Quick Facts
Biography
Mayken Verhulst (1518–1599), also known as Marie Bessemers, was a sixteenth-century miniature, tempera and watercolor painter, identified by Lodovico Guicciardini in 1567 as one of the most important female artists in the Low Countries.
Life
Mayken Verhulst was born in Mechelen in 1518. She was the second wife of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, the mother-in-law of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, and, according to Karel van Mander, the first teacher of her grandsons Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Her sister Lysbeth was married to the engraver and painter Hubert Goltzius, and her sister Barbara was married to the painter Jacob de Punder.
No works survive that can be securely attributed to Verhulst, although she is frequently identified as the person behind several works assigned to the Master of the Brunswick Monogram.
Verhulst might also have been the author of a painting in the Kunsthaus Zürich with a self-portrait with her husband (panel, 50.5 x 59 cm).
Following Pieter Coecke's death in 1550, she likely oversaw the publication of a large woodcut series Ces Moeurs et Fachons de Faire des Turcz (Manners and Customs of the Turks) (1553).
Verhulst died in Mechelen in 1599. Her house and former painter's workshop, 't Vliegend Peert is a historic monument in Mechelen. It is a museum named Het Zotte Kunstkabinet.