Gender, Subject, + Power

Though women historically have been seen and treated as inferior to men, the degrees of freedom and ability they exhibited have varied as time has progressed. As discussed in Chapter One of Whitney Chadwick's Women, Art, and Society, recent findings have suggested that the economic and social circumstances not affected by the omnipresence of the Christian Church allowed for greater freedom for women, in terms of managing the family's property and producing goods. However, these revelations have not negated the well-understood oppression and mistreatment of women since the Middle Ages. In any case, the ways in which women performed and maintained the roles society imposed on them have dramatically evolved from the Middle Ages into the 19th century.

Religion continued to dominate society in the Middle Ages, and it dictated the ways in which women could exist and be remembered. Chadwick made clear in the beginning of Chapter One that social historians' recent findings about women in the time period were "ambiguous", but that there did exist evidence of their lives being "shaped by economic and social forces outside ecclesiastic control, at least during the period of the early Middle Ages" (Chadwick 44). The lack of physical boundaries between domestic and public life, as well as documentation of involvement in masonry and building, are examples given in the text to support Chadwick's claim. And, in terms of the art of the period, women were often represented as laborers in manuscript illustration, embroidery, and paintings.

Monasteries were key centers of art production, which explained the continuing depictions of divine womanhood, as seen with the "apogee in the twelfth-century cult of the Virgin Mary" (Chadwick 45). However, this did not mean female nuns were treated equally in all aspects; women were allowed to convert to nuns and learn what was taught by men, but they could do nothing beyond that besides being depicted by male artists. An important exception to this was the so-called Beatus Apocalypse of Gerona, a manuscript worked on in part by a woman (whose self-chosen title was Depintrix, or "painteress") named Ende (Guerrilla Girls 20). Whether she was a nun or not is uncertain, but nonetheless, she was the first female Spanish manuscript illustrator and one whose work remains known to this day. Also of note are the works of German nun Hildegard of Bingen and French court writer Christine de Pisan. Hildegard and her work Scivias, as well as Pisan's allegory The City of Ladies, exemplified the trend of religious creation and influence. Both women, along with Ende, lived on as role models for other female artists, and their lives served as necessary foils to the situations of artists later in history.

Hildegard of Bingen, from Scivias (c. 1142-52)

In contrast, the Renaissance saw a notable shift toward enhanced separation and degradation of women, in both society and the art world, that continued into the 18th and 19th centuries. Despite the claims of Renaissance scholar Jacob Burckhardt, women were not seen as equal to men in that time period. In fact, a 1971 essay by Linda Nochlin "inaugurated feminist challenges to the prevailing view of Renaissance art as a naturalistic reflection of the reality rather than a set of constructed and gendered myths" (Chadwick 66). Chadwick notes the impact of capitalism and the modern state as catalysts for new economic, social, and familial dynamics in Renaissance Italy (and across the world). An already increasing idea of "masculinity" and "femininity" skyrocketed, and women found themselves being the product of art more than the producer. Power and wealth were concentrated in the more conservative art hubs of Florence and Rome, but exceptions such as the city of Cremona allowed women such as Sofonisba Anguissola to flourish in the 16th century. However, as the Guerrilla Girls point out in Chapter 3 of their book, she was "a noble whose father believed women should be educated", meaning his sending her work to Michaelangelo was the only reason her career got underfoot (Guerrilla Girls 29). Noting that is not meant to discredit his efforts, as it can be argued that familial help is surely a sign of progress, but it said much about the time that a man had to convince another man of a woman's worth. Male approval, not to mention one with immense power and wealth, gave and continues to give women's work value. So, although Sofonisba possessed a high level of talent and capacity before and without the recognition, the master's gaze was what allowed her work to be considered and, ultimately, remembered.

Sofonisba Anguissola, "Queen Anne of Austria" (1570)

Anguissola was one of many women artists popular during the Renaissance, and her contemporaries included the likes of Elisabetta Sirani and the famed Artemisia Gentileschi. The works of Sirani and Gentileschi also posed questions about the lengths women had to go through to be recognized and taken seriously. Sirani became immensely popular during her lifetime, to the point of being "accused of signing work her father had done" and having to "paint in public and [opening] a school for women artists" (Guerrilla Girls 30). Beyond just that, her well-known piece entitled "Portia Wounding Her Thigh" was a blatant example of women bending-over-backward and hurting themselves to prove their allegiance and value. In the story of Julius Caesar, Portia literally wounded her thigh in order to prove to her husband Brutus that she was trustworthy. She became a representative of all the women who experienced similar things (be it with self-inflicted harm or otherwise), as well as of women in general. However, she also stood for the divide between women for male attention, a phenomenon created by the men of the patriarchy and spurred on by the male gaze. In order to distance herself from other women, who could not be trusted with such secrets and dangerous details, she had to lacerate her leg. Often, women must prove their worth and individuality by distancing themselves from other women because of the stereotypes surrounding them. "I'm not like other girls" is a common phrase meant to distinguish a stronger, more capable woman from other, lesser ones, but what it does is reinforce the male gaze and group all females who utter the same words together anyway. Perhaps it works in the short term but, as the treatment of women who rise to prominence in the 18th and 19th centuries demonstrates, Portia may be a powerful figure in the painting but an incomplete representation of empowerment in real life.

Elisabetta Sirani, "Portia Wounding Her Thigh" (1664)

Come the late 1700s and early 1800s, more female artists began forcing themselves into predominantly male spaces, such as France's Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, for both better and worse. Two of the most famous artists of the time were Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun and Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, both of whom were frequently commissioned for their portraits and historical paintings. Vigée Le Brun, in particular, was hailed as one of Marie Antoinette's favorite portraitists (see "Marie Antoinette and Her Children" below). As Le Brun and Labille-Guiard joined the Academy on the same date in 1783, they became press spectacles. On the one hand, many critics applauded their fame and prominence, but just as many degraded them and their work, spread false rumors, and declared them "rivals" with little basis (a common argument was that Le Brun's work was "feminine" and Labille-Guiard's was "masculine" in their brushstrokes, color, and depiction of subjects). This fabricated duel between two equally accomplished and skilled painters was another such way patriarchy continued to lord over society. While both women gained the recognition they deserved, their careers were pitted each other by men afraid to be overshadowed in their own stomping grounds. Like Portia wounding her thigh, Le Brun and Labille-Guiard were made to fight each other for a seat at the men's table. Their excellence, skill, and subjects mattered not, though their very existence within the Royal Academy was, in itself, instrumental progress in moving toward equality among artists.

Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, "Marie Antoinette and Her Children" (1787) 

Women's roles in art and society have transformed throughout history based on the power of religion and the strength of the patriarchy at the time. The early Middle Ages contained several instances in which men and women shared relative equality but, even then and in later eras, there has never been total respect and opportunities for women. What this meant for the 20th century was that there was much work to be done, in order to allow women, artists or otherwise, to play on the same field as men. And, as is known now in the 21st century, is that there was indeed much progress for equality and opportunity, but there remain far more barriers to overcome for people and artists of all genders and backgrounds to be truly equal.

Works Cited

Auricchio, Laura. “Eighteenth-Century Women Painters in France.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/18wa/hd_18wa.htm (October 2004)

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art and Society. 5th ed., Thames and Hudson, 2012.

Guerrilla Girls. The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. Penguin Books, 1998.

Nochlin, Linda. “From 1971: Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? -.” ARTnews, ARTNews Media, LLC, 24 Sept. 2018, www.artnews.com/2015/05/30/why-have-there-been-no-great-women-artists/.