May 8, 2023 • 36 mins
Flemish painter Michaelina Wautier’s style was realistic and detailed, with a dark, almost somber color palette. And for a long time, she remained an unknown, even among art historians.
Research:
- Atkins, Christopher D.M. and Jeffrey Muller, editors. “Michaelina Wautier and The Five Senses: Innovation in 17th-Century Flemish Painting.” CNA Studies. December 2022. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 2022.
- Atkins, Christopher and Alyssa Trejo. Email correspondence. Center for Netherlandish Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston. 4/12/2023.
- “Six Paintings by 17th-Century Artist Michaelina Wautier Sought by Rubens House.” 4/26/2017. https://www.codart.nl/art-works/six-paintings-17th-century-artist-michaelina-wautier-sought-rubens-house/
- Dill, Vithória Konzen. “5 Things You Should Know About Michaelina Wautier.” Daily Art Magazine. 1/8/2023. https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/michaelina-wautier/
- Esterow, Milton. “For Centuries, Her Art Was Forgotten, or Credited to Men. No More.” New York Times. 12/5/2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/arts/design/michaelina-wautier-artist-boston.html
- Kairis, Pierre-Yves. “Interview with Pierre-Yves Kairis.” MAS. https://mas.be/en/page/interview-pierre-yves-kairis
- Kimball, Jill. “Student-curated MFA Boston exhibition spotlights long-forgotten female Flemish painter.” Brown University. 12/7/2022. https://www.brown.edu/news/2022-12-07/wautier
- Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. “Looking at the Overlooked: A live conversation on the life and work of Michaelina Woutier.” Via YouTube. 12/9/2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJArJm9kR7Q
- “Michaelina Baroque’s Leading Lady.” Exhibition pamphlet. 2018.
- McCouat, Philip. “Forgotten Women Artists #4: Michaelina Wautier: Entering the Limelight After 300 Years.” Journal of Art in Society. 2019. https://www.artinsociety.com/forgotten-women-artists-4-michaelina-wautier-entering-the-limelight-after-300-years.html
- Museum of Fine Arts Boston. “Michaelina Wautier and ‘The Five Senses’.” https://www.mfa.org/gallery/michaelina-wautier-and-the-five-senses
- Needleman, Sam. “Michaelina’s Boys.” The New York Review. 3/12/2023. https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/03/12/michaelinas-boys/
- Nordenfalk, Carl. “The Five Senses in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes , 1985, Vol. 48 (1985). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/751209
- Van der Stighelen, Katlijne. “CHAPTER 6 Anna Francisca de Bruyns (1604/5–1656), Artist, Wife and Mother: a Contextual Approach to Her Forgotten Artistic Career.” Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, 2019. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctvrxk3hp.12
- Van der Stighelen, Katlijne. “‘Doing justice to an artist no one knows is quite an undertaking’.” Apollo Magazine. 7/2/2018. https://www.apollo-magazine.com/doing-justice-to-an-artist-no-one-knows-is-quite-an-undertaking/
- Van der Stighelen, Katlijne. “Michaelina Wautier 1604-1689: Glorifying a Forgotten Talent.” Rubenshuis and BAI Publishers. Translated. 2018.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. So that same trip into
Boston that brought about our recent episode on Mary Dyer
(00:21):
also inspired this one. I was wandering around the Museum
of Fine Arts and I stumbled onto a set of paintings.
They depicted the Five Senses, and I found them to
be just very striking and very beautiful, very realistic, with
this very dark, almost somber kind of color palette, and
also at the same time just full of lovely details,
(00:45):
like the way the light would fall onto the curls
of one subject's hair, or the way their clothing draped
around them. These paintings turned out to be by seventeenth
century Flammish painter Michelina Wotier, who you will also hear
pronounced more like Wautier, depending on whether the person is
(01:08):
using a French pronunciation or a Dutch one. I heard
a lot of our historians talking about her. They were
split on what pronunciations that they used, and it also
didn't seem to like fall along the lines of English
speakers using one pronunciation in French or Dutch or whatever
speakers using a different one. We're gonna stick with Watier
(01:32):
just because that seems like it will work best for us,
and we also won't randomly be slipping into a different
pronunciation and random times in the episode. This is somebody
who has been relatively unknown even among people who specialize
specifically in seventeenth century are until very recently. So unfortunately,
(01:55):
we don't have a lot of biographical detail about Mickelina Watier,
and what we do know is still evolving. For example,
her birth year. The first major retrospective of Watier's artistic
career was held in twenty eighteen as a collaboration by
the Museum on the Stroom see that as mas or
Moss and Ruben's House in Antwerp, Belgium. Material created for
(02:19):
that exhibition, including the exhibition catalog, gives the date of
her baptism as September second, sixteen oh four. The first
US exhibition of her artwork is the one that's going
on at the MFA in Boston, and material connected to
that exhibition gives the date of September second, sixteen fourteen. Normally,
(02:39):
in this kind of a situation, we might say something
like source X gives her birth date as X, but
source Y gives her birth date as why. But in
the case of Mcleena Watier, that ten year difference is
a big deal. Her father, Charles Watier, died non November
twenty fourth, sixteen seventeen. Mcleena would have been one of
at least six siblings and half siblings still living at home,
(03:03):
and the youngest of them was only about a year old.
We really don't know how her mother, Jean George, supported
herself and all of these children after Charles's death, although
she was from a pretty wealthy merchant family and she
might have gotten financial support from them. So was this
Mckelina's experience from the age of three or from the
(03:24):
age of thirteen. Was she one of the oldest children
in the household and her father died, or was she
one of the youngest. One of Mickelina's brothers was also
named Charles, and he became an artist as well. He
was born in sixteen oh nine. If he was five
years older than Mickelina, we can imagine that maybe she
looked up to him as an artist, and perhaps he
(03:45):
was able to mentor her and help oversee her artistic
education as she was growing up. If he was five
years younger than Mickelina, he may still have provided her
access to artistic training and space that she wouldn't have
had otherwise when they were with adults, but it could
have been a very different dynamic. So the catalog from
(04:05):
that twenty eighteen exhibition in Belgium cites a record of
baptism that was part of a volume of records that
ended in March of sixteen oh nine. So as I
started working on this, it seemed like the sixteen oh
four date was probably the correct date. But then I
emailed the Center for Netherlandish Art at the MFA, which
organized this current exhibition there, to ask if there was
(04:28):
maybe some newly uncovered information correcting the date to sixteen fourteen,
And according to the response that I got back from them, yes,
newly discovered documents have indeed placed her birth year as
sixteen fourteen and not sixteen oh four. If you're curious
about what those documents might be, so am I, but
I don't know. Miguelino Woitier was born in Monts, southwest
(04:50):
of Brussels, which at the time was part of the
Southern Netherlands under the control of Habsburg Spain. Habsburg Spain
is a modern term describing the territory ruled by Charles
the First and Charles the Second in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Habsburg Spain included what's now Spain and Portugal,
much of modern Germany, the Netherlands, southern Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia,
(05:13):
although it gained a lost parts of that territory at
various points. Spain also started aggressively colonizing the Americas during
these years. Mcalina's mother was her father's second wife. The
elder Charles Woitier had five children with his first wife,
Barb before her death sometime in sixteen oh one or
(05:33):
very early sixteen oh two. Then Charles and Jehan got
married in February of sixteen oh two, and they had
six children together, Mcalina and five boys. We mentioned that
Jean was from a wealthy merchant family, Barb was as well,
and there was more than one marriage connecting these two families.
(05:54):
Mckelina's certificate of baptism lists her name as Maria Magdalena,
and we don't really know when the name Michelina came
into the picture. There are also a lot of different
spellings of the name Waitier. In written records, people used
different spellings and pronunciations depending on which dialect of Dutch
(06:14):
they spoke, or if they spoke French or some other language.
As far as we know, she was the only girl
among her siblings and half siblings to survive to adulthood.
Based on what we know of Mickelina's mother's family and
the fact that Mckelina was able to focus so much
on painting, this family was probably very affluent even after
(06:35):
her father's death, and the quality of her artwork suggests
that she had private art teachers. The subjects that she
chose to portray in her art also suggest that she
had a really solid education in subjects like religion, mythology,
and history. She signed contracts in both French and Dutch,
so she probably spoke both of those languages, and it
(06:57):
also seems that the Watier family was socially prominent and respected.
Nicquelina's grandfather and great grandfather had served as aldermen, and
her father held positions at court. Nicquelina's half brother, Jacques,
joined the Royal Guard in the capital of Madrid in
sixteen fifteen, and he was later elevated to the nobility.
Her brother Pierre also became the herald of Arms for
(07:20):
the Duchy of Guilders in sixteen twenty eight. Miquelinootier probably
started studying art while living in Mons, but we don't
really know where she studied, or who her teachers were,
or if she traveled to study art elsewhere. She also
wasn't the only woman artist in the area at the time.
Another was Anna Francisco du Brune, who was born in
(07:42):
sixteen oh four and got married in the church of
Saint Germain in Mont in sixteen twenty eight. In sixteen
thirty two, the chapel of Notre Dame du bon Voulois
was completed not far away, and de Brune painted the
Assumption of the Virgin to hang behind the chapel's high
office her We don't really know if Mickelina and Anna
(08:03):
Francisca knew one another. It seems like they might have.
Mickelina almost certainly would have known about Anna Francisca's work
as an artist. She was painting for the chapel that
was sort of right down the street from where her
family lived. Mickelina's mother, June, died on June nineteenth, sixteen
thirty eight. Since Mickelina was not married, she was probably
(08:25):
still living with her mother in Moles. At least that
would have been what was expected of her, especially if
Juhne needed any kind of help or care near the
end of her life. Sometime after Juhne's death, Mickelina moved
to Brussels, where her brother Charles lived, probably into the
home that he had already established there. This means that
(08:45):
Charles had enough money for a home that was large
enough to also accommodate his sister and possibly to house
an art studio for the two of them as well.
The first written mention we have of Charles Wattiers an
artist as from sixteen teen forty two, and the first
mention we have of Miquelina Watier as an artist is
from righte about the same time. But both of these
(09:08):
really suggest that neither of them was just starting out
as a painter. For Charles, this was a mention that
he was one of the people who was painting in
Brussels without first becoming a citizen of Brussels or joining
the guild. That suggests he was supposed to have done
both of those things already. He was not a student.
He was somebody who was expected to join the guild
(09:29):
and pay its associated fees in order to work professionally
as an artist. For whatever reason, he was not doing that.
Later references also describe him as foreign trained as an artist.
That foreign training may have happened in Italy. He did
eventually become a citizen and join the guild. First mention
(09:50):
of his doing that is in sixteen fifty one. Not
really clear why he didn't do it initially, He just
didn't know that he had to fil For Miquelina, the
first reference we have is an engraving of her portrait
of military commander Andreas Cantelmo Ducopopoli, which was created in
(10:10):
sixteen forty three. Although Mquelina's original painting no longer exists,
the engraving made from it suggests that she was already
a mature, skilled artist. The fact that Cantelmo commissioned this
work from her also suggests that she had already established
a reputation for herself, although we don't know what work
he might have seen that led him to want her
(10:32):
to paint his portrait. The engraving was also created by
Paulos Pontius, who did extensive work with artists like Peter
Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyke, so it seems like
she already had a lot of connections within the artistic
community and to possible customers and patrons. We will talk
about Nichelino Watier's career as an artist and gleans some
(10:54):
more stuff about her life from what we know of
her work after a sponsor break. Miquelina Watier is not
the first seventeenth century woman artist we have talked about
on the show. Others include Italian artist Lavinia Fontana and
(11:18):
Artemisia Gentileski and German entomologist and illustrator Maria Sebuia Mariam.
Other prominent women artists from the period who we have
not discussed include Dutch artist Judith lester She, Artemisia Gentdeleski,
and Mikuelina Watier are sometimes grouped together as examples of
just especially prominent and skilled women artists from this period,
(11:42):
but there were many many other women working as artists
in the seventeenth century whose work did not become as
well known. In the chapter Mickelina Watier and Working Women
in Early Modern Europe from the twenty eighteen Exhibition Catalog,
Martha Howell writes that there were dozens of professional women painters,
perhaps even hundreds, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
(12:04):
that there were also many more women who painted, but
just not professionally. Many, but not all, of the most
well known women artists during this era were the daughters
of male artists, like Artemisia Gentileski's father, Razzio and Lavinia
Fontana's father Prospero, were both prominent professional painters. Of course,
(12:26):
not every woman artist who came to prominence also had
an artist father. Judith Lester's father was a brewer, but
having a father or maybe an uncle or some other
adult male artist in the immediate family could really open
up a lot of doors for women to study art
and find commissions and find places to exhibit their work.
(12:48):
There were also a lot of limits on the lives
and careers of most women artists. In much of Europe,
membership in an artist guild was required to work professionally,
but many artists guilt accepted few, if any women. Women
were often barred from art schools and anatomy classes and
workshops where they might learn to draw and paint the
(13:09):
human form, especially if those classes involved working with nude
male models. As a result, a lot of women artists
focused on subjects that they had easier access to, so
things like flowers and landscapes and their own families and
the families of people they knew. The style of painting
that evolved in the Southern Netherlands under Spanish Habsburg rule
(13:32):
is known as Flemish Baroque painting, and still lifes of
flowers and flower gardens were a big part of this style.
This gave professional women painters some opportunities to make a
living by painting something that was really popular and that
they also had easy access to, and which was considered
appropriate subject matter for women to be interested in. Of course,
(13:55):
there were exceptions to these trends, a notable one being
Artemisia Gentileski, who we have covered on the show before.
We just ran our episode on her as a Saturday Classic.
But another is Mikuelina Wotier. The only other artist we
know of in her family is her brother Charles, and
the two of them seem to have come into their
(14:15):
own as professionals at roughly the same time, at least
within a few years of each other. We know of
only two still life paintings in Woitier's body of work,
which may have been made together and intended as a pair.
We're going to talk a bit more about those pieces later.
She also did portraits and paintings depicting moments from history
and mythology, which was not common for women artists at all,
(14:39):
and one painting in particular suggests that she had a
lot of opportunity to work with nude male models, something
that women were generally prohibited from doing, and most, but
of course not all, women painters at the time slowed
down or stopped working entirely after getting married, but Wotier
never married. It seems likely that living and working with
(15:02):
her brother, Charles, gave Mickelina Watier access to resources and
educational opportunities that she just would not have had access
to otherwise. She and her brother almost certainly consulted one
another on their work as well, and they may have
even collaborated, although each of them really developed their own style.
In particular, Charles's brushwork tends to be smoother and more blended,
(15:26):
while Mickelina's is often a lot more layered, with a
lot shorter and tighter strokes. This is something you can't
really see unless you're looking at the painting in person,
or if you have a really really high resolution image
of it that can retain all of that detail. Some
of their commissions may also have come about through their
other brothers military connections. Both Charles and Mcalina painted a
(15:50):
lot of portraits of officers who were serving the Spanish
crown and other people who were connected with the Spanish Habsburgs.
One of Mickelina Watier's made her patrons was Archduke Leopold
Wilhelm of Austria, who bought at least four of her
works and probably commissioned at least one of them. Leopold
was Governor of the Spanish Netherlands from sixteen forty seven
(16:12):
to sixteen fifty six, and he was also an avid
art collector. There's a painting of him in his enormous
gallery surrounded by his collection, which includes paintings by Titian Raphael, Peter,
Paul Rubens, and Anthony van Dyke, among others. A painting
that the Archduke almost certainly commissioned from Michelina Watier is
(16:34):
called the Bacchanal or the Triumph of Bacchus, which is
often described as her masterpiece, and this one painting illustrates
so many of the ways that Watier really broke away
from what was expected of women and women artists, like
there was a period when the creator of this painting
was not identified and people saw it and just assumed
(16:56):
that it was by a man, because of all the
things we're about to talk about. Number one is painting
was big. It was more than nine It is still
exists more than nine feet high and twelve feet wide,
or about two point seven by three point seven meters,
So it really wasn't something a person could easily create
while painting on an easel in her own home or
in a small studio space. Number two was the subject matter,
(17:20):
the mythical god Bacchus reclining on a leopard skin while
being carried in what looks like a wheelbarrow pushed by
a satyr. He's in the middle of a procession of
more than fifteen people, most of the male, and most
of them at least partially nude. These people represent a
spectrum of ages and body types, suggesting that Watier had
extensive knowledge of anatomy and had worked with enough live
(17:43):
art models to be able to represent this level of
physical diversity, and specifically that she had worked with nude
male models, and this painting is radical and subversive. And
yet another way, there is only one figure who's looking
outward from the canvas, and that is a woman painted
in the right corner, wearing a blush pink drape that
(18:05):
exposes one of her breasts. This is a self portrait
of Wotier herself. We of course do not know her
motivations or her thought process for putting herself and the
painting in this way, but it is really easy to
conclude from it that she was a person who wanted
to push some boundaries. Watier also created a full self
portrait sometime around sixteen forty nine. It shows her as
(18:27):
an artist, sitting in an easel, holding brushes in an
artist's palette with the paints that she's about to use.
There's a faintly visible outline of a person's head on
the canvas, suggesting that she is working on a portrait
of a man. She is elegantly dressed, wearing a pearl necklace,
with her hair curling down to her shoulders. There's a
(18:48):
small pocket watch near the edge of the easel, something
several art historians have interpreted as reference to the passage
or fleetingness of time, and also as a mark of
her affluence. Because watches were ex and it's incredibly detailed.
Watier even painted in the weave of the canvas that
she's about to start painting on, with such clarity that
(19:09):
it is hard to tell what's detail that she added
and what is the actual weave of the physical canvas.
About a year after making this self portrait, Wotier created
a series of paintings depicting the five senses. Sets like
these depicting the five senses, the four seasons, the four elements,
the seven deadly sins, things like that. They had started
(19:32):
to become popular in the sixteenth century, although artists had
been creating these kinds of sets as far back as
the early Middle Ages. These sets of paintings were often
full of allegory and symbolism. In terms of the five senses,
artists often drew from Arisitelian philosophy, and they arranged the
senses in a hierarchy, with sight at the top of
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the hierarchy, and then hearing, smell, taste, and touch. What
reason for the popularity of sets like these was that
printmakers could sell prints of the whole set at once,
rather than one painting at a time at the same time,
Though intact sets of all of the original paintings are
pretty rare, Watier's Five Senses may have been another commission
(20:18):
from someone very wealthy, because these paintings seem to have
been intended to be hung as a set in a
row that would have required a lot of wall space.
But if that's the case, we don't know who commissioned them.
Often paintings of the Five Senses focus on beautiful, idealized
women in very elaborate settings, but these are much simpler,
(20:41):
and they depict five boys. The boy's orientation and positioning
suggests that they're meant to be displayed in that Aristelian order.
They were ordered this way the first time they were
listed in a sale catalog as well. That happened in
eighteen eighty three. These paintings are very dark. They're mostly
painted in shades of browns and blacks and dark greens.
(21:04):
Sight looks a bit older than the other boys, and
he's looking at his own hand through glasses that are
held up to his space. Hearing is looking out from
the canvas playing a recorder. Smell is pinching his nose
with one hand while holding a rotten egg in the other. One,
Taste is about to bite into a piece of bread,
(21:24):
and Touch has just cut his finger on a knife,
and he's looking at this situation as though he's just
not quite sure what just happened. Her models for these
paintings may have been boys and teenagers who she knew
and whose family she was friends with. The same boys
appear in some of her other works. The boys in
(21:46):
Taste and Touch are also painted in a piece called
Two Boys, in which one boy is holding a partially
eaten egg and the other seems to be trying to
take it from him. The boy shown in Hearing is
also one of the two boys. Boys blowing bubbles, which
is exactly what it sounds like. It's boys blowing soap
bubbles through a straw. Two Boys and Boys Blowing Bubbles
(22:08):
are examples of Watier's genre paintings, that is, paintings meant
to represent scenes from everyday life. We will talk about
some of Woitier's later works after a quick sponsor break.
(22:29):
We mentioned earlier that still life paintings of flowers were
very popular in seventeenth century artwork, and that they were
a particularly popular subject for women, in part due to
those flowers being so easy for women to access. But
as we noted earlier, there are only two known floral
still lifes painted by Michelina Watier. They are Flower Garland
(22:52):
with Dragonfly and Flower Garland with Butterfly. Both of them
were painted in sixteen fifty two. These may have been
a set. In both of these paintings, the garland is
draped in between two animal skulls. The flowers are really
detailed and delicate, which contrasts with these animal skulls that
extend sort of past the edges of the canvas. Another
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painting that may have been commissioned by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm
was one of Italian Jesuit missionary Martino Martini. Miquelino Watier
painted this portrait in sixteen fifty four. Martini was in
Brussels from February to June of that year and he
had audiences with the Archduke. During that time, Martini did
(23:36):
his missionary work in China, and he was the first
person in Europe to publish an atlas of China. Watier
painted him in Chinese garments, which is likely what he
was wearing while in Brussels. He was known as Waiquan
in China. That name is shown in the painting's top
right corner. This is the only known portrait of Martini
(23:56):
made during his life. A posthumous portrait created after he
died in sixteen sixty one doesn't resemble this one much
at all. Mickelina Watier's last known work is Annunciation, painted
in sixteen fifty nine, showing that Angel Gabriel telling Mary
that she would conceive and give birth to Jesus Christ.
(24:17):
Although this painting still exists, it seems like it was
cut down on the top and sides at some point.
It's currently two hundred by one hundred and thirty four
centimeters or six point five feet by four point four feet,
but older catalogs give dimensions that are more than three
meters high and two meters wide, or roughly ten feet
by six and a half feet, so it's hard to
(24:40):
get the full effect of what this painting was supposed
to look like. The Angel Gabriel's wings and garments are
cut off at the side, and what should really look
like a very dramatic break in the clouds with the
Holy Dove and beams of light coming through it seems
almost muted. We don't really know if Watier continued to
paint after eating this work, or if she didn't, why
(25:02):
she stopped. Over the sixteen years between sixteen forty three
and sixteen fifty nine when we know she was active
as an artist, she created roughly forty known works. These
represented nearly every genre of painting that was part of
the Flemish Baroque style, including portraits, still lifes, genre paintings,
and history paintings. This is a much broader range than
(25:26):
the vast majority of women painters at the time, and
the history paintings in particular are notable because they are
so far outside the realm of what women were thought
capable of depicting. In sixteen sixty eight, Michleita and Charles
Woitier bought a home near Notre Dame de la Chapelle
in Brussels, and in sixteen eighty nine she died. With
(25:46):
the birth year of sixteen fourteen, she would have been
about seventy five years old. She was buried at Notre
Dame de la Chapelle, and she left all of her
possessions to her brother, so any paintings that had not
already been sold to someone else, probably stayed within her family.
Charles Watier died in seventeen oh three. Like Mickelina, he
(26:07):
had never married, and he left most of his possessions
to his nephew, Augustine Charles, who was master of the mint.
Augustine Charles was allowed to dispose of those possessions however
he saw fit. Charles Watier also left an annuity to
his maid, a woman named Jean Ldeux, and his will
specified that this was in recognition of her service and
(26:28):
devotion to his sister. That has led to some speculation
about whether Mickelina needed particular care in the last years
of her life that Jeune was responsible for, or what
their relationship might have been. Based on all of the
stuff that we have gleaned from her what we know
of her life and work, Mickelina Watier seems to have
been really well known and well respected in Brussels during
(26:51):
her life. Multiple paintings of hers were bought by and
possibly commissioned by Archduke Leopold Bilhelm, and she also made
multi portraits of prominent people who only would have worked
with her if she had an established and respected reputation
as an artist. She and her brother also seemed to
have been really well off. They bought and sold various
(27:12):
pieces of property. They were able to support themselves and
their lives and work as artists with no apparent problem.
But after her death, Nikolina Waitier was almost entirely forgotten,
and a lot of her work was misattributed to other artists,
in some cases with her signature on her work painted
over and replaced with someone else's. One thing that could
(27:34):
have helped keep her name and legacy alive in the
public consciousness was Prince of her Self portrait. This is
something many artists did, essentially as a marketing tool to
promote themselves while living and to help protect their memory
after their deaths. But no Prince of her Self portrait
were ever made, and we don't know why. To be clear,
(27:55):
her name did not totally disappear from history. She signed
and dated roughly half her known pieces, and even with
somebody painting over some of her signatures for unknown reasons,
art historians and other writers still knew who she was.
She was mentioned in texts from time to time in
the centuries that followed, but it really wasn't until the
(28:16):
end of the twentieth century that people started really taking
dedicated effort to correct those misattributions, and also realizing just
how prominent and groundbreaking her work had been. Various art
historians today describe her as one of the Old Masters,
alongside contemporaries like Artemisia Gentileski, Peter Paul Rubins, Anthony van Dyke,
(28:38):
and Johannes Vermier. In terms of misattributed work. At least
one of those signed paintings wound up being attributed to
Frowns Wowders, who was one of Rubens's students, probably because
of their similarly spelled last names. Some of Watier's works
were also incorrectly attributed to her brother. Her Bacchanal was
listed in the Inventory of the archdukes possessions after his
(29:01):
death in sixteen sixty two, but her name was not included.
Watier was reidentified as its creator in nineteen sixty seven.
Her annunciation was attributed to French court painter Pierre Badeaux
until her signature was discovered during a restoration in nineteen
eighty three. By the eighteenth century, her self portrait had
(29:23):
been misattributed to past podcast subject Artemisia Gentileski. Three different
experts independently reviewed it in twenty thirteen and concluded that
it was Watier's work. By that point, people had started
unearthing more information about her. In nineteen ninety one, art
historian Pierre eves Caries had seen a painting by Charles
(29:46):
Watier while visiting a church. He learned that Charles was
from Mons, and then he found mention of a Michelina Woitier,
also from Mons, and thought they might be siblings, but
really didn't have a way to prove it. In nineteen nine,
twenty three, art historian Kadlena van der Stieglen had been
visiting a museum in Vienna to see a painting they
(30:06):
had in storage which had been attributed to Anthony van Dyck.
While walking through the storage area, the bacchanal caught her eye.
She could see it had to be something notable, but
it didn't match a style she immediately recognized, so she
started researching its creator. In nineteen ninety six, Kiri's read
an article she'd published about Watier and realized that their
(30:29):
work was overlapping. Following the work of these and other
art historians, people started looking for and finding lost and
previously unknown works by Mcklina Watier, While preparing for that
twenty eighteen exhibition that we've mentioned a couple of times,
Rubenhaus and Antwerp announced an effort to find The Five
(30:49):
Senses and Garland with a Butterfly. At that point, the
Five Senses was known only as a black and white
representation of Hearing that had been printed in a nineteen
teen seventy five auction catalog. Garland with Butterfly had been
rediscovered before disappearing again in nineteen eighty five. All of
these paintings have since been found. Rose Marie and Eichvan Otterlow,
(31:14):
who founded the Center for Netherlandish Art at the MFA
along with Susan and Matthew Weatherby, bought The Five Senses
in a private sale in twenty twenty and have loaned
it to the MFA. Garland with Butterfly is on loan
from a private collection to Nord Verbron's Museum in the Netherlands.
The twenty eighteen exhibition of Boitier's work at Museum on
(31:35):
Destrum was called Michelina Baroke's Leading Lady that included twenty
one of her paintings, as well as related pieces by
other artists. This exhibition really sparked renewed interest and name recognition,
and that led to discoveries of other previously lost or
unknown work, including and in addition to the Five Senses
and Garland with Butterfly that we just mentioned. The exhibition
(31:59):
at the is called Mikeelina Wattier in the Five Senses
Innovation in seventeenth century Flemish Painting. It includes the Five Senses,
Watier's self portrait and other works by her predecessors and contemporaries.
This is a collaborative effort by the Center for Another
Landish Art at the MFA and Brown University. Six doctoral
(32:20):
students from Brown helped curate this exhibition as part of
a graduate practicum. The Center for Another Landish Art has
also started a new series called CNA Studies, and its
first volume features essays by these six students. The order
of things that really caught my eye when I was
walking through here were like the paintings and the fact
that it was student curated. I was like, the how
(32:41):
cool is that? That's amazing? Yeah, so yeah, that's Nickoelina Watier,
who I chose to new an episode on knowing we
didn't know much about her, and then realized we really
know almost nothing about her. Do you have listener mail?
I do not know if this person says Brianna or
(33:04):
Brianna so one or the other. Hello, Holly and Tracy.
I was once again so excited to hear mention of
my hometown on your show. I've spent so much time
listening to you as I explore the place where I
grew up and have moved back to as an adult.
It is interesting how history is told through the bias
of the teller. I always understood the invention of the
(33:27):
roller coaster was absolutely derived from the inspiration of tourism
and being outdoors from our Switchback. There was never a
mention of Christianity nor a diversion from alcohol. When local
historians would brag about the inspiration, I thought i'd share
some fun anecdotes about the Switchback today. While the original
(33:48):
Switchback tracks are long gone, its history still brings tourists
to visit jim Thorpe. There is a tourist train that
goes to the peak of an adjacent mountain in town
and you can view the clear for the Switchback cars,
the nearby river, and the Pocono scenery. The Switchback is
part of the rails to trails projects something I'd love
to hear more about, as I enjoy hiking, biking, and
(34:10):
walking on those paths frequently. We have a run to
the top of the Switchback trail every fall. Our soccer
and track coaches in school would have us run to
the top or as far as we could of this
mountain several times during conditioning season, and I'm glad as
an adult I can opt out of that activity. I've
attached a photo of a replica railroad car that resides
(34:31):
at the bottom of the trail, as well as a
photo of the path. Although it admittedly doesn't do it justice,
it truly is quite narrow, quite tall, and quite steep.
My doggo Paisley, and I love to listen to you
while we take our walks. Keep up the well researched work.
That is either Brianna or Brianna or hopefully not a
third pronunciation that I did not think of. So uh,
(34:55):
I loved this email about the switchback railway in this
city of jim Thorpe. I should have said at the
top of the reading this email if that was what we
were talking about. Also, I don't know if we can
make an episode about the rails to Trails project, but
that is also a project I am very fond of.
(35:15):
And one of the things I thought about in reading
about how this picture does not really do it justice
because it really is narrow and steep, reminded me of
the time that we did a live podcast in San Francisco,
and I've seen plenty of footage of San Francisco, and
(35:36):
I had looked at Google Maps, and where I was
thinking about going was like like a mile away. A
mile is a like a space. I walked routinely a
mile somewhere, not a big deal, and I just it
wasn't until I was there in person that I really
understood how big the hills were. It was like, I
(35:58):
didn't understand this. So I'm imagining at the bottom of
the former switchback railway, and Jim Thorpe I might also
be like, well, I was not prepared for house beefus.
Actually no, thank you, yeah, so thank you so much
for these pictures and for this email. If you would
like to send us a note about this or any
(36:19):
other podcast, we're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
We're also all over social media and missed in History.
That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Panterests and Instagram.
And you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio
app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
(36:42):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. So that same trip into
Boston that brought about our recent episode on Mary Dyer
(00:21):
also inspired this one. I was wandering around the Museum
of Fine Arts and I stumbled onto a set of paintings.
They depicted the Five Senses, and I found them to
be just very striking and very beautiful, very realistic, with
this very dark, almost somber kind of color palette, and
also at the same time just full of lovely details,
(00:45):
like the way the light would fall onto the curls
of one subject's hair, or the way their clothing draped
around them. These paintings turned out to be by seventeenth
century Flammish painter Michelina Wotier, who you will also hear
pronounced more like Wautier, depending on whether the person is
(01:08):
using a French pronunciation or a Dutch one. I heard
a lot of our historians talking about her. They were
split on what pronunciations that they used, and it also
didn't seem to like fall along the lines of English
speakers using one pronunciation in French or Dutch or whatever
speakers using a different one. We're gonna stick with Watier
(01:32):
just because that seems like it will work best for us,
and we also won't randomly be slipping into a different
pronunciation and random times in the episode. This is somebody
who has been relatively unknown even among people who specialize
specifically in seventeenth century are until very recently. So unfortunately,
(01:55):
we don't have a lot of biographical detail about Mickelina Watier,
and what we do know is still evolving. For example,
her birth year. The first major retrospective of Watier's artistic
career was held in twenty eighteen as a collaboration by
the Museum on the Stroom see that as mas or
Moss and Ruben's House in Antwerp, Belgium. Material created for
(02:19):
that exhibition, including the exhibition catalog, gives the date of
her baptism as September second, sixteen oh four. The first
US exhibition of her artwork is the one that's going
on at the MFA in Boston, and material connected to
that exhibition gives the date of September second, sixteen fourteen. Normally,
(02:39):
in this kind of a situation, we might say something
like source X gives her birth date as X, but
source Y gives her birth date as why. But in
the case of Mcleena Watier, that ten year difference is
a big deal. Her father, Charles Watier, died non November
twenty fourth, sixteen seventeen. Mcleena would have been one of
at least six siblings and half siblings still living at home,
(03:03):
and the youngest of them was only about a year old.
We really don't know how her mother, Jean George, supported
herself and all of these children after Charles's death, although
she was from a pretty wealthy merchant family and she
might have gotten financial support from them. So was this
Mckelina's experience from the age of three or from the
(03:24):
age of thirteen. Was she one of the oldest children
in the household and her father died, or was she
one of the youngest. One of Mickelina's brothers was also
named Charles, and he became an artist as well. He
was born in sixteen oh nine. If he was five
years older than Mickelina, we can imagine that maybe she
looked up to him as an artist, and perhaps he
(03:45):
was able to mentor her and help oversee her artistic
education as she was growing up. If he was five
years younger than Mickelina, he may still have provided her
access to artistic training and space that she wouldn't have
had otherwise when they were with adults, but it could
have been a very different dynamic. So the catalog from
(04:05):
that twenty eighteen exhibition in Belgium cites a record of
baptism that was part of a volume of records that
ended in March of sixteen oh nine. So as I
started working on this, it seemed like the sixteen oh
four date was probably the correct date. But then I
emailed the Center for Netherlandish Art at the MFA, which
organized this current exhibition there, to ask if there was
(04:28):
maybe some newly uncovered information correcting the date to sixteen fourteen,
And according to the response that I got back from them, yes,
newly discovered documents have indeed placed her birth year as
sixteen fourteen and not sixteen oh four. If you're curious
about what those documents might be, so am I, but
I don't know. Miguelino Woitier was born in Monts, southwest
(04:50):
of Brussels, which at the time was part of the
Southern Netherlands under the control of Habsburg Spain. Habsburg Spain
is a modern term describing the territory ruled by Charles
the First and Charles the Second in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Habsburg Spain included what's now Spain and Portugal,
much of modern Germany, the Netherlands, southern Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia,
(05:13):
although it gained a lost parts of that territory at
various points. Spain also started aggressively colonizing the Americas during
these years. Mcalina's mother was her father's second wife. The
elder Charles Woitier had five children with his first wife,
Barb before her death sometime in sixteen oh one or
(05:33):
very early sixteen oh two. Then Charles and Jehan got
married in February of sixteen oh two, and they had
six children together, Mcalina and five boys. We mentioned that
Jean was from a wealthy merchant family, Barb was as well,
and there was more than one marriage connecting these two families.
(05:54):
Mckelina's certificate of baptism lists her name as Maria Magdalena,
and we don't really know when the name Michelina came
into the picture. There are also a lot of different
spellings of the name Waitier. In written records, people used
different spellings and pronunciations depending on which dialect of Dutch
(06:14):
they spoke, or if they spoke French or some other language.
As far as we know, she was the only girl
among her siblings and half siblings to survive to adulthood.
Based on what we know of Mickelina's mother's family and
the fact that Mckelina was able to focus so much
on painting, this family was probably very affluent even after
(06:35):
her father's death, and the quality of her artwork suggests
that she had private art teachers. The subjects that she
chose to portray in her art also suggest that she
had a really solid education in subjects like religion, mythology,
and history. She signed contracts in both French and Dutch,
so she probably spoke both of those languages, and it
(06:57):
also seems that the Watier family was socially prominent and respected.
Nicquelina's grandfather and great grandfather had served as aldermen, and
her father held positions at court. Nicquelina's half brother, Jacques,
joined the Royal Guard in the capital of Madrid in
sixteen fifteen, and he was later elevated to the nobility.
Her brother Pierre also became the herald of Arms for
(07:20):
the Duchy of Guilders in sixteen twenty eight. Miquelinootier probably
started studying art while living in Mons, but we don't
really know where she studied, or who her teachers were,
or if she traveled to study art elsewhere. She also
wasn't the only woman artist in the area at the time.
Another was Anna Francisco du Brune, who was born in
(07:42):
sixteen oh four and got married in the church of
Saint Germain in Mont in sixteen twenty eight. In sixteen
thirty two, the chapel of Notre Dame du bon Voulois
was completed not far away, and de Brune painted the
Assumption of the Virgin to hang behind the chapel's high
office her We don't really know if Mickelina and Anna
(08:03):
Francisca knew one another. It seems like they might have.
Mickelina almost certainly would have known about Anna Francisca's work
as an artist. She was painting for the chapel that
was sort of right down the street from where her
family lived. Mickelina's mother, June, died on June nineteenth, sixteen
thirty eight. Since Mickelina was not married, she was probably
(08:25):
still living with her mother in Moles. At least that
would have been what was expected of her, especially if
Juhne needed any kind of help or care near the
end of her life. Sometime after Juhne's death, Mickelina moved
to Brussels, where her brother Charles lived, probably into the
home that he had already established there. This means that
(08:45):
Charles had enough money for a home that was large
enough to also accommodate his sister and possibly to house
an art studio for the two of them as well.
The first written mention we have of Charles Wattiers an
artist as from sixteen teen forty two, and the first
mention we have of Miquelina Watier as an artist is
from righte about the same time. But both of these
(09:08):
really suggest that neither of them was just starting out
as a painter. For Charles, this was a mention that
he was one of the people who was painting in
Brussels without first becoming a citizen of Brussels or joining
the guild. That suggests he was supposed to have done
both of those things already. He was not a student.
He was somebody who was expected to join the guild
(09:29):
and pay its associated fees in order to work professionally
as an artist. For whatever reason, he was not doing that.
Later references also describe him as foreign trained as an artist.
That foreign training may have happened in Italy. He did
eventually become a citizen and join the guild. First mention
(09:50):
of his doing that is in sixteen fifty one. Not
really clear why he didn't do it initially, He just
didn't know that he had to fil For Miquelina, the
first reference we have is an engraving of her portrait
of military commander Andreas Cantelmo Ducopopoli, which was created in
(10:10):
sixteen forty three. Although Mquelina's original painting no longer exists,
the engraving made from it suggests that she was already
a mature, skilled artist. The fact that Cantelmo commissioned this
work from her also suggests that she had already established
a reputation for herself, although we don't know what work
he might have seen that led him to want her
(10:32):
to paint his portrait. The engraving was also created by
Paulos Pontius, who did extensive work with artists like Peter
Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyke, so it seems like
she already had a lot of connections within the artistic
community and to possible customers and patrons. We will talk
about Nichelino Watier's career as an artist and gleans some
(10:54):
more stuff about her life from what we know of
her work after a sponsor break. Miquelina Watier is not
the first seventeenth century woman artist we have talked about
on the show. Others include Italian artist Lavinia Fontana and
(11:18):
Artemisia Gentileski and German entomologist and illustrator Maria Sebuia Mariam.
Other prominent women artists from the period who we have
not discussed include Dutch artist Judith lester She, Artemisia Gentdeleski,
and Mikuelina Watier are sometimes grouped together as examples of
just especially prominent and skilled women artists from this period,
(11:42):
but there were many many other women working as artists
in the seventeenth century whose work did not become as
well known. In the chapter Mickelina Watier and Working Women
in Early Modern Europe from the twenty eighteen Exhibition Catalog,
Martha Howell writes that there were dozens of professional women painters,
perhaps even hundreds, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
(12:04):
that there were also many more women who painted, but
just not professionally. Many, but not all, of the most
well known women artists during this era were the daughters
of male artists, like Artemisia Gentileski's father, Razzio and Lavinia
Fontana's father Prospero, were both prominent professional painters. Of course,
(12:26):
not every woman artist who came to prominence also had
an artist father. Judith Lester's father was a brewer, but
having a father or maybe an uncle or some other
adult male artist in the immediate family could really open
up a lot of doors for women to study art
and find commissions and find places to exhibit their work.
(12:48):
There were also a lot of limits on the lives
and careers of most women artists. In much of Europe,
membership in an artist guild was required to work professionally,
but many artists guilt accepted few, if any women. Women
were often barred from art schools and anatomy classes and
workshops where they might learn to draw and paint the
(13:09):
human form, especially if those classes involved working with nude
male models. As a result, a lot of women artists
focused on subjects that they had easier access to, so
things like flowers and landscapes and their own families and
the families of people they knew. The style of painting
that evolved in the Southern Netherlands under Spanish Habsburg rule
(13:32):
is known as Flemish Baroque painting, and still lifes of
flowers and flower gardens were a big part of this style.
This gave professional women painters some opportunities to make a
living by painting something that was really popular and that
they also had easy access to, and which was considered
appropriate subject matter for women to be interested in. Of course,
(13:55):
there were exceptions to these trends, a notable one being
Artemisia Gentileski, who we have covered on the show before.
We just ran our episode on her as a Saturday Classic.
But another is Mikuelina Wotier. The only other artist we
know of in her family is her brother Charles, and
the two of them seem to have come into their
(14:15):
own as professionals at roughly the same time, at least
within a few years of each other. We know of
only two still life paintings in Woitier's body of work,
which may have been made together and intended as a pair.
We're going to talk a bit more about those pieces later.
She also did portraits and paintings depicting moments from history
and mythology, which was not common for women artists at all,
(14:39):
and one painting in particular suggests that she had a
lot of opportunity to work with nude male models, something
that women were generally prohibited from doing, and most, but
of course not all, women painters at the time slowed
down or stopped working entirely after getting married, but Wotier
never married. It seems likely that living and working with
(15:02):
her brother, Charles, gave Mickelina Watier access to resources and
educational opportunities that she just would not have had access
to otherwise. She and her brother almost certainly consulted one
another on their work as well, and they may have
even collaborated, although each of them really developed their own style.
In particular, Charles's brushwork tends to be smoother and more blended,
(15:26):
while Mickelina's is often a lot more layered, with a
lot shorter and tighter strokes. This is something you can't
really see unless you're looking at the painting in person,
or if you have a really really high resolution image
of it that can retain all of that detail. Some
of their commissions may also have come about through their
other brothers military connections. Both Charles and Mcalina painted a
(15:50):
lot of portraits of officers who were serving the Spanish
crown and other people who were connected with the Spanish Habsburgs.
One of Mickelina Watier's made her patrons was Archduke Leopold
Wilhelm of Austria, who bought at least four of her
works and probably commissioned at least one of them. Leopold
was Governor of the Spanish Netherlands from sixteen forty seven
(16:12):
to sixteen fifty six, and he was also an avid
art collector. There's a painting of him in his enormous
gallery surrounded by his collection, which includes paintings by Titian Raphael, Peter,
Paul Rubens, and Anthony van Dyke, among others. A painting
that the Archduke almost certainly commissioned from Michelina Watier is
(16:34):
called the Bacchanal or the Triumph of Bacchus, which is
often described as her masterpiece, and this one painting illustrates
so many of the ways that Watier really broke away
from what was expected of women and women artists, like
there was a period when the creator of this painting
was not identified and people saw it and just assumed
(16:56):
that it was by a man, because of all the
things we're about to talk about. Number one is painting
was big. It was more than nine It is still
exists more than nine feet high and twelve feet wide,
or about two point seven by three point seven meters,
So it really wasn't something a person could easily create
while painting on an easel in her own home or
in a small studio space. Number two was the subject matter,
(17:20):
the mythical god Bacchus reclining on a leopard skin while
being carried in what looks like a wheelbarrow pushed by
a satyr. He's in the middle of a procession of
more than fifteen people, most of the male, and most
of them at least partially nude. These people represent a
spectrum of ages and body types, suggesting that Watier had
extensive knowledge of anatomy and had worked with enough live
(17:43):
art models to be able to represent this level of
physical diversity, and specifically that she had worked with nude
male models, and this painting is radical and subversive. And
yet another way, there is only one figure who's looking
outward from the canvas, and that is a woman painted
in the right corner, wearing a blush pink drape that
(18:05):
exposes one of her breasts. This is a self portrait
of Wotier herself. We of course do not know her
motivations or her thought process for putting herself and the
painting in this way, but it is really easy to
conclude from it that she was a person who wanted
to push some boundaries. Watier also created a full self
portrait sometime around sixteen forty nine. It shows her as
(18:27):
an artist, sitting in an easel, holding brushes in an
artist's palette with the paints that she's about to use.
There's a faintly visible outline of a person's head on
the canvas, suggesting that she is working on a portrait
of a man. She is elegantly dressed, wearing a pearl necklace,
with her hair curling down to her shoulders. There's a
(18:48):
small pocket watch near the edge of the easel, something
several art historians have interpreted as reference to the passage
or fleetingness of time, and also as a mark of
her affluence. Because watches were ex and it's incredibly detailed.
Watier even painted in the weave of the canvas that
she's about to start painting on, with such clarity that
(19:09):
it is hard to tell what's detail that she added
and what is the actual weave of the physical canvas.
About a year after making this self portrait, Wotier created
a series of paintings depicting the five senses. Sets like
these depicting the five senses, the four seasons, the four elements,
the seven deadly sins, things like that. They had started
(19:32):
to become popular in the sixteenth century, although artists had
been creating these kinds of sets as far back as
the early Middle Ages. These sets of paintings were often
full of allegory and symbolism. In terms of the five senses,
artists often drew from Arisitelian philosophy, and they arranged the
senses in a hierarchy, with sight at the top of
(19:55):
the hierarchy, and then hearing, smell, taste, and touch. What
reason for the popularity of sets like these was that
printmakers could sell prints of the whole set at once,
rather than one painting at a time at the same time,
Though intact sets of all of the original paintings are
pretty rare, Watier's Five Senses may have been another commission
(20:18):
from someone very wealthy, because these paintings seem to have
been intended to be hung as a set in a
row that would have required a lot of wall space.
But if that's the case, we don't know who commissioned them.
Often paintings of the Five Senses focus on beautiful, idealized
women in very elaborate settings, but these are much simpler,
(20:41):
and they depict five boys. The boy's orientation and positioning
suggests that they're meant to be displayed in that Aristelian order.
They were ordered this way the first time they were
listed in a sale catalog as well. That happened in
eighteen eighty three. These paintings are very dark. They're mostly
painted in shades of browns and blacks and dark greens.
(21:04):
Sight looks a bit older than the other boys, and
he's looking at his own hand through glasses that are
held up to his space. Hearing is looking out from
the canvas playing a recorder. Smell is pinching his nose
with one hand while holding a rotten egg in the other. One,
Taste is about to bite into a piece of bread,
(21:24):
and Touch has just cut his finger on a knife,
and he's looking at this situation as though he's just
not quite sure what just happened. Her models for these
paintings may have been boys and teenagers who she knew
and whose family she was friends with. The same boys
appear in some of her other works. The boys in
(21:46):
Taste and Touch are also painted in a piece called
Two Boys, in which one boy is holding a partially
eaten egg and the other seems to be trying to
take it from him. The boy shown in Hearing is
also one of the two boys. Boys blowing bubbles, which
is exactly what it sounds like. It's boys blowing soap
bubbles through a straw. Two Boys and Boys Blowing Bubbles
(22:08):
are examples of Watier's genre paintings, that is, paintings meant
to represent scenes from everyday life. We will talk about
some of Woitier's later works after a quick sponsor break.
(22:29):
We mentioned earlier that still life paintings of flowers were
very popular in seventeenth century artwork, and that they were
a particularly popular subject for women, in part due to
those flowers being so easy for women to access. But
as we noted earlier, there are only two known floral
still lifes painted by Michelina Watier. They are Flower Garland
(22:52):
with Dragonfly and Flower Garland with Butterfly. Both of them
were painted in sixteen fifty two. These may have been
a set. In both of these paintings, the garland is
draped in between two animal skulls. The flowers are really
detailed and delicate, which contrasts with these animal skulls that
extend sort of past the edges of the canvas. Another
(23:15):
painting that may have been commissioned by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm
was one of Italian Jesuit missionary Martino Martini. Miquelino Watier
painted this portrait in sixteen fifty four. Martini was in
Brussels from February to June of that year and he
had audiences with the Archduke. During that time, Martini did
(23:36):
his missionary work in China, and he was the first
person in Europe to publish an atlas of China. Watier
painted him in Chinese garments, which is likely what he
was wearing while in Brussels. He was known as Waiquan
in China. That name is shown in the painting's top
right corner. This is the only known portrait of Martini
(23:56):
made during his life. A posthumous portrait created after he
died in sixteen sixty one doesn't resemble this one much
at all. Mickelina Watier's last known work is Annunciation, painted
in sixteen fifty nine, showing that Angel Gabriel telling Mary
that she would conceive and give birth to Jesus Christ.
(24:17):
Although this painting still exists, it seems like it was
cut down on the top and sides at some point.
It's currently two hundred by one hundred and thirty four
centimeters or six point five feet by four point four feet,
but older catalogs give dimensions that are more than three
meters high and two meters wide, or roughly ten feet
by six and a half feet, so it's hard to
(24:40):
get the full effect of what this painting was supposed
to look like. The Angel Gabriel's wings and garments are
cut off at the side, and what should really look
like a very dramatic break in the clouds with the
Holy Dove and beams of light coming through it seems
almost muted. We don't really know if Watier continued to
paint after eating this work, or if she didn't, why
(25:02):
she stopped. Over the sixteen years between sixteen forty three
and sixteen fifty nine when we know she was active
as an artist, she created roughly forty known works. These
represented nearly every genre of painting that was part of
the Flemish Baroque style, including portraits, still lifes, genre paintings,
and history paintings. This is a much broader range than
(25:26):
the vast majority of women painters at the time, and
the history paintings in particular are notable because they are
so far outside the realm of what women were thought
capable of depicting. In sixteen sixty eight, Michleita and Charles
Woitier bought a home near Notre Dame de la Chapelle
in Brussels, and in sixteen eighty nine she died. With
(25:46):
the birth year of sixteen fourteen, she would have been
about seventy five years old. She was buried at Notre
Dame de la Chapelle, and she left all of her
possessions to her brother, so any paintings that had not
already been sold to someone else, probably stayed within her family.
Charles Watier died in seventeen oh three. Like Mickelina, he
(26:07):
had never married, and he left most of his possessions
to his nephew, Augustine Charles, who was master of the mint.
Augustine Charles was allowed to dispose of those possessions however
he saw fit. Charles Watier also left an annuity to
his maid, a woman named Jean Ldeux, and his will
specified that this was in recognition of her service and
(26:28):
devotion to his sister. That has led to some speculation
about whether Mickelina needed particular care in the last years
of her life that Jeune was responsible for, or what
their relationship might have been. Based on all of the
stuff that we have gleaned from her what we know
of her life and work, Mickelina Watier seems to have
been really well known and well respected in Brussels during
(26:51):
her life. Multiple paintings of hers were bought by and
possibly commissioned by Archduke Leopold Bilhelm, and she also made
multi portraits of prominent people who only would have worked
with her if she had an established and respected reputation
as an artist. She and her brother also seemed to
have been really well off. They bought and sold various
(27:12):
pieces of property. They were able to support themselves and
their lives and work as artists with no apparent problem.
But after her death, Nikolina Waitier was almost entirely forgotten,
and a lot of her work was misattributed to other artists,
in some cases with her signature on her work painted
over and replaced with someone else's. One thing that could
(27:34):
have helped keep her name and legacy alive in the
public consciousness was Prince of her Self portrait. This is
something many artists did, essentially as a marketing tool to
promote themselves while living and to help protect their memory
after their deaths. But no Prince of her Self portrait
were ever made, and we don't know why. To be clear,
(27:55):
her name did not totally disappear from history. She signed
and dated roughly half her known pieces, and even with
somebody painting over some of her signatures for unknown reasons,
art historians and other writers still knew who she was.
She was mentioned in texts from time to time in
the centuries that followed, but it really wasn't until the
(28:16):
end of the twentieth century that people started really taking
dedicated effort to correct those misattributions, and also realizing just
how prominent and groundbreaking her work had been. Various art
historians today describe her as one of the Old Masters,
alongside contemporaries like Artemisia Gentileski, Peter Paul Rubins, Anthony van Dyke,
(28:38):
and Johannes Vermier. In terms of misattributed work. At least
one of those signed paintings wound up being attributed to
Frowns Wowders, who was one of Rubens's students, probably because
of their similarly spelled last names. Some of Watier's works
were also incorrectly attributed to her brother. Her Bacchanal was
listed in the Inventory of the archdukes possessions after his
(29:01):
death in sixteen sixty two, but her name was not included.
Watier was reidentified as its creator in nineteen sixty seven.
Her annunciation was attributed to French court painter Pierre Badeaux
until her signature was discovered during a restoration in nineteen
eighty three. By the eighteenth century, her self portrait had
(29:23):
been misattributed to past podcast subject Artemisia Gentileski. Three different
experts independently reviewed it in twenty thirteen and concluded that
it was Watier's work. By that point, people had started
unearthing more information about her. In nineteen ninety one, art
historian Pierre eves Caries had seen a painting by Charles
(29:46):
Watier while visiting a church. He learned that Charles was
from Mons, and then he found mention of a Michelina Woitier,
also from Mons, and thought they might be siblings, but
really didn't have a way to prove it. In nineteen nine,
twenty three, art historian Kadlena van der Stieglen had been
visiting a museum in Vienna to see a painting they
(30:06):
had in storage which had been attributed to Anthony van Dyck.
While walking through the storage area, the bacchanal caught her eye.
She could see it had to be something notable, but
it didn't match a style she immediately recognized, so she
started researching its creator. In nineteen ninety six, Kiri's read
an article she'd published about Watier and realized that their
(30:29):
work was overlapping. Following the work of these and other
art historians, people started looking for and finding lost and
previously unknown works by Mcklina Watier, While preparing for that
twenty eighteen exhibition that we've mentioned a couple of times,
Rubenhaus and Antwerp announced an effort to find The Five
(30:49):
Senses and Garland with a Butterfly. At that point, the
Five Senses was known only as a black and white
representation of Hearing that had been printed in a nineteen
teen seventy five auction catalog. Garland with Butterfly had been
rediscovered before disappearing again in nineteen eighty five. All of
these paintings have since been found. Rose Marie and Eichvan Otterlow,
(31:14):
who founded the Center for Netherlandish Art at the MFA
along with Susan and Matthew Weatherby, bought The Five Senses
in a private sale in twenty twenty and have loaned
it to the MFA. Garland with Butterfly is on loan
from a private collection to Nord Verbron's Museum in the Netherlands.
The twenty eighteen exhibition of Boitier's work at Museum on
(31:35):
Destrum was called Michelina Baroke's Leading Lady that included twenty
one of her paintings, as well as related pieces by
other artists. This exhibition really sparked renewed interest and name recognition,
and that led to discoveries of other previously lost or
unknown work, including and in addition to the Five Senses
and Garland with Butterfly that we just mentioned. The exhibition
(31:59):
at the is called Mikeelina Wattier in the Five Senses
Innovation in seventeenth century Flemish Painting. It includes the Five Senses,
Watier's self portrait and other works by her predecessors and contemporaries.
This is a collaborative effort by the Center for Another
Landish Art at the MFA and Brown University. Six doctoral
(32:20):
students from Brown helped curate this exhibition as part of
a graduate practicum. The Center for Another Landish Art has
also started a new series called CNA Studies, and its
first volume features essays by these six students. The order
of things that really caught my eye when I was
walking through here were like the paintings and the fact
that it was student curated. I was like, the how
(32:41):
cool is that? That's amazing? Yeah, so yeah, that's Nickoelina Watier,
who I chose to new an episode on knowing we
didn't know much about her, and then realized we really
know almost nothing about her. Do you have listener mail?
I do not know if this person says Brianna or
(33:04):
Brianna so one or the other. Hello, Holly and Tracy.
I was once again so excited to hear mention of
my hometown on your show. I've spent so much time
listening to you as I explore the place where I
grew up and have moved back to as an adult.
It is interesting how history is told through the bias
of the teller. I always understood the invention of the
(33:27):
roller coaster was absolutely derived from the inspiration of tourism
and being outdoors from our Switchback. There was never a
mention of Christianity nor a diversion from alcohol. When local
historians would brag about the inspiration, I thought i'd share
some fun anecdotes about the Switchback today. While the original
(33:48):
Switchback tracks are long gone, its history still brings tourists
to visit jim Thorpe. There is a tourist train that
goes to the peak of an adjacent mountain in town
and you can view the clear for the Switchback cars,
the nearby river, and the Pocono scenery. The Switchback is
part of the rails to trails projects something I'd love
to hear more about, as I enjoy hiking, biking, and
(34:10):
walking on those paths frequently. We have a run to
the top of the Switchback trail every fall. Our soccer
and track coaches in school would have us run to
the top or as far as we could of this
mountain several times during conditioning season, and I'm glad as
an adult I can opt out of that activity. I've
attached a photo of a replica railroad car that resides
(34:31):
at the bottom of the trail, as well as a
photo of the path. Although it admittedly doesn't do it justice,
it truly is quite narrow, quite tall, and quite steep.
My doggo Paisley, and I love to listen to you
while we take our walks. Keep up the well researched work.
That is either Brianna or Brianna or hopefully not a
third pronunciation that I did not think of. So uh,
(34:55):
I loved this email about the switchback railway in this
city of jim Thorpe. I should have said at the
top of the reading this email if that was what we
were talking about. Also, I don't know if we can
make an episode about the rails to Trails project, but
that is also a project I am very fond of.
(35:15):
And one of the things I thought about in reading
about how this picture does not really do it justice
because it really is narrow and steep, reminded me of
the time that we did a live podcast in San Francisco,
and I've seen plenty of footage of San Francisco, and
(35:36):
I had looked at Google Maps, and where I was
thinking about going was like like a mile away. A
mile is a like a space. I walked routinely a
mile somewhere, not a big deal, and I just it
wasn't until I was there in person that I really
understood how big the hills were. It was like, I
(35:58):
didn't understand this. So I'm imagining at the bottom of
the former switchback railway, and Jim Thorpe I might also
be like, well, I was not prepared for house beefus.
Actually no, thank you, yeah, so thank you so much
for these pictures and for this email. If you would
like to send us a note about this or any
(36:19):
other podcast, we're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
We're also all over social media and missed in History.
That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Panterests and Instagram.
And you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio
app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
(36:42):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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