The National Museum in Oslo is currently presenting an exhibition titled [Woman] Painter, featuring 51 paintings by 19 female artists active between 1550 and 1650 across northern and southern Europe. The show, organized in partnership with Rome’s Borghese Gallery and running through February 7, aims to highlight female artists’ accomplishments beyond the constraints traditionally imposed by their gender.

The exhibition offers a diverse range of works grouped into categories such as “Training and Recognition,” “Portraits,” “Still Lives,” “Music,” and “Religion and Mythology.” Notable pieces include Judith Leyster’s expressive “Three Happy Boys” (c. 1629), painted when she was about 20 years old, and Artemisia Gentileschi’s dramatic “Judith and her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes” (c. 1639). Also featured are Sofonisba Anguissola’s 1559 portrait of her family and pet dog, Plautilla Nelli’s delicate profile portrait of a saint from around 1570, and Giovanna Garzoni’s playful 1650s still lifes of fruit.

The show emphasizes the variety and quality of these works, challenging longstanding ideas about a distinct “female sensibility” in art. It recalls the words of the 16th-century art historian Giorgio Vasari, who described female artists as “marvels” and “miracles,” acknowledging their creative achievements despite considerable societal obstacles.

Historically, women’s contributions to art have been underrecognized. Vasari’s 1550 book *Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects* mentioned only one female artist—Properzia de’ Rossi, a Bolognese sculptor known for carving a crucifixion from a peach stone—out of more than 180 figures. His 1568 edition expanded this to four women, including Anguissola and Nelli. Over the past five decades, feminist art historians such as Linda Nochlin and Griselda Pollock have expanded awareness and scholarship on women artists from earlier periods. Efforts include the Madrid Prado Museum’s 2016 solo exhibition of Flemish still-life painter Clara Peeters and London’s National Gallery 2020 show on Italian Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi, the latter being the gallery’s first dedicated to a female artist.

The exhibition also addresses the challenges of attribution faced by female artists. Many did not sign their work, leading to misattribution or loss. This was the case for Judith Leyster, whose paintings were once credited to contemporaries like Frans Hals or her husband Jan Miense Molenaer. Similarly, Lucrezia Quistelli’s only known surviving work, an altarpiece titled “The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine” (c. 1576), was long thought to be by her teacher until her signature was identified during restoration in 2015.

Interestingly, two female artists represented in the exhibition appear only through portraits made by others: Gabriel Metsu’s “Portrait of Maria de Grebber” (c. 1660) and David Teniers’ “Portrait of Anna Brueghel and her Son David Teniers III” (c. 1645). This speaks to the scarcity of surviving works by many women painters of the period.

Cynthia Osiecki, co-curator of [Woman] Painter and the National Museum’s curator of Old Masters, reflected on the ongoing nature of art history, stating, “We are never done writing and rewriting.” The exhibition forms part of a broader surge of interest in female artists, with recent and upcoming shows across Europe and the United States exploring women’s roles in art over several centuries.