Dr. Margreet Wolters

Curriculum vitae and duties

Margreet Wolters studied art history in Nijmegen. During her study she gained a fascination for what now is called Technical Art History and she studied a minor in Methods and Techniques of material research of art objects by Prof. Dr. J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen).

From 1994-1999 she was a PhD student in a research project focusing on the working methods and workshop practices of Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer and a number of artists from their circle. She received her PhD in 2011 from the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen with a dissertation on the function of the underdrawing in the works of Joachim Beuckelaer.

Margreet Wolters has worked at the RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History since 1997, beginning as Scientific Associate in Infrared Reflectography and currently as Curator of Technical Documentation. Her specialism is in conducting research with infrared reflectography and the analysis of the underdrawing in works by artists from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, with a special interest in the creative process of the paintings production. Until now she examined approximately 650 works of art with infrared reflectography, in commission and also for her own research projects.

Wolters also worked on important RKD database projects, for example to make accessible the results of Prof. Dr. Peter Klein’s dendrochronological research. She has also been a driving force behind the Marks on Arts Database and of the planned addition of medieval miniatures to RKDimages.

She has contributed her expertise to exhibition and cataloguing projects, working for example on the catalogues of Early Netherlandish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam as well as in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen. Exhibitions in which she has participated include Dutch Primitives: Paintings from the Late Middle Ages, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2008), Pieter Pourbus and the Forgotten Masters, Bruges, Groeningemuseum (2017-2018) and Magical Miniatures, Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent (2018).

With the award in 2021 of an NWO Museum grant, Margreet is examining the underdrawing and working methods of Pieter Lastman, Rembrandt’s teacher.

Publications (selection)

• ‘Ondertekening in miniatuur. Onderzoek met infraroodreflectografie naar Zuid-Nederlandse handschriften’ in: Anne Margreet As-Vijvers en Anne Korteweg (red.), Zuid-Nederlandse Miniatuurkunst. De mooiste verluchte handschriften in Nederlands bezit, Zwolle 2018, p. 20-31 (met M. Leeflang)
• ‘Kwadraatnetten en kleuraanduidingen. Een ontwerp voor een glasraam door Joachim Beuckelaer als model voor een schilderij’, Delineavit et Sculpsit 41 (2017), pp. 34-40
• ‘Een nieuw perspectief. De ondertekening in de Wladislawzaal door Hendrik van Steenwijck II’, in: E. Geudeker e.a. (red.), RKD Bulletin: Bijdragen voor Rudi Ekkart bij zijn afscheid als directeur van het RKD, 2012, pp. 207-212
• ’Drawing → Underdrawing → Painting: Compositional Evolution in the Working Process of Joachim Beuckelaer’, JHNA 4:2 (Summer 2012), DOI:10.5092/jhna.2012.4.2.2
• 'Lente, Zomer, Winter, drie triomfen van jaargetijden toegeschreven aan Louis de Caullery', in: Oud Holland 125 (2012), pp. 5-27 (met I. Wolf)
• Met kool en crijt. De functie van de ondertekening in de schilderijen van Joachim Beuckelaer, dissertatie Rijksuniversiteit Groningen 2011
• ‘In search of the right colour: colour notations in a late sixteenth-century Dutch painting’, in: M. Spring (red.), Studying Old Master Paintings. Technology and Practice. The National Gallery Technical Bulletin 30^th Anniversary Conference Postprints, Londen 2011, pp. 111-117 (met F. Lammertse, A. Wallert)
• ‘Samenwerking tussen Alexander Keirincx en Cornelis van Poelenburch belicht’, Oud Holland 121 (2009), pp. 14-42 (met N. Sluijter-Seijffert)'Der Marien-Altar des Meisters der Virgo inter Virgines im Salzburg Museum', in: P. Husty, P. Laub (red.), Arsa Sacra. Kunstschätze des Mittelalters aus dem Salzburg Museum, Jahresschrift des Salzburg Museum∙Band 53, Salzburg 2010, pp. 19-35 (met J. Giltaij)
• 'De laat-middeleeuwse schilder aan het werk. Hollandse atelierpraktijken in de vijftiende eeuw', in: cat. tent. F. Lammertse, J. Giltaij (red.), Vroege Hollanders. Schilderkunst van de late Middeleeuwen, Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) 2008, pp. 45-58 (met M. Faries, J.P. Filedt Kok en M. Leeflang)
• 'De Monogrammist HB geïdentificeerd: Huybrecht Beuckeleer', in: P. van den Brink, L.M. Helmus (red.), Album Discipulorum J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, Zwolle 1997, pp. 231-238