Women as Subjects in Art During the Renaissance Period

Gender and Art in the Renaissance

Joyce de Vries

• Last REVIEWED: eighteen August 2021
• LAST MODIFIED: 28 November 2016
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920105-0104

Introduction

There is a large torso of scholarship on the many topics related to gender and fine art in Renaissance Europe (c. 1400–c. 1600), and much of it relates to women'southward product and representation. This scholarship has largely developed since the advent of the second wave women's move in the United states of america in the 1960s and 1970s, when feminist artists and art historians began to search for women artists from the past to serve as both part models and evidence of women'south inventiveness. Scholars have since rediscovered quite a number of women artists from the Renaissance era. While researchers go along to uncover evidence in archives and primary sources of women artists, identify their works, and document and contextualize their careers, scholars have broadened their telescopic of inquiry to observe farther evidence of Renaissance women's agency in the arts and culture. Women's patronage and collecting of art is a major expanse of research, and scholars have explored how women in the past fashioned their gendered identities via their commissions and collections. Some other major field of study is the representation of women. This includes women'due south portraiture, which is oft, but not always, related to their patronage, and an array of depictions of biblical women; saints; sinners; and historical, legendary, and mythological women. These studies consider how women adhere to, or challenge, conventional notions of femininity. Similarly, as gender studies has expanded to include more than research on men and masculinities, art historians have begun to problematize Renaissance men'south artistic production and representation to conscientiously explore a range of men's gendered identities and practices. In addition, scholars have recently turned their analyses toward intersections of gender and material culture in the domestic realm. These examinations wait at the gendered imagery throughout the home too as the gendered ways that people interacted with a broad range of images and objects, including painting and sculpture, but also ceramics, glass, metal wares, textiles, and other applied and decorative household items. The iconography and office of these images and artifacts oftentimes reflect their links to major milestones, such as birth, courting, union, and death as well as the related issues of love, sex activity, and sexualities; their gendered analyses have led to important insights on the lives of men and women from the past.

General Overviews

There are several full general overviews that are a proficient identify to begin research into issues related to gender and art in the Renaissance. Chadwick 2012 is often used as a textbook for classes on women and fine art, and its early chapters provide useful information on women as artists, patrons, and subjects throughout Europe in the Renaissance. Tinagli 1997 is another good introduction to bug related to women, focused on Italia. Both Miguel and Schiesari 1991 and Johnson and Matthews-Grieco 1997 similarly feature investigations of women, gender, and the arts in Italia. Several essays in Broude and Garrard 1992 and Broude and Garrard 2005 examine representations of women in Italian Renaissance art; other capacity discuss women'south practices and depictions from elsewhere in Europe, although beyond the chronological parameters of the Renaissance. Similarly, the essays in Broude and Garrard 1982 exercise non pertain specifically to the Renaissance, but nevertheless provide important data on a range of women's depictions from other eras besides as methodological models for feminist analysis. Carroll and Stewart 2003 and Grössinger 1997 explore depictions of women in northern European Renaissance art and how they were used as both positive and negative examples of feminine behavior. Garrard 2010 offers new, gendered interpretations of iconic works by Italian artists, and provides an important discussion of the gendering of artistic practice, nature, science, and thought during the Renaissance.

• Broude, Norma, and Mary D. Garrard, eds. Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany. New York: Harper & Row, 1982.

  One of the earliest anthologies of essays with feminist analysis of women's representations, this volume contains capacity that explore depictions of women from the ancient through the modern, and serves as an excellent overview of the fundamental questions that early feminist fine art historians were exploring in their research.

• Broude, Norma, and Mary D. Garrard, eds. The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.

  A collection of twenty-nine essays that examine gender issues in fine art history from the Early on Modern era through the 20th century. Seven focus on Renaissance depictions of women, including 2 on women's portraiture besides as studies of representations of the Virgin Mary and mythological women like Venus and Medusa.

• Broude, Norma, and Mary D. Garrard, eds. Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History after Postmodernism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

  The xx-three essays in this anthology explore gender bug in women'south representation and artistic product from the Renaissance to the early on 21st century.

• Carroll, Jane L., and Alison M. Stewart, eds. Saints, Sinners, and Sisters: Gender and Northern Art in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Aldershot, U.k., and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003.

  An anthology of eleven studies of representations of women in the fine art of northern Europe, organized into the categories of saints as office models; sinners as negative models; and women as nuns, wives, and poets. While several chapters cover cloth beyond the years 1400–1600, all offer important data and analysis.

• Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Fine art, and Society. 5th ed. London: Thames & Hudson, 2012.

  Chapters 1 through 4 offer a expert, full general overview of women as artists, patrons, and subjects in late medieval and early modernistic Europe. The bibliography is organized by chapter and topic, with entries for artists every bit well equally major themes and issues.

• Garrard, Mary D. Brunelleschi'southward Egg: Nature, Art, and Gender in Renaissance Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

  Garrard offers fresh interpretations of well-known works by Renaissance artists similar Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Titian, among others, in light of the growing feminization of nature and art and masculinization of science and the intellect in this period.

• Grössinger, Christa. Picturing Women in Tardily Medieval and Renaissance Fine art. Manchester, United kingdom: Manchester University Press, 1997.

  A study of depictions of women in northern European fine art, particularly in woodcut prints, and how these women were typically characterized as either good or evil.

• Johnson, Geraldine A., and Sara F. Matthews-Grieco, eds. Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Academy Press, 1997.

  An illustrated collection of nine interdisciplinary essays on depictions of women, women artists and patrons, and the lived experiences of women, including nuns. While there is no bibliography for the entire volume, each essay has all-encompassing endnotes and in that location is a thorough index.

• Miguel, Marilyn, and Julian Schiesari, eds. Refiguring Adult female: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.

  A book of eleven essays on problems related to women and gender from scholars of literature, history, and art history. While only 2 of the essays explore the iconography of representations of women, the other capacity explore social, political, and literary bug of import to our agreement of Renaissance women in Italy.

• Tinagli, Paola. Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation and Identity. Manchester, United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland: Manchester University Press, 1997.

  Examines painted furniture associated with marriage and dowries every bit well as representations of women, including portraiture, nudes, and saints. With many images, this book is a good introduction to the major problems in the field.

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