Discours de Sa Majesté la Reine à l'occasion de l'exposition "Michaelina Wautier – Peintre" à Vienne

Discours de Sa Majesté la Reine à l'occasion de l'exposition "Michaelina Wautier – Peintre"
au Kunsthistorisches Museum à Vienne
29 septembre 2025
 

Mr President, Madam,

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

It is a great pleasure for me to be here with you this afternoon in the beautiful city of Vienna for the opening of an exhibition dedicated to an extraordinary artist.

Michaelina Wautier touches me in more ways than one. Obviously, because she was born in Mons and lived for many years in Brussels, cities that are now located in Belgium. But it is undoubtedly the extraordinary audacity she displayed as a woman in the 17th century that strikes Me the most.

Through the variety and often ambitious nature of the subjects she tackled, the format of some of her paintings, and also her exceptional technique and her highly recognisable, sometimes poetic style, she stood out from the female artists of her time and certainly deserves to be ranked alongside the greatest painters of her era.

Michaelina Wautier is also a mystery. Little is known about her life or personality. Her work is all we have to give us an idea of the woman she was. We can guess that she was highly educated and extremely sensitive, as well as free-spirited. She is a fascinating woman, who looks out at us from the ‘Triumph of Bacchus’ and is revealed in this superb exhibition, perhaps all the more inspiring because we can only imagine her through her painting.

Her lack of recognition until the 2018 solo exhibitions in Antwerp is indicative of the invisibility of women artists generally. ‘For most of history, anonymous was a woman,’ wrote Virginia Woolf, one reason why this exhibition, along with the one to be held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, is all the more necessary.

I am delighted that the international and Austrian public can at last discover this exceptional artist, who hails from our country and has been unknown for too long. It is a joy and an honour for Belgium to see one of its most talented women so beautifully showcased in such a famous museum.

I would like to express my warmest thanks to President Van der Bellen for inviting me to share this wonderful cultural moment at the Kunsthistorisches Museum which has chosen to give this artist the recognition she deserves.