute that merited the Vienna retrospective, general director Fine said. Many of Wautier’s paintings express a bitter-sweet, melancholy, quintessentially modern sensibility.
Her series portrays the five senses as providing both pleasure and pain. There is beautiful music and fine food, but “Smell” has a boy pinching his nose while holding a rotten egg, and “Touch” shows its juvenile subject scratching his head after cutting his finger with a whittling knife.
The Triumph of Bacchus, too, is not triumphant in a straight-forward way. In the far-right corner of the painting, starkly illuminated and accentuated by a brightly-coloured half-toga, Wautier has painted herself as one of the revellers.
Unlike those around her, she is not joyous: a man to her left appears to be grabbing her head in the same manner that the cherubs to her feet manhandle a goat. Yet the expression on her face is not one of intimidation but of confidence.
“How she has painted herself into the picture is a sign of self-assertion”, said Fine. “She is being grabbed by the man next to her. But she resists and breaks away from him and the drunken revelry to look out of the picture plane.”
