Why Do Women in Classical Art Look Like Men
Art Abode | ARTH Courses | ARTH 200 Assignments | ARTH 213 Assignments | ARTH 220 Syllabus
Excerpts from
Patricia Simons, "Women in Frames: The Gaze, the Center, the Profile in Renaissance Portraiture"
from History Workshop: A Journal of Socialist and Feminist Historians, 25 (Spring, 1988), 4-30; reprinted in Broude and Garrard, The Expanding Soapbox, pp.38-57:
p. 39: Studies of Renaissance art have had difficulty in accomodating gimmicky thinking on sexuality and feminism. The period which is presumed to take witnessed the nascency of Modernistic Man and the discovery of the World does not seem to require investigation. Renaissance art is seen equally a naturalistic reflection of a newly discovered reality, rather than as a set of framed myths and gender-based constructions. In its stature as loftier culture, information technology tends to be either applauded or ignored (by the political right or left respectively) as an untouchable, elite product. My work on profile portraits of Florentine women attempts to bring theories of the gaze to bear on some of these traditional Principal theories, thereby unmasking the apparent inevitability and neutrality of Renaissance fine art.
Effectually xl independent panel portraits of women in contour survive from Quattrocento Tuscany, but it is thought that this genre began in Italy around the years 1425-fifty with a cluster of 5 male portraits. The merely extended discussions of the Renaissance profile convention tend to presume a male norm for all surviving panels. Jean Lipman in 1936 wrote of the female person figures' "bulk and weight" and "strong shapes," Rab Hatfield's report on the five male person profiles of their "bravura" and "potent shapes." Both writers were imbued by Jakob Burckhardt'due south interpretation of the Renaissance equally a menses giving nascence to mod, individualistic man. For the art historian specifically, the rise of an individualistic consciousness during the Renaissance, plotted by Burckhardt in 1860, explains the development of individualized and more numerous portraiture at the time. Hence for Lipman these figures --"completely exposed to the gaze of the spectator"-- were self-sufficient, invulnerable, displaying past the surface accent of the design only the surface of the self-contained person. Hatfield's afterwards attention to social context shifted the accent, for he argued that "intimacy is deflected" because "social prestige" is existence historic and a family "pedigree" formed in the images. But the portrayed were characterized past their visual order as reasoned, intelligent men whose virtù , or public and moral virtue, required "admiration and respect." For both writers, the profile portrait celebrates fame, and derives from public pictorial conventions....
/p. xl: Normally, the utilization of the profile in fifteenth-century art is explained by recourse to the revival of the classical medal and the importation of conventions for the portrayal of courtly rulers, evoking the commemoration of fame and individualism. Such causal reasoning is inappropriate to the parameters and frames of Quattrocento women. In this paper, profile portraits will be viewed as constructions of gender conventions, not as natural, neutral images.
Backside this project lies a tardily-twentieth century interest in the middle and the gaze, largely investigated so far in terms of psychoanalysis and film theory. Further, diverse streams of literary criticism and theory brand us enlightened of the structure of myths and images, of the degree to which the reader (and the viewer) are agile, so that, in ethnographic terms, the center is a performing agent. Finally, feminism can be brought to bear on a field and a discipline which are only starting time to accommodate to a de-Naturalized, mail service-humanist world. Burckhardt again looms hither, for he believed that "women stood on a footing of perfect equality with men" in the Italian Renaissance, since "the educated woman, no less than the man, strove naturally afterwards a feature and complete individuality." That the "education given to women in the upper classes, was essentially the same as that given to men" is neither true, we would say, nor adequate proof of their social equality.
Joan Kelly'south essay of 1977, "Did Women Have a Renaissance?," opened a contend amidst historians of literature, religion and society, but art historians have been slower to enter the give-and-take. A patriarchal historiography which sees the Renaissance equally the Showtime of Modernism continues to dominate fine art history, and studies of Renaissance painting are niggling touched by the feminist enterprise. Whilst images of or for women are now showtime to exist treated as a category, some of this work perpetuates women's isolation in a separate sphere and takes fiddling account of gender analysis. Instead, we can examine relationships betwixt the sexes and think of gender as "a primary field with which or past means of which ability is articulated." Then we demand to consider the visual /p. 41: construction of sexual difference and how men and women were able to operate every bit viewers. Farther, attention tin be paid to the visual specifics of form rather than content or "iconography," and then that theory tin be related to exercise.
The trunk of this paper investigates the gaze in the display civilization of Quattrocento Florence to explicate further means in which the contour, presenting equally averted eye and a face bachelor to scrutiny, was suited to the representation of an ordered, chaste and decorous slice of property....
The history of the profile to ca. 1440 was a male history, except for the occasional inclusion of women in altarpieces as donor portraits, that is, portraits of those making their pious offer to the almighty. But from ca. 1440 almost all Florentine painted contour portraits depicting a unmarried figure are of women (except for a few studies of male heads on paper, probably sketches for medals and sculpture when they are portraits and non studio exercises). Past ca. 1450 the male was shown in iii-quarter length and view, first maybe in Andrea Castagno's sturdy view of an unknown human whose gaze, hand and facial structure intrude through the frame into the viewer'south space....
For some time, withal, women were yet predominantly restricted to the contour, and most examples of this format are dated after mid-century. Only in the later 1470's exercise portraits of women once more follow conventions for the male person counterparts, moving out from the restraining control of the profile format, turning towards the viewer and tending to exist views of women both older and less ostentatiously dressed than their female person predecessors had been. Such a change has not been investigated and cannot be my subject here, which is to highlight the predominance of a female person presence in Florentine profile portraits.
Painted by male artists for male patrons, these objects primarily addressed male person viewers. Necessarily members of the ruling and wealthy class in patrician Florence, the patrons held restrictive notions of proper female beliefs for women of their class. Elsewhere in Italy, especially in the northern courts, princesses were also restrained by rules of female decorum but were portrayed because they were noble, exceptional women. In mercantile Florence, however, that women who were not imperial were recognized in portraiture at all appears puzzling, and I recall can only exist understood in terms of the visual or optic modes of what can exist called a "display culture." By this I mean a culture where the outward display of honor, magnificence and wealth was vital to 1'due south social prestige and definition, and so that visual language was a crucial mode of discourse....
To exist a woman in the earth was /is to be the object of the male gaze: to "appear in public" is "to be looked upon," wrote Giovanni Boccaccio. The Dominican nun Clare Gambacorta (d. 1419) wished to avert such scrutiny and plant a convent "beyond the gaze of men and costless from worldly distractions." The gaze, and then a metaphor for worldliness and virility, made of Renaissance adult female an object of public soapbox, / p. 42: exposed to scrutiny and framed by parameters of propriety, brandish, and "impression management." Put simply, why else pigment a woman except as an object of display within male discourse?
Only at certain key moments could she be seen, whether at a window or in the "window" of a console painting, seen and thereby represented. These centered on her rite of passage from ane male firm to another upon her wedlock, usually at an historic period between fifteen and xx, to a homo as much every bit fifteen years her senior. Her very existence and definition at this time was a office of her outward advent. Pleading for extra finery and household linen, rather than just functional clothing, to be included in her dowry, one widow implored her children, when her brothers forced her into a second spousal relationship, "Requite me a way to exist dressed." This woman nearly pictures herself as naked and undefined unless a certain level (modo) of (ad)dress or representation equally volition equally wealth can be attained. Costume was what Diane Owen Hughes calles "a metaphorical fashion" for social distinction and regulation. The "allegorical significance" of apparel made possible the visible marking out of one's parental and marital identity. A bearer of her natal inheritance and an emblem too of her conjugal line once she had entered the latter's boundaries, a woman was an adorned Other who was defined into existence when she entered patriarchal soapbox primarily as an object of substitution.
Without what Christiane Klapisch-Zuber calls "publicity," the important alliance forged between two households or lineages by a union was not fairly established. Without witnesses, the contract was not finalized. By contrast, the priest's presence at this time was not legally necessary. Visual display was an essential component of the ritual, a performance which allowed, indeed expected, a woman'south visible presentation in social display and required an appropriately honorable degree of adornment.
The historic period of the women in these profile portraits, forth with the lavish presence of jewelry and fine costumes (usually outlawed by sumptuary legislation and rules of morality and decorum), with multiple rings on her fingers when her hands are shown, and pilus bound rather than free-flowing, are all visible signs of her newly married (or perhaps sometimes betrothed) state. The woman was a spectacle when she was an object of public display at the time of her marriage but otherwise she was rarely visible, whether on the streets or in monumental works of fine art. In panels displayed in areas of the palace open up to common interchange, she was portrayed as a sign of the ritual's performance, the brotherhood's formation and its honorable nature.
An example of a father'due south attention to his daughter before marriage, however, also points upwards attitudes taken to a adult female's public appearance. Whilst Giovanni Tournabuoni granted jewelry to his girl Ludovica equally part of her lavish dowry, he will of 1490 withal stipulated that ii of the valuable, carefully described items ultimately remain part of his male patrimony, for they were to return to his manor upon her expiry. A cantankerous surrounded by pearls, probably the "crocettina" mentioned in Giovanni'southward volition, hangs from Ludovica's neck in her portrait past Domenico Ghirlandaio within the family chapel at Santa Maria Novella, decorated at her father's expense between 1486 and 1490. She also wears a dress richly brocaded with the triangular Tornabuoni keepsake. Then, at the time when she was betrothed merely non however married, not long earlier she passed beyond their confines, she is displayed forever every bit a Tornabuoni woman, wearing their emblem and wealth.
/p. 43: When the bride went fuori ('exterior') and was "led" or "taken abroad" past her husband, she diameter a counter-dowry of goods supplied by him. I mother, Alessandra Strozzi, happily reported her girl in 1447 that "When she goes out of the business firm, she'll have more than 400 florins on her back" because the groom Marco Parenti "is never satisfied having things made for her, for she is cute and he wants her to look at her best...."
In wanting his bride "to look at her best" Marco was seeking a visible, displayable sign of his honor. Indeed a wife'south costume was considered by jurists a sign of her married man'due south rank. "Being beautiful and belonging to Filippo Strozzi," Alessandra wrote to her son of a potential bride in 1465, " she must take beautiful jewels, for just as yous accept won award in many things, you can not fall brusque in this." Similar the "gilded facade" of a palace, "such adornments...are taken equally evidence of the wealth of the married man more than than every bit a want to impress wanton eyes," wrote Francesco Barbaro in his treatise On Wifely Duties of 1416. To Barbaro, a wife'south public appearance was a sign of her propriety and her husband's trust: wives "should not be shut upwards in their bedrooms as in a prison but should be permitted to go out [in apertum], and this privilege should be taken as prove of their virtue and probity."
He and then went on, "By maintaining a decorous and honest gaze in their eyes, the most acute of senses, they can communicate as in painting, which is chosen silent poetry...." Attributes of costume, jewelry and honorable bearing are as much signs as the occasional coats of artillery in these portraits. 
Perhaps nosotros can find an explanation for those numerous donor portraits in profile past considering the...linkage, past the nun Clare Gambacorta, between "the gaze of men" and "worldly distractions." Especially when shown in profile, the donor's faces are visible to both divine and "worldly," sacred and "secular" (yet sacralized) realms, seen past the adored sanctities however also viewed by priests and devotees, including the donors themselves. Like nuns and donors /p. 44: the women portrayed in profile are displayed and visible objects, and even so they are removed from "worldly distractions." They are inactive objects gazing elsewhere, decorously averting their eyes. In this sense they are chaste, if not virginal, framed if not (quite) cloistered. All the same, dissimilar nuns, these idealized women are very much not "beyond the gaze of men."
A young Florentine patrician daughter rarely became anything other than a nun or a wife. In each instance she was defined in relation to her engagement with men, either marrying Christ or a worldly husband and eschewing all other men....
Visually, the strict orderliness of the profile portrait can exist seen as a surprising contradiction of contemporary misogynist literature. Supposedly "inconstant," like "irrational animals" without "whatever gear up proportion," living "without order or measure," women are transformed by their "dazzler of mind" and "dowry of virtue" into ordered, constant, geometrically proportioned and unchangeable images, bearers of an inheritance which would exist "precious" to their children. A woman, who was supposedly vain and narcissistic, was nevertheless made an object in a framed "mirror" when a man'southward worldly wealth and her ideal dowry, rather than her "true" or "real" nature, was on display.
Giovanna Tornabouni'due south portrait by Domenico Ghirlandaio contains an inscription, with the engagement 1488, indicating that "conduct and soul" were valuable, laudable commodities carried by the adult female. Farther, depiction strove for the problematic representation of these invisible virtues" "O art, if thousand were able to draw the carry /p. 45: and soul, no lovelier painting would be on earth." Having died whilst pregnant in 1488, the new dead Giovanna née Albizzi is here immortalized as noble and pious, bearing her husband's initial, L for Ludovico, on her shoulder and his family'due south simplified, triangular emblem on her garment. She is forever captivated every bit part of the Tornabuoni heritage, displayed in their palace to be seen by their visitors and themselves, including her son, who diameter their proper noun.
Within the panel, she is framed by a unproblematic, closed-off room; within the palace, we know from an inventory, she was really framed in a "cornice made of gold" on show in a splendid "room of golden stalls." Sealed in a niche like her accourtrements of piety and propriety, she is an eternally static spectacle held decorously firm by her arm, cervix, and spine. Giovanna'southward very body becomes a sign, attempting to articulate her intangible simply valuable "acquit and soul." The "dowry of virtue" is encased and contained within her husband'due south finery, each enhancing the other. Forever framed in a state of idealized preservation, she is constructed as a female exemplar for Tornabuoni viewers and others they wished to impress with this ornamento.
Profile portraits such as Giovanna'southward participate in a language of visual and social conventions. They are not only reflection of a preexistent social or visual reality.... In these portraits a woman can wear cosmetics and extravagant ornament forbidden by legal and moral codes. There this orderly creature was visible at or near a window, yet she was explicitly banished from public appearance at such windows. At that place a expressionless wife or absent girl or newly incorporated, deflowered married woman was made an object of commemoration, equally eternally alive and chaste....
A woman's painted presence shares with cultural values of the time an idealized stock of impressive, manipulative linguistic communication bachelor inside Quattrocento culture. Visual fine art, it can be argued, both shared and shaped social language and need non be seen equally a passive reflection of predetermining reality. For the representation of women, the contour form and its particulars were well suited to the construction, rather than reflection, of an invisible "reality."
It is not only the display of attributes similar jewelry and costume (peradventure often more than fantabulous fantasies than were the actual possessions) which pronounce the portrayed woman as the bearer of "wealth" both earthly and invisible. The profile grade itself is amenable to the construction of a display object, since the viewed is rendered static by an impersonal, typifying structure....
Niccolò Fiorentino, Giovanna degli Tornabuoni, c. 1486
Inscription on Obverse: VXOR LAVRENTII DETORNABONIS IONNA ALBIZA (wife of Lorenzo Tornabuoni Giovanna Albizzi)
Inscription on the reverse: CASTITAS PVL [CH] RITUDO AMOR (Chastity, Dazzler, Love)
Giovanna was born in 1468, the daughter of Maso degli Albizzi. Lorenzo Medici arranged the spousal relationship of Giovanna to Lorenzo Tornabuoni, son of Giovanni. The wedlock celebrated on June xv, 1486 marked the brotherhood of 2 major Florentine families. In Oct of 1487, Giovanna gave nativity to a son, Giovanni, thus fulfilling her dynastic part. She died in child nascence in October of 1488.
/p. 46: "Individuality" appears to the caste that simplifying silhouettes can stand for particular faces. Merely full characterization depends upon facial asymmetry, and momentary moods are also denied by the timeless patterning profile. In these mostly anonymous profile portraits, confront and trunk are every bit allegorical as coats of arms....
The traditional immortalizing of a dead man or a male ruler by utilise of the profile was appropriated for female person representation, still the form's restrictive capacity was accentuated. One of the few surviving pairs in which the male and female portraits are in profile, Piero della Francesca's depiction of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino couples a ruler with a woman. 
/p. 50: In fifteenth-century lodge, lowered or averted optics were the sign of a woman's modesty, chastity and obeisance. A loose woman, on the other mitt, looked at men in the street. Temptation or a lover were avoided or discouraged if a virtuous adult female did non return the gaze.
| | |
| attributed to Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of a Immature Homo and Immature Woman, c. 1490. | |
| Botticelli, Portrait of a Lady ("Simonetta Vespucci"), 1475-80. (Berlin) | Botticelli, Portrait of a Lady ("Simonetta Vespucci"), 1475-80 (Frankfurt) |
These two paintings by Botticelli while they at showtime seem to conform to the contour portrait convention diverge from this in notable ways. The profiles are not pure, but rather the heads are slightly turned and then that you lot can come across a little bit of the far middle. Also in contrast to portraits like Ghirlandaio's portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, the perfect and highly stylized hair mode of the Ghirlandaio has been loosened in these two Botticelli portraits. The Frankfurt panel breaks from the standard convention of the woman facing left. Scholars have generally agreed that while the same person, likely Simonetta Vespucci, is the model for both paintings, that these two are intended to present an ideal of female person beauty. Scholars accept related these to the tradition of love verse from Petrarch and the ideas of platonic beauty. Petrarch wrote dear poetry dedicated to "Laura." As in the tradition of the courtly love, Laura is unattainable; it is destined to exist an unrequited dearest. This tradition was continued in the poesy of Botticelli's contemporaries similar Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494). Poliziano had written a poem entitled La giostra. The poem celebrates a tournament in 1475 in which Giuliano de' Medici received the victor's crown from Simonetta Vespucci. Poliziano's La giostra has been associated with Botticelli'southward Venus and Mars in the National Gallery in London:
The physiogomy and details of the pilus of the Venus figure have striking similarities to the adult female in the Frankfurt portrait. The wasps that buzz around the caput of Mars in the London panel suggests an clan with the Vespucci family which had on its coat of arms wasps (Vespucci in Italian means "picayune wasps). Simonetta Cattaneo, born in Genoa, married Marco Vespucci in 1468. She died at the age of 23 in Apr of 1476.
While the Berlin and Frankfurt portraits and the London Venus and Mars are likely based on Simonetta Vespucci, these figures can also be likened to Petrarch's descriptions of his Laura especially with the elaborately curled hair:
stirring it, and being softly stirred in turn,
handful that sweet gold about, then
gathering it, in a lovely knot of curls over again,
you lot linger around bright eyes whose loving sting
pierces me and then, till I feel it and weep,
and I wander searching for my treasure,
similar a creature that oftentimes shies and kicks:
at present I seem to find her, now I realise
she's far away, now I'chiliad comforted, now despair,
now longing for her, at present truly seeing her.
Happy air, remain hither with your
living rays: and you, clear running stream,
why tin't I exchange my path for yours? (227: La Canzoniere)
Art Home | ARTH Courses | ARTH 200 Assignments | ARTH 213 Assignments | ARTH 220 Syllabus
mcnamaraefuld1951.blogspot.com
Source: http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth213/women_in_frames.html
0 Response to "Why Do Women in Classical Art Look Like Men"
Post a Comment