Royal Academy to Stage First UK Exhibition Dedicated to Baroque Painter Michaelina Wautier

The Royal Academy of Arts will present the first UK exhibition dedicated to the remarkable Baroque painter Michaelina Wautier this spring, offering audiences a rare opportunity to discover one of the seventeenth century’s most overlooked artistic talents.

Running from 27 March to 21 June 2026 at the Academy’s galleries in Burlington House, the exhibition brings together around 25 paintings spanning Wautier’s career. Active in seventeenth-century Brussels, Wautier was an artist of extraordinary ambition who worked across genres ranging from portraiture and still life to religious and mythological painting—fields that were typically dominated by male artists at the time.

Despite her achievements, Wautier’s work faded from public awareness for centuries. Many of her paintings were misattributed or forgotten entirely until renewed scholarly attention in the late twentieth century began to restore her reputation. Today she is increasingly recognised as one of the most significant female painters of the Baroque period, a contemporary of artists such as Artemisia Gentileschi.

The exhibition traces the breadth of Wautier’s artistic range while also exploring the social world in which she worked. The opening section focuses on her portraiture, revealing a painter closely connected to Brussels’s cultural elite. Among the highlights is her striking Self-Portrait from around 1650, which will be shown in dialogue with a self-portrait by the influential Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens. The pairing offers insight into how both artists shaped their public image at a time when portraiture played a crucial role in artistic identity.

Other notable works include Portrait of a Military Commander (1646), which demonstrates Wautier’s ability to convey authority and psychological depth, and Portrait of Martino Martini (1654), depicting the Jesuit missionary and scholar. Together these works highlight her sensitivity to character and her technical confidence.

Religion forms another central theme in the exhibition. Large-scale devotional paintings were rarely attempted by women artists in the seventeenth century, yet Wautier approached them with notable ambition. Works such as The Education of the Virgin (1656) and Saint John the Evangelist reveal her command of complex composition as well as her capacity to bring emotional warmth to traditional sacred narratives. Some paintings in this section also shed light on her collaborative relationship with her brother, the painter Charles Wautier, offering rare insight into their shared studio practice.

The final section explores Wautier’s most innovative work. Her recently rediscovered series The Five Senses (1650) reimagines a familiar allegorical theme by portraying each sense through lively young boys engaged in everyday activities. At a time when such subjects were usually represented by idealised female figures, Wautier’s approach introduces humour, individuality and a sense of realism that sets the series apart.

The exhibition culminates with Wautier’s monumental painting The Triumph of Bacchus (c.1655–59), now housed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Once part of the celebrated collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, the canvas depicts a vibrant mythological celebration. Within the crowded scene, Wautier inserts her own likeness among the revelers, boldly meeting the viewer’s gaze. The gesture is widely interpreted as an act of artistic self-assertion, demonstrating both confidence and awareness of her place within the artistic world.

From a carefully chosen vantage point in the final gallery, visitors will be able to view both this self-insertion in The Triumph of Bacchus and the earlier self-portrait displayed at the beginning of the exhibition, offering a compelling visual dialogue across different moments of the artist’s career.

The exhibition has been organised by the Royal Academy of Arts in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Museum. It is curated by Julien Domercq, with assistance from Rina Sagoo.

Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue bringing together the latest scholarship on Wautier’s work, reflecting the growing interest in her art and the ongoing research that continues to uncover new information about her life and paintings.

As museums and historians increasingly reassess the contributions of women artists, this exhibition offers a long-overdue recognition of a painter whose ambition and technical mastery place her among the most compelling figures of the Baroque era