The Easel

1st April 2026

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.

The great imagination of John Vanbrugh

Guy Stagg | Engelsberg Ideas | 26th April 2026

Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, two of Europe’s grandest country houses, were both designed by Vanbrugh. Castle Howard, built around 1702, introduced a flamboyance and cheerful disregard for classical proportions that set the style for English baroque architecture. These buildings employ a “careful choreography of visual effects”, giving them a “messy vitality” admired by modern architects. Above all, they demonstrate that ‘buildings can be theatre’.

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