The Art of Clara Peeters is an exhibition co-organised with the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp in collaboration with the Government of Flanders and sponsored by Fundación AXA. This is the first exhibition at the Prado to be devoted to a woman painter: Clara Peeters. Peeters was a pioneer in the genre of the still life and one of the few women active as a professional painter in early modern Europe.

Loaned from different museums and private collections are the fifteen finest works from Peeters’ small known oeuvre, which is generally considered to number around 40 paintings. Among them are the four important examples by the artist housed in the permanent collection of the Prado, making the Museum an important reference point for the study of Peeters’ work.

Having previously been seen in Antwerp, the Museo del Prado is now showing the The Art of Clara Peeters, an exhibition on this female painter who formed part of the first generation of European artists to specialise in still-life painting and was among the very few women to devote her professional activities to painting in early modern Europe.

The presence at the Prado of this group of fifteen major works by Peeters will emphasise the achievements of this highly gifted and exquisite artist, whose known surviving oeuvre numbers barely 40 paintings.

Both the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue reflect the most recent scholarship on the artist’s life and work, locating Clara Peeters in the cultural and artistic context of Antwerp and also drawing attention to the situation of women artists on the threshold of the modern era when their opportunities were hindered by widespread prejudices.