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From Hortus Deliciarum by Herrad of Landsberg Titled: Philosophia et Septem Artes Liberales (Philosophy and the Seven Liberal Arts) Year: After 1170 |
During the Middle Ages, women were considered property, they were valued only as objects. The worth of a woman derived from her status as wife, daughter, sister, mother, and so on. Once married, "a woman had to obey her husband" (Guerilla Girls, 22), and she was to exist for his pleasure, never her own. A woman in the Middle Ages was not entitled to her own identity, nonetheless her own property. There was a single exception to women’s inability to become educated and educate others and escape the sentence of an abusive marriage, the convent. Choosing to commit their lives to the convent and pursue being a nun was the single greatest a choice a woman could make if she wanted to become educated and educate others. Within the Middle Ages, various art pieces reflect a woman’s enlightenment being directly connected to her status as a nun. The first piece, Hortus Deliciarum, a book created by Herrad of Landsberg, relays the transmission of learning shown through nuns in Germany. What made this piece most special is that it is a book written by a woman that includes a dedication to all of the women who contributed to the making. Herrad of Landsberg was able to pursue this due to her status as an abbess who was in a political and religious position to create pieces of art and literature for the education of others.
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From Liber Scivias,
by Hildegard of Bingen
Year: 1142-52
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Similarly, Hildegard of Bingen’s piece, Scivas, is a staple of art and women within the Middle Ages as she enforces her own and her art’s legitimacy as direct contact with God. Hildegard of Bingen created bodies of work on the basis that she was illustrating her religious experiences, which translated into her acceptance as a visionary. Often during the era, "Churchmen who wrote about mystics tended to emphasize their inspiration and minimize their education" (Chadwick, 61),whereas Hildegard of Bingen used both her inspiration and her education to create her art and pursue religious female freedom. During a period that women were not to read or write, nonetheless, create art or establish herself as an intellectual. Due to Hildegard of Bingen’s religious experiences and revolutionary work, she became a politically active woman, creating work that revealed her conception of female otherness concerning Catholic male authority and circumventing the Church’s denial of power to women. Due to her brilliance and her ability to dedicate her views to Catholicism, she received papal recognition for her art and her ideas. Although most of the women who acquired power and produced art were nuns, which were not many, there existed a very few who pursued the arts. Christine De Pizan, a widow who is considered to the first woman to have made her living as a writer, authored a work titled The Book of the City of Ladies, which crafted an argument against sexist scholars of the time. A particular piece, The Bricklayers, depicts women as builders, instructors, thinkers, and are all empowered in the absence of men. Through this work, and others, Christine De Pizan was able to establish herself as a courageous, outspoken intellectual and poet. De Pizan was able to do the work of other women from that time, without having to attribute her brilliance to divine intervention as the nuns had done.
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| From The Book of the City of Ladies, The Bricklayers by Christine De Pizan Year: 1405 |
The Renaissance continued the societal tradition of enforcing patriarchy and religion through art. During the Renaissance, religion was of the utmost importance in Europe, and everything that was done socially, politically, and culturally, was done surrounding Catholicism. Unfortunately for women of all statuses, "The Church's hierarchial organization reinforced the class distinctions in society; its patriarchal organization reinforced the class distinction in society; its patriarchal dogma included a full set of theories on the natural inferiority of women" (Chadwick, 44).
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| Queen Ann of Austria by Sofonisba Anguissola Year: 1570 |
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| Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi Year: 1618 |
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| Portia Wounding Her Thigh by Elizabetta Sirani Year: 1664 With these artists and paintings being used as the foundation for women in art, female artists were enabled to flourish within the nineteenth century. Along with the utilization of women in art came the utilization of other mediums for women to create their art. Although still difficult for women of lower classes, women of higher classes with access to art and supplies began representing women unapologetically. As with all other histories, there was pushback against female artists that "asserted that famous women were miraculously endowed with the qualities that enabled them to succeed and thus could not serve as models for ordinary women" (Chadwick, 87). One of the women used to represent intersectional artists, and unique mediums were Harriet Powers and the creation of her quilts. Powers used the art form to tell stories and represent the African tradition which the medium stemmed; her work was later revived during the Second Wave of Feminism (1970s) to represent the women just like her, those existing in intersectionality.
Works Cited Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Print. The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print. |
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