Start Here: 5 things to know about Michaelina Wautier
Staff | Royal Academy | 5th April 2026
The clamour around Wautier is building and building. She came from a well-off family, likely had a good training in art, never married but shared a house with her artist brother near Brussels and died around 1689. She mastered an unusually wide range of genres, displaying both ambition and immense skill. Having been re-discovered only in the last decade, one writer anticipates more revelations. Seeing her work hung beside Rubens in a London show, another writer concludes, “Wautier is a giant”. A backgrounder is here.