Tiffany Hale: Post #2

Women in the art historical context are not just influenced by change– in most ways their art is defined by change. The changes that took place from Renaissance seem minimal in the contemporary context; yet, it radically, and permanently, changed circumstances for women in art. To evaluate the changes, it's necessary to define the hegemonic gender roles in place. In the middle ages, women are completely subordinate to men. They cannot own property or wages. Women could not truly leave the domestic sphere, and their prime"virtues are chastity and motherhood; her domain is the private world of the family” (Chadwick 71). A woman moved from the care of her father to the care of her husband and, after his death, to the care of her eldest male child. In the unfortunate event of a husband's premature death, a woman was expected to cope. Either a father would have to step in and take care of the woman again. In the most desperate cases, a widow would turn to the oldest, and most misogynistic, profession in the world: prostitution. 

A true question is how the circumstances for women changed, and why. The invention of the printing press in 1450 lent to a more educated population. The new ubiquity of books directly fostered the emergence of the Renaissance. The Renaissance was definitely an artistic movement; however, the ideals of the Renaissance was more important than the painters themselves. The Renaissance was focused on humanitarianism, and the power of man. Logic, a principle revived from classicism, reigned supreme over the sacred reasonings of the past. A mercantile middle class slowly bloomed, and surplus money allowed for nonessential purchasing, like art. Women artists in the scope of this movement truly faced a change. A trend of female artists entering the sphere either through artistic or radical families emerged: Sofonisba Anguissola’s father believed in educating his daughters according to humanist ideas of the time. Bologna was a radical city in Italy that allowed special freedom to women. The patron saint of the city is a woman, and this special status mixed with the abnormally high population of women in comparison to men. The result was a population of Italian Renaissance citizens who sincerely believed in an educated female population. Instead of the radical divergence in cases like Fontana, it became relatively normalized for women to be educated in Bologna. 

In the face of all the apparent changes, it is important to clarify that the women of the Renaissance, and even into the 18th and 19th centuries, were exceptions, not the rule. For example, Chadwick quotes the difficulty Lavinia Fontana faced in her art education: “Despite her adherence to the principles of naturalism advocated by the Carracci family, she was prevented from joining the Carraci Academy...because of its emphasis on drawing from the nude model” (Chadwick 94). Fontana's merit was not enough to grant her a full education: it never did become acceptable for women to study the nude figure, especially male nudes. Artemesia Gentileschi endured a rape by a colleague of her father. The doctrines of the time dictated she would only save her virtue by marrying her assailant. When her father sued the man to save her integrity, the court system tortured her for truth during the trial. Female artists existed in a strange space between the leading edge and archaic and harmful standards. Northern Europe during the Renaissance featured an incredible difference: domestic paintings. Female painters in Northern Europe faced the same gender difficulties, but the domestic setting of the painting promoted an unprecedented, and accessible, space for female mastery. Even the Christian rebel Martin Luther cautiously admitted that women might be, with careful consideration of their domestic duties, capable of learning language and art. 

These Renaissance changes flowed casually into the works of the late 18th century and into Victorian times. This video from educational channel Unboring Learning, features a short summary of the social and political atmosphere of Victorian England. It especially underlines the atmosphere in which female artists worked. Court painter Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun and her contemporary, a neoclassical painter named Angelica Kauffmann, achieved a certain level of celebrity within the art world. They were still marginalized; however their merit was undeniable. Kaufmann even faced mockery from males for a patriarchal system they enforced: “But were she married to such gentle males/ As figured in her painted tales,/ I fear she’d find a stupid Wedding Night” (Chadwick 160). The writer mocks the anatomical inaccuracies of the male figure in Kauffmann's work with full knowledge that she would literally never be able to be a student of the male form. Queen Elizabeth’s reign in England meant strict, traditional ideas of femininity, but with the changing landscape of politics to further secularization, created a space for a dialogue of equality. Only radical, exceptional women spoke of suffrage and women's rights...but even the tiniest push was more force toward equality than women had experienced in all the previous centuries combined. 

In each micromovement, there lived a woman who unabashedly rebelled against the norm. One stark example is Artemesia Gentileschi, whose violent and raw portrayal of Judith in "Judith Decapitating Holofernes" (1618, below) solidified her formal and thematic brilliance in comparison with famous contemporaries like Caravaggio. She depicts an intentional, concentrated Judith sawing through a human neck with a sharp knife not in service of biblical accuracy, but to create a deviation from the frail, sexualized female nude. 

"Judith Decaptitaing Holofernes" by Artemesia Gentileschi (1618)

Maria Sybilla Merian not only radically diverged from her role as contained domesticated wife, she created stunningly accurate scientific studies of wildlife. Merian did not let the status quo keep her indoors; instead, she followed her passion and ambition and completely struck out on her own to do work that revolutionized visual taxonomy in Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705, below). 

Illustrations from Metamorphosis Insectorum Surnamensium, Maria Sybilla Merian (1705)

Rosa Bonheur rocked the 19th century: her existence as a gender-nonconforming, lesbian, woman was radical enough. Her intelligence and subversive genius is only reinforced by her incredibly realistic images of cattle that stand as dialogues for women's place in society. The majestic cows in "Plowing in the Nivernais" (1848, below) are not simply domesticated animals. They are symbols for the domesticated, man-whipped Victorian woman whose life of quiet servitude was, in many ways, hardly better than an over-worked plowing cow. 

"Plowing in the Nivernais", Rosa Bonheur (1848)

In retrospect, the invention of the printing press foreshadowed more than a renaissance. It foreshadowed societal upheaval. Ignorance is assuredly docility, if not bliss. When a capitalist market freed up finances, religion subordinated to logic, and a burgeoning middle class emerged, the established norms of white patriarchal society lost its strongest foundations. Dialogue is status quo's most valuable asset. Education and surplus income set the stage for an alternative dialogue to develop. Women in an art historical context never again regressed to a completely domestic lifestyle. 


Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art and Society. 5th Edition. 2012. Print.