Wendy Wauters

In 2005, Wendy Wauters (°1983) obtained a Master of Visual Arts degree from St. Lukas Brussels. She later enrolled in Art History at KU Leuven and graduated in 2017 with a thesis on early modern evocations of the healing and makeability of men who are overcome by temporary insanity, stupidity or narheid, supervised by Prof. dr. Barbara Baert and Prof. dr. Jan Van der Stock. Meanwhile, she worked as an intern at Fondation Custodia (Paris), as a student employee at Illuminare (KU Leuven) and as a scientific assistant at Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Antwerp).

From 2017 to 2021, she was a PhD candidate in Art History at her alma mater. Her doctoral research formed part of the Brain-Belspo project Ornamenta sacra, a research collaboration between KU Leuven, UCLouvain and KIK-IRPA Brussels. In the framework of this project, Wauters conducted her study under the supervision of Prof. dr. Barbara Baert. Her dissertation aimed to shed light on the sensory and ritual aspect of several (undervalued) liturgical objects from the Southern Netherlands. Embedded in the context of the Antwerp Cathedral of Our Lady from c. 1450 to the wonderjaar of 1566, this research took on a concrete shape.

Wauters has been awarded the Frans Olbrechts Prize 2018 for her master’s thesis Een oven vol van menig hoofd en zotten bol.

Selected bibliography

• Wendy Wauters, ‘The Invisible Presence of Ornamenta Sacra in the Antwerp Church of Our Lady (c. 1450-1566)’, in Barbara Baert, Ralph Dekoninck (eds.), Art & Religion, Leuven: Peeters, 2021. (forthcoming)

• Wendy Wauters, ‘Smelling Disease and Death in the Antwerp Church of Our Lady’, in Early Modern Low Countries (2021). (forthcoming)

• Wendy Wauters, ‘The Origins of the Furnace Motif. From Magico-religious Ritual to Early Modern Tale of Makeability’, Journal of Early Modern Christianity 7, 1 (2020), pp. 85-110.

• Wendy Wauters, ‘The Stirring of the Religious Soundscape. The Auditory Experience in the Antwerp Church of Our Lady (c. 1450-1566) and an Iconological Analysis of the Altar Bell’, in Teresa Hiergeist, Ismael Del Olmo (eds.), Dimensions of the Holy and the Sacred in 16th and 17th Century Europe, conference proceedings, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Berlijn: Peter Lang Publishers, 2020, pp. 221-260.

• Wendy Wauters, ‘Extracting the Stone of Madness in Perspective. The Cultural and Historical Development of an Enigmatic Visual Motif from Hieronymus Bosch: A Critical Status Quaestionis’, in Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen 2015-2016, Antwerpen: Garant, 2018, pp. 9-36.

Topstukken van Wendy Wauters

• Altaarbel met musicerende Orpheus van Peeter Van den Gheyn
• Altaarbel van de Kathedraal van Sint-Michiel en Sint-Goedele
• Hondenslager met zweep en tang