Mayken Verhulst (1518–1599) was a sixteenth-century miniature, tempera and watercolor painter, identified by Lodovico Guicciardini in 1567 as one of the most important female artists in the Low Countries.
Mayken Verhulst was born in Mechelen in 1518. She was the second wife of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, mother-in-law of Pieter Brueghel the Elder and, according to Karel van Mander, the first teacher of her grandsons Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder. No works survive that can be securely attributed to her, although she is frequently identified as the person behind several works assigned to the Master of the Brunswick Monogram.[1] She might also have been the author of a painting in the Kunsthaus Zürich with a self portrait with her husband (panel, 50.5 x 59 cm).[2] Following Pieter Coecke's death in 1550, she likely oversaw the publication of a large woodcut series Ces Moeurs et Fachons de Faire des Turcz (Manners and Customs of the Turks) (1553).[3] Verhulst died in Mechelen in 1599.