Norbertus van Couwerven, abbot of St Michael's

The portrait of Norbertus van Couwerven, abbot of St Michael's, was created by Katharina Pepijn in 1657, executed in oil paint on canvas. According to cataloguing records, the work entered the holdings of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, where it remains located, recorded under inventory number 1067. The painting measures 106 cm in height by 130 cm in width.

No details regarding the original commissioner or earlier provenance prior to the museum's acquisition are documented in the available sources. The work was exhibited in 1957 as part of the exhibition Vlaamse Kunst van de XVIIe en XVIIIe Eeuw held at the same museum.

Katharina Pepijn was among the relatively few documented women painters active in seventeenth-century Antwerp, and this 1657 portrait is one of the works that preserves her artistic output. Its survival in the permanent collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp has kept both the painter and her sitter, the abbot Norbertus van Couwerven, present in the institutional record of Southern Netherlandish portraiture, where the composition's ecclesiastical symbols exemplify the visual language of church authority in the period.

Created in 1657, this oil portrait by Flemish artist Katharina Pepijn presents Norbertus van Couwerven, the abbot of St Michael’s. The figure is seated in a red chair before a dimly lit crucifixion scene, holding a modest cross in his left hand. The painting is part of the collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp.

The painting reflects the 17th‑century Flemish tradition of combining portraiture with religious symbolism, a practice common among ecclesiastical patrons. By situating the abbot before a crucifixion scene, Pepijn aligns his personal identity with the broader theological narratives prevalent in Counter‑Reformation art.