The exposition (Ingenious Women: Women Artists and Their Companions) shows works by eighteen women artists, contextualising them for the first time with those of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and teachers.
Women artists portrayed royalty and nobility, owned workshops, and schooled students, but mostly fell into oblivion.
Northern and southern Europe in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries was home to more women painters, teachers, and graphic artists than we often realise nowadays. At the same time, it was deemed socially undesirable and would be pursued only under exceptional circumstances.
However, if aided by family members, teachers, and other pioneers, the prescriptive roles could be breached. Hence, typically, women artists stemmed from artistic families, where they could acquire the necessary skills outside of official studies.
The exposition brings together around 100 portraits, history paintings, still lifes, drawings, and graphic arts from the Renaissance, Baroque, and Classicist epochs and puts them into the perspective and context of their time.