Wautier - The Triumph of Bacchus

Handmade tray printed with a detail from the painting „The Triumph of Bacchus” (c.1655/1659) by Michaelina Wautier (c. 1614/18–1689).
It was famously believed that such a large and ambitious painting could not be the work of a woman. She signed „The Triumph of Bacchus” not with her name, but by painting herself as a bacchante, the only figure in this scene of pagan debauchery to meet the viewer’s gaze—at a time when women artists were usually restricted to painting flowers and domestic subjects. Such was the unusual potency of her work that for centuries, „The Triumph of Bacchus” was thought to be the work of a male painter.