Prado and Rijksmuseum team up to trace how three women rulers shaped art
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid are launching a joint research project on how ruling women shaped art in 16th-century Europe.
The work centres on the Habsburg Empire, the dynasty that controlled Spain, the Netherlands and large parts of Europe and the Americas at the time. The Art Newspaper reported the partnership on 2 October 2026.
The spotlight falls on three women. Margaret of Austria, Mary of Hungary and Margaret of Parma governed the Netherlands in succession for almost 60 years. They called the shots. They commissioned portraits, furnished palaces and decided which artists received work and money.
The project calls this influence "matronage" rather than "patronage". Patronage, the funding and protection of artists, is often linked with kings, popes and male collectors. The new word puts women rulers in the frame.
Mary of Hungary offers a clear example. She owned Titian's Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg (1548), the equestrian portrait of her brother, the emperor. She also commissioned the Venetian painter's Four Furies (1548-49), a set of large mythological canvases, for the great hall of her palace at Binche, in what is now Belgium.
The research will lead to an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in 2029. It will examine how the three regents worked with art and artists. The partnership will also organise a series of expert meetings on female power and art.
A fellowship programme starting in September 2027 will support the work. It will give a researcher access to extensive archives held by both museums. Those holdings include inventories, correspondence and collection records.
The aim is to search the two collections to recover women's roles during the Habsburg era, an effort also described by Euronews as an alliance against invisibility.
What makes this stand out is the paperwork. Wills, payment records and letters record who ordered, who paid and who kept what. For visitors, this means familiar paintings may soon come with new names attached.
