“Why have there been no great women artists?” Maybe because too many of their masterpieces were dismissively shoved into storage for not having been painted by a more famous man.
That, at least, seems to be what befell a still life by the 17th-century Flemish painter Clara Peeters. Still Life with Small Game and Grapes on a Gilded Tazza, ca. 1620, was at one point thought to be by Ambrosius Brueghel (son of Jan, grandson of Pieter). But, according to the Guardian, that attribution was rescinded in the early 20th century, leaving the still life in “anonymous” limbo ever since.
Cynthia Osiecki, a curator at the National Museum of Norway in Oslo, came across Still Life with Small Game and Grapes on a Gilded Tazza in the museum’s storage area several years ago. A number of details indicated to Osiecki, who specializes in early modern art, that this painting may in fact be by Peeters, one of the most important women Old Masters working in Europe.
The wood panel it was painted on was from a supplier that Peeters is known to have used, the ornate dish (tazza) in the painting is similar to others that Peeters painted, and the way the birds, grapes, and hazelnuts were rendered reminded Osiecki of Peeters’s hand as well. The smoking gun, so to speak, is the almost-hidden self-portrait Peeters snuck onto the surface of one of the grapes, one of her telltale painterly tricks. (She appears in a reflection on the lid of the jug in Still Life with Cheese, Almonds and Pretzels at the Mauritshuis in the Hague, for example, and on the goblet on the right of Still Life with Flowers, Gilt Goblets, Coins and Shells, at the Prado.) When Osiecki spotted this, she knew she had solved the mystery. “I could see a shape on some of the grapes, and on closer examination I realized they look like outlines of human figures,” Osiecki told the Guardian.
The newly attributed Peeters—bringing the total of her known paintings to 40—is included in Osiecki’s show, “Woman Painter,” at the National Museum of Norway (Oct. 8, 2026-Feb. 7, 2027), alongside artworks by Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Artemisia Gentileschi, Michaelina Wautier, and others whose canvases just may be hiding in plain sight in a museum storage facility.
