View women in portraits from the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries and
ID: 109338 • Letter: V
Question
View women in portraits from the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries and compared how they have changed?
View portraits of women that you find at these virtual museums
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City http://www.metmuseum.org/ (Links to an external site.)
The Chicago Art Institute http://www.artic.edu/ (Links to an external site.)
The National Gallery in Washington, DC https://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb.html (Links to an external site.)
The Louvre, in Paris http://www.louvre.fr/en (Links to an external site.)
The British Museum, in London http://www.britishmuseum.org/
Explanation / Answer
Women in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries were challenged with expressing themselves in a patriarchal system that generally refused to grant merit to women's views. Cultural and political events during these centuries increased attention to women's issues such as education reform, and by the end of the eighteenth century, women were increasingly able to speak out against injustices. Though modern feminism was nonexistent, many women expressed themselves and exposed the conditions that they faced, albeit often indirectly, using a variety of subversive and creative methods. By "early modern" it is meant the Renaissance in Europe (the 15th and 16th centuries) and I choose Western art because it is the dominant historical influence on European and eventually on American culture. The earliest representations of actual men and women occur in portraits, a form which developed in the 15th century. Before the Renaissance the men and women represented in art were primarily religious and Biblical and mythical figures, but in the 15th century the portrait developed--that is, the representation of an actual, living human being. Those depicted in these portraits were the wealthy and privileged, because they were the only ones who could afford to commission paintings of themselves or their loved ones. In fact, for several centuries (until about the nineteenth century) most of the men and women represented in portraits (unless they were related to an artist) were of the elite, privileged class. Most of these portraits share one common trait: they represent idealized versions of the wealthy.
The symbols of their status often have a prominent role in the portrait, whether heraldic devices to indicate lineage, ornaments and jewelry to signify wealth, or symbolic attributes in the background to suggest particular virtues or accomplishments. The examples below, ranging from the 15th to the 17th century, are typical. The social structure of sixteenth century Europe allowed women limited opportunities for involvement; they served largely as managers of their households. Women were expected to focus on practical domestic pursuits and activities that encouraged the betterment of their families, and more particularly, their husbands. In most cases education for women was not advocated—it was thought to be detrimental to the traditional female virtues of innocence and morality. Women who spoke out against the patriarchal system of gender roles, or any injustice, ran the risk of being exiled from their communities, or worse; vocal unmarried women in particular were the targets of witch-hunts. Anne Hutchinson, who challenged the authority of Puritan clergy, was excommunicated for her outspoken views and controversial actions. Anne Askew, a well-educated, out-spoken English Protestant, was tried for heresy in 1545; her denial of transubstantiation was grounds for her imprisonment. She was eventually burned at the stake for her refusal to incriminate other Protestant court ladies. Elizabeth I ascended to the throne in 1558, a woman who contradicted many of the gender roles of the age. She was well educated, having studied a variety of subjects including mathematics, foreign language, politics, and history.
Elizabeth was an outspoken but widely respected leader, known for her oratory skills as well as her patronage of the arts. Despite the advent of the age of print, the literacy rate during this period remained low, though the Bible became more readily available to the lower classes. Religious study, though restricted to "personal introspection," was considered an acceptable pursuit for women, and provided them with another context within which they could communicate their individual ideas and sentiments. In addition to religious material, women of this period often expressed themselves through the ostensibly private forms of letters and autobiographies. In this general sense these early portraits of men and women are alike. The differences, however, are telling. Not only are the women usually more elaborately dressed in expensive fabrics, sometimes embellished with gold, they also wear expensive and beautiful jewelry. In evaluating what from a modern viewpoint appears to be vanity, we should be careful. Women in Renaissance society may have been privileged but they were usually un-empowered. Their portraits were designed for the male viewers; the women are passive, powerless objects subject to the controlling gaze of males.
These males, their husbands or fathers, wanted affirmation of their own status. Women's clothing and jewelry provided an obvious and public demonstration of a family's wealth. Female bodies are thus used to display the male accumulation of power and wealth. It is also the case that the women portrayed may be wearing jewels that were part of the dowry or special wedding gifts; thus, it is important to their families that these women display their finery. The seventeenth century was not an era of drastic changes in the status or conditions of women. Women continued to play a significant, though not acknowledged, role in economic and political structures through their primarily domestic activities. They often acted as counselors in the home, "tempering" their husbands' words and actions. Though not directly involved in politics, women's roles within the family and local community allowed them to influence the political system. Women were discouraged from directly expressing political views counter to their husbands' or to broadly condemn established systems; nevertheless, many women were able to make public their private views through the veil of personal, religious writings.
Again, women who challenged societal norms and prejudices risked their lives Mary Dyer was hanged for repeatedly challenging the Massachusetts law that banished Quakers from the colony. Though their influence was often denigrated, women participated in various community activities. For example, women were full members of English guilds; guild records include references to "brethern and sistern" and "freemen and freewomen." During the seventeenth century, women's writings continued to focus on largely religious concerns, but increasingly, women found a creative and intellectual outlet in private journal- and letter-writing. Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative, published in 1682, is a famous narrative written ostensibly for personal use that was made public and became a popular success. In this puzzling double portrait (the male peaks in the window) by Fra Filippo Lippi the lavishly dressed bride wears both a shoulder brooch and head brooch, traditional groom's gifts in Florence Italy. As seen marking her with dresses and jewels, often bearing his crest, by bestowing on her a ritual wedding wardrobe the husband introduced his wife into his kin group and signaled the rights he had acquired over her. Most of the items remained the property of the husband, who might later bequeath them to his wife or repossess them; if he needed capital, they could be sold. The eighteenth century brought the beginning of the British Cultural Revolution.
With the increasing power of the middle class and an expansion in consumerism, women's roles began to evolve. The economic changes brought by the new middle class provided women with the opportunity to be more directly involved in commerce. Lower-to middle-class women often assisted their husbands in work outside the home. It was still thought unseemly for a lady to be knowledgeable of business so, though some class distinctions were blurring, the upper class was able to distinguish themselves from the rest of society. The rise in consumerism allowed the gentry to place a greater emphasis on changing fashion and "display," further distancing them from the middleclass. With the advent of changes in rules of fashion and acceptable mores within society, some women established a literary niche writing etiquette guides. Also due to the Cultural Revolution, mounting literacy rates among the lower classes caused an increase in publishing, including the rise of the periodical. Men and women of all classes found new means to express ideas in the wider publishing community.
Though women's writing during this period continued largely to be an extension of domesticity, and focused mainly on pragmatic, practical issues, women found a wider market for publication. The act of professional writing, however, was still considered "vulgar" among the aristocracy. Significant colonial expansion during this period provided would-be writers with unique subject matter—letters written by women abroad discussed foreign issues and culture, and offered a detailed view of far-off lands. These letters were often circulated among members of an extended family, as well as in the larger community. In defiance of social strictures, women such as Mary Wollstonecraft began to speak out publicly on women's rights, including education and marriage laws. Though women had better access to education, the goal of women's education was to attain an ideal womanhood as a proper education" was viewed as one that supported domestic and social activities but disregarded more academic pursuits.
Women such as Wollstonecraft advocated access to education for women that was equal to that of their male counterparts. Marriage laws, which overwhelmingly favored men, also spurred public debate, though little was accomplished to reform laws during this period. Virtuous sexual behavior was in fact the most important quality in a maiden or wife. As St. Bernardino preached in Florence, a woman's betrayal of her husband is more serious than a husband's betrayal of his wife, because 'she has no other virtue to lose. Repeat: she has no other virtue to lose. And presumably men have many virtues. Perhaps this explains the popularity for several centuries in western art of one story inherited from Roman history and legend--the story of Lucretia. A quick search turned up more than 50 paintings based on the legend. According to the story, Lucretia, a married woman, was raped by the son of a Roman king. Because she had been dishonored, by no act of her own volition, she did the honorable thing and committed suicide. She is sometimes depicted being raped but more often in the act of doing the honorable deed. The rape is depicted by Titian, a 16th century male painter, the suicide by Artemisia Gentileschi, a 17th century female painter.
Analysis of nineteenth-century women has included examination of gender roles and resistance on either side of the Atlantic, most often focusing on differences and similarities between the lives of women in the United States, England, and France. While the majority of these studies have concentrated on how white, middle-class women reacted to their assigned domestic or private sphere in the nineteenth century, there has also been interest in the dynamics of gender roles and societal expectations in minority and lower-class communities. Although these studies can be complementary, they also highlight the difficulty of making generalizations about the lives of women from different cultural, racial, economic, and religious backgrounds in a century of steady change. Women in the early twentieth century were perhaps most active and influential as writers and artists. The advent of the new century did witness a change in the style and content of women's writing, as well as an increase in the depiction of feminine images and themes in literature. By the mid-twentieth century, women throughout the Western world had completely redefined their roles in almost every social, political, and cultural sphere.
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