WOMAN RENDERED: Feminine Multi-Dimensionality in Renaissance to Modern Art

In the modern world, we are saturated with hundreds upon thousands of images of women on a daily basis -- advertisements, family photos, selfies, ad campaigns, influencer content, professional photography, amateur video editing -- each one, in their own minutely different way, attempting to tell us a story about that woman, to make us feel, react, to pivot our behavior. Most, due to the sheer volume, we see and ignore, never think about again. But each picture we consume in our lives is representative of an idea, a feeling, a concept. One that we, implicitly or not, carry in ourselves after viewing it. The invention and widespread dissemination of the camera, allowing people to actually capture reality and not just render it, the ability to cannibalize a bespoke slice of life, over and over again, has watered down a potent truth for us: a visual, the art of visualization, holds more power than we know. 

Before it was even fathomable that reality could be “captured” by means of a device like a camera, the mind’s eye was a human’s only tool to create their own realities, to conceive a world or an idea which is not directly correlated to the one they live in. Society in Europe, from about 800 CE on, was dominated (in degrees of proximity) by the Catholic Church. The Church saw itself as the arbiter of the non-tangible and inexplicable -- the power they wield is and was based solely on a composed reality that its followers cannot see, a visual that, because they did not experience it, people cannot possess.  This requires an incredible amount of faith among followers, especially when devoting themselves to a rigid and often ghastly life on Earth in order to achieve the heaven that is promised for them after death. Because of this ghastly life -- filled with death, disease, poverty, cruel injustice towards women, and unfair punishment -- the common person, could not imagine the divine. They had never seen anything close to what the Church promised as eternal Nirvana, and they looked to the church to explain it to them. 

Because of this, as well as the (deliberate) low rates of literacy, the Catholic Church relied on man-made visuals to teach the lessons and morals of the Bible to the common person. Most, if not all, art made subsequent to the formation of the Church was of religious imagery due to this -- monks acted as the proprietors of stories, and secular chroniclers were hard to come by following the church's founding and dominance. This, as intellectual and civil liberties grew among common people, became less of the case. Private agents, though commissioned usually by the church, became prominent players in the art world.

But, in giving independent artists, not just the Church, the power of visualization, the power to render, humankind is able to add dimension and complexity to stories that are intended to put women in their hegemonic place as either mother, whore, or object. The increased distancing from the Church as well as social gains made by women in the last 500 years show in painting a journey of the reclamation the multi-dimensionality of women as complex characters, not just as moral conduits. A discovery of the validity that a woman, as human, not simply as an allegory or vehicle, is subject enough for pieces of

contemplation. We will see the humanization of women subjects culminate in a post-modern reality, where the whimsy of allegory is totally stripped, and all that exists is a-reality.

Di Bodone

Italy pre-renaissance, being the center of Catholicism, was determined to produce images that accompanied scripture in a manner that they deemed compelling. Following the fall of the Roman Empire, Rome and Christianity were still fighting for cultural dominance -- their acension as the religion of hegemony was not as automatic as the church might have you believe. Just like every enduring and sweeping institution or idea (for example, Elizabethan England, and in turn, Naziism), those at the helm realize that followers' hearts are won through clear stories, and the deliberate visualization of those stories for common people.

Thus, the Church realized that visuals were imperative to the spread of Christianity (inherently a civil religion in doctrine). In order to sow implicit hierarchy among the culture, they did not illustrate the stories of the Bible as scenes, but rather expressions of truth. The Catholic Church was one of the first to realize that harnessing the creation of visuals, creating an image in an image-scarce world, expresses much more to a follower than the repitition of scripture. While the common believer may have their own developed schemas based on spoken word alone, visuals of those words create canonized certainty. Using simple elements such as shape, size, color, and texture, obedience was bred through visual tricks.

Accordingly, pre-Renaissance Italy was filled with flat, anatomically incorrect, emotionless depictions of one of the most important stories in the Bible: The Virgin Mary and Jesus, or a Maesta, a very common scene for Italian art from the late Middle Ages on. At the time, the archetype of the Virgin was one of the only acceptable renderings of a woman. In many of these devotional portraits, Mary looks only slightly bigger than her infant son Jesus, who is larger than the adult angels -- signaling a visual hierarchy of power. The mother and woman looks small even compared to her baby son. She acts as a throne for her male child, and is seen as the means of his arrival, the deliverer of divinity.

Ognissanti Madonna (1310), Giotto di Bondone

In almost all compositions, she reveres him -- both of them looking rather somber and physically strange, inhuman. Their figures are stiff and separate, yet bathed in gold leaf, their faces quarantined in a sphere of holy light. Their humanness is not to be emphasized, but rather their divinity through use of this shine. The viewer is meant to be entranced by the richness of the piece, and therein the richness of the church. Geometry plays a part too: when the viewer stands in front of the piece, they feel as though they are being dwarfed by the figures, standing beneath them, due to the early attempts at single-point perspective. Further, a literal hierarchy is formed: the triangular nature of the piece, with the addition of a triangular altar, is a "dog-whistle," so to speak, for an expression of hierarchical power, with Jesus and Mary at the head, then kings and queens, followed by the angels -- the final tier of the pyramid is the viewer.

Even for a common person, the roles are plainly spelled out: even the most divine woman is to sit behind, flatly, her only reason for existence, for reverence, being her son. Without Jesus, Mary would not be “worth” rendering for our eyes; the justification for the use of paint, the drawing of her feminine figure is tied solely to the fact that she delivered a prophet who is not yet a man. She must act as his messenger until he comes of age -- a concept that all women at the time needed to learn in order to survive. Her son, though he is her creation, is revered -- not her, the creator. She is seen as a means to an end.

But, without cultural knowledge, this composition could be read much differently. In Bondone's composition, her size, expression, and gilded appearance, all signaling power as a God-like figure herself, is diminished only through scriptural implications; if not for the universal knowledge that Mary was a mere vehicle for a male God, a less religiously educated viewer could indeed infer that she is the object of worship in this painting, and not her son -- and, as we will see, they indeed did. This visual exaltation and therein societal power of Mary is only weakened in this painting through the misogynistic dogma of Catholicism.

However, visually, we are anchored in not only Christ's physical primacy as well as his authority (even as a baby) through the small signal of a raised hand; baby Jesus expresses masculine autonomy and leadership through this gesture. Where he points, though, is not determined. Does he mythically will obedience with this gesture, or does he simply move to embrace, reach out for, his mother, the child he is? Or -- does he point to his mother, the Virgin, as an equal in his reverence? Is this motion a point of prophetic power or the subversion of it? With Bondone's Ognissanti Madonna, we start to see more the grey area in the conceptual nature of these church-based commissions. Bondone's composition, as conceptually superficial as may seem in terms of the humanization of a woman-subject, acts as one of the most morally ambiguous depictions of Virgin Mary during the Italian Middle Ages. Her expression, though not at all overtly mutinous to the church's status quo, demands respect as not only the role of the Virgin Mary, but as a woman.

Da Vinci

After almost 500 years of these artistic “Dark Ages,” free of complexity, curiosity, and multi-dimensionality, the human spirit itself was deflated, repressed by the Catholic Church in their quest for cultural dominance. Many born into this climate of intellectual shadow yearned for the return of a society that prioritized human discovery and innovation over hierarchy, a world that was determined by the human, not God. As humanism swept through Europe in the 15th century, individuals started to focus more on personal versus prescribed destiny. Instead of one singular divine path, it was understood that nature would reveal its scripture to all in their own time. All that is divine is also human. This reawakened many people’s interests in the stories of the Bible -- but from a much different point of view than had been previously explored in their lifetime. 

No one embodied this ideal more than Leonardo da Vinci, father of the Italian Renaissance and the quintessential humanist. Da Vinci sought to breathe true life into subjects like the Virgin Mary and her relationship with her son with pieces like The Virgin of the Rocks (1483). Made during his time in Milan, the painting depicts Mary and Child Christ, or the Holy Family, as they meet infant Saint John the Baptist fleeing to Egypt, with an angel flanking their right. Da Vinci’s style in this piece perfectly embodies his ushering in of High Renaissance style for all of Europe, and for all of time to come. With his famous technique, “sfumato,” he is able to achieve life-like contours of the bodies and faces, softening and bringing to life what once looked flat and one-dimensional.

The Virgin of the Rocks, Leonardo da Vinci, 1483

Shadows fall on all four figures; we are no longer in an other-worldly realm: one where baby Jesus can be as big as his mother, where the foreground and the background are indistinguishable, where gold fills the composition space, leaving no room for the contemplation of these figures’ anatomy or surroundings as humans. Mary does not sit and allow her son to then be propped up by her; instead, she stands above the boys as any mother would, imparting guardianship and care unto them. This is the pivot for her humanization. Da Vinci bravely ventures to assert that though Christ was from birth a prophet, he was also a human boy who required the human care of his mother. She is elevated here from the role of mere vehicle to that of a worthy shepherd, a conclusively necessary part of Jesus's growth and safety.

Da Vinci renders the Virgin as she may have looked: twisted naturally in her pose, shrouded in worldly darkness and an obviously realistic background, caught in the action of holding her baby boy and guarding John, all four of the figures convincingly and naturally interacting with each other. In her face, several emotions are present simultaneously: worry for John, the instinct of protection towards both the boys, the cautious urging of Jesus, her obvious lightness and innocence — all existing under the umbrella of intense care and love displayed for her son. Here, she is seen as not just a vehicle for values, but something revolutionary: a real, human mother. A woman. 

The figures, although more organically this time, are still arranged in a pyramid, signaling hierarchy -- only this time, Mary sits decidely at the top; she looks more like the arbiter of the story than a prop in it. She protects John and blesses her son in the same breath with an expression of knowingness. Da Vinci is not shy in positing that this hierarchy formed by the church does not hold any precedence over the natural hierarchy, where, no matter what, a child always looks to his mother. Further, we again see the child Christ's two-finger point. Though he no longer sits on his mother's lap, he still points in her direction -- but this time, not decisively. Where his expression underscores worry or fear, her's is unwavering. Her human, motherly love, her maturity over her infant son, her son's tender deference to her -- this was minutely and covertly radical for women's holistic rendering.

Da Vinci’s willingness to push the boundaries for the representation of biblical women is evident in further works like the cartoon The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist (1499) and its later painted rendition,The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (1510). Their complex depiction of mother and child further pushed the question of who was considered subject matter worth rendering. Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin, is taken out of her traditional context as an accessory to the story and put in the forefront — specifically for the purpose of evoking human emotion and lived experience in the viewer. Compared to Bodone's attempt to make the onlooker feel small compared to the biblical figures, da Vinci attempts to forge relatability between viewer and divine subject.

In his study for the eventual finished piece, Anne and Mary sit together cradling the baby Jesus, him sitting between his mother and grandmother, sharing Mary and Anne as a throne. This perhaps is a play on the classic Maesta like that of di Bodone's, signaling that the deliverance of this prophet was dependent on generations of women performing labor that has been seen as ordinary, and anything but divine. As the infant Jesus does in di Bondone's Maesta, he signals with two fingers to his side, making a decisive gesture. This time, though, he not only points to Anne, his grandmother, Anne herself points assuredly upwards -- motioning to God. This signal of the prophet's, representing power and inspiration, is mimicked by the matriarch of the painting, with more structure and angularity, more experience, than the child prophet's motion. Da Vinci plays with traditional visual hierarchy by Anne's elongation of Christ's gesture, expressing that his existence is predicated upon and made possible by the women who led the way for the young boy: his mother, and her mother before. Though the women may be seen as a bridge between God and his son, Da Vinci asserts that this role is not diminutive, but rather divine. He celebrates the deliverance through what all children consider divine: their mother's love.

This is especially potent in the later painting, where Mary, Anne, and Jesus sit together sans John. Mary sits on her mother’s lap as she looks after her new baby, making a clearer visual hierarchy than Jesus upon the seat of collective feminine power as drawn in the sketch. Now, Anne holds Mary like a mother would their small daughter, underscoring the tenderness and delicacy of this scene, making it human, further emphasizing the wonder and anxiety she and her mother may have felt after assuming this strange new reality. Mary is a young girl, a teen, perhaps daunted in the task of raising her baby. Anne protects them both as matriarch, still seeing Mary as her baby. In the revised version, above all, the viewer is meant to witness the love between not just Mary and Jesus, but Anne and Mary. Da Vinci makes it clear that their story is worth rendering, too. While they are still characters, still with moral and mythical associations, he separates them from their allegory. Here, they are able to breathe freely as women, enjoying a sacred, beautiful, and Earthly moment -- a love so palpable that the viewer can feel it as if it’s their own. 

Raffaello

These studies of the Holy Family done by da Vinci undoubtedly influenced and inspired Raffaello Sanzio, master of the Renaissance period. The twisted human positions, complex interaction of figures, and multi-dimensional facial expressions had captured the imaginations of painters to come. The emotional interest introduced and championed by da Vinci became not a stylistic choice, but rather an implicit facet of art -- reality (physical and meta-emotional) should be captured at all costs. We see da Vinci’s influence acutely in Raffaello’s Madonna of the Goldfinch (1506). While lighter and airier of a composition than The Virgin of the Rocks, the emotion in this painting shows an elaboration on the emotional complexity awarded to Mary by da Vinci, as well as the adoption of his “sfumato” technique. Mary looks down at the interaction between Christ and John with care and love, scripture in her left hand. They are outside, in a nondescript field, a “mundane” and ordinary background. Christ, standing contrapposto, leans over to touch the delicate goldfinch in John’s hands.

Madonna of the Goldfinch, Raffaello Sanzio, 1506

In this piece, Mary departs from her usual depiction. While Da Vinci elevated her from a vessel to a deliverer, Raffaello asserts her role as writer and conveyer of the divine story she is a part of. She looks as though she is caught in the moment of relaying to the boys whatever is in her book; the symbol is taken to mean scripture. However, the scripture that we relay had not yet been written. It is clear, then, that Rafaello means to express Mary's integral role in Christ's eventual teachings, and that the goodness he preached was relayed in one way or another to him by his mother. As in Da Vinci's earlier mentioned pieces, Mary is in a role of not only shephard, but now teacher -- rabbi. She is clearly at the head of the pyramid in this composition. Her face, filled with love, also has a twinge of responsibility to it. The fate of these boys is in her hands, and she is aware of it. Relief hits her eyes when she sees that the goodness she preaches to them is being manifested through Earthly actions, such as the embrace of a small goldfinch.

Mary, in this moment, seems not to revere the two boys’ holiness (for, as a young mother and mentor, she sees their holiness as a reflection of her own) but instead the tenderness of this childlike act. Her face emanates earnest pride and love for both boys. She lovingly caresses John for acting so sweetly to gently share the bird for Christ to touch. Christ, leaning on her mother’s knee, rests his foot on Mary’s, in a humane and universal act demonstrating the sacred mother-child bond. While we are looking at a scene meant to be set in a far-off land and time, this image feels universal, transcendent. But what makes it so is not Mary’s mythically-associated inaccessibility -- rather her relatability. This is a scene every woman and child, every human, can place themselves in, perhaps simultaneously, for perpetuity. The pieces by Da Vinci, and in turn, Rafaello represent emotional innovations that opened doors for women, albeit mythological or allegorical women, to be rendered thoughtfully and humanely. 

Titian

The exploration of the humanity and multi-dimensionality of these biblical figures gave way to a desire to render women more and more — and not just the ones of impeccable morality. While Mary and Anne had no historical or theoretical foundation to be depicted in any other way than fair, gentle, kind, and holy (despite their radical humanization), artists began to take interest in women that possessed directly contrasting inner multitudes. Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) was the catalyst for the direct severance of allegory and female body. While rendering his own version of Venus, an allegorical goddess of love usually depicted naked, Titian makes it clear that this woman, while posed like Venus, is beautiful like Venus, is very much human.

Venus of Urbino, Titian, 1538

She rests on her bed, seducing the viewer with direct eye contact -- her room and decoration are era-appropriate. A dog, a symbol of fidelity, lies sleeping -- signaling the secret nature of Venus's meeting with whoever stares back at her. By bringing Venus into the modern world, Titian is able to challenge conceptions associated with the nude female body and its morality. He makes it clear that, though the setting is not classically antique, this is the same form we revere and consume when in allegorical form. In contrast the Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, where the female embodiment of love floats on water resting in a giant seashell, with no distinguishable facial expression, Titian’s Venus looks disarmingly lustful and seductive, humanly so, while also embodying the traditional delicacy associated with Venus.

Almost more radically, though, this Venus has visible servants. The two women in the background lug heavy brocaded fabrics and rifle through chests, ostensibly for their employer, who rests on her bed, waiting for a male caller. Though we cannot see their faces clearly, the standing servant's profile is almost as arresting as Venus's gaze. In critics' eyes, this is a nameless woman of no consequence -- why waste the paint? If the subject is this woman, why is it important that we look upon her servants?

Titian was determined to not only express a multitude of feminine experience in one Earthly body, but also remind audiences of the cost of sumptuous beauty. The forms and women we revere in paintings such as Birth of Venus are not real; their ethereal radiance and beauty is not something that need be questioned or maintained. This is not the case for Earthly women, however. Titian asserts that a woman as beautiful and rich as Venus translated into worldly terms would surely have and require hoardes of maidservants; curated beauty is no accident. By shedding light on this concept not only from an artistic lens but also a class-oriented one, Titian makes it clear that the only difference between Venus and her servant is her means.

And perhaps this is integral to Titian's modern interpretation of Venus: a woman, a goddess, if placed on Earth, could only wield her power through money. Would a goddess born poor be lauded as a goddess in modern times? This piece makes it clear that, in the 16th century, we are moving away from the times of myth and abstract power, and towards reality and reason. His Venus forces the viewer to stare at her as if they were the one who decided to view her this way. She challenges the gaze put on allegorical women; she humiliates the man who dares sneak a peak at her.

The viewer is forced to imagine not just female sensuality, but the power associated with it in the modern world. We are no longer voyeurs looking at a scene of nymphs through forrest trees -- instead we view a woman and her household through velvet curtains. It is not only this modern depiction of Venus, but her and her maids' characterization as well that challenges paradigms in the art world about which women are worth rendering. As we see here, Titian takes cues from his predecessors by thoughtfully showing a multitude of emotion in one moment. He takes it further by letting there exist not just simultaneous emotion, but also contradictions.  

Caravaggio

Titian’s dismantling of these ideas was essential for the work to come. Without the foundation that a woman, mythical or ordinary, is a worthy subject in and of herself, and therein the celebration of the human and mundane, an artist like Caravaggio would not have been able to achieve such heights. Humanity becomes integral to understanding the mythological. In his work, Baroque artist Caravaggio builds on the humanization of da Vinci and Raffaello, as well as the moral multitudes explored by Titian. While it is clear that his work is of direct influence from these artists, there is still an absolutely revolutionary ability in his work to visualize these scenes as they actually would have taken place. Caravaggio presents biblical scenes, to the distaste of many of his contemporaries, as shockingly mundane. Though Titian gave us a very intimate and realistic view into the private world of a woman, this is seen as palatable due to her obvious wealth and status as depicted. The richness of the subject and her surroundings softens the shock of her humanity; nobility was truly seen by society as being closer to God. But Caravaggio pushes the boundaries even further.

Martha and Mary Magdalene, Caravaggio, 1598

His piece, Martha and Mary Magdalene (1598) places us in an almost uncomfortably intimate position, as we watch important biblical figures, sisters, Martha and Mary Magdalene take part in passionate discussion. Martha, looking radically ordinary, feverishly tries to convince the more sumptuous and vainer Mary to listen to the word of Christ. Martha in mid-action, counting on her fingers the countless miracles that Jesus had performed, her face shrouded in shadow but her hands in light, pleads with Mary to hear her. Mary listens, actively, but looks doubtful, or perhaps even aloof to her sister’s words. While interested, she is rendered as psychologically distant, her vanity represented by the mirror obscuring her in her left hand. Yet, despite her reaction, Mary is bathed in sun, the natural light revealing the truth of her expression as well as representing her eventual journey as Christ’s bride. Caravaggio, using his “chiaroscuro” technique, is able to use ordinary light as divine, casting shadows and illuminating the important emotional elements of his composition. Here, we see a fully formed woman: an individual, with autonomy, making a decision, not defined by any one trait but rather the cohabitants of her simultaneous virtue and sin. Caravaggio’s choice to render Mary Magdalene as opposed to the Virgin Mary shows a shifting in societal beliefs about the validity of different women as worthy subjects. 

Velazquez

After Caravaggio’s brilliant restructuring of the value of a subject, especially a female subject, artists opened the floodgates in terms of their visualization. Velazquez, fellow Baroque painter, depicted the same scene as Caravaggio 20 years later, but in a much different way, taking Caravaggio’s principles even further. In Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1618), whether seen through a mirror or a window, we see Mary at the feet of Jesus, with Martha behind her. Velazquez in this piece flips scripture on its head, and, instead of painting the abundance of story, he paints the lack.

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Velazquez, 1618

We see Jesus, seated, in the background. Mary kneels to listen to him speak, ignoring Martha’s direction to help with the food they prepared for Christ’s visit. Christ says that Mary has made the right choice, implying Martha is silly to worry about such frivolities -- implying that they will not eat. While this is seen overtly as a noble and gracious act, Velazquez deigns to pose the frightening question: isn't that a bit rude to the host?

While the classic scene plays out in a small frame, the important faces are the ones in the foreground, taking up two-thirds of the composition: the maids in the kitchen, who actually did the preparation, frustrated that their labor will not be put to use. Surrounded by fish, eggs, and other food items, the two maids, listening to what is happening in the other room, are not pleased that their plight has gone to waste. While Caravaggio humanized the women that were seen as the subjects of the story, Velazquez poignantly and almost humorously illuminates a female identity yet to be explored thoroughly as a subject in stories — that of the servant. We might draw comparisons to Titian’s inclusion of Venus’s two maids, but something here shifts the power balance even further. In Titian's piece, the women existed, yes, but mostly as a way to prove a point -- he makes them just barely visible, commenting on the lack of attention we give these subjects in the face of noble ones. But, to Velazquez, the maids' perspectives matter, their experiences took place just as Mary Magdalene's had. Here, the life of the lower-status woman is seen as just as, if not more, important than that of the one she serves. This epic scene is reduced, masterfully, down to the most human and domestic elements, making it relatable for the first time to all viewers, all women. 

Fragonard

Caravaggio and Velazquez’s deep search into the divinity of the ordinary and exploration of unconventional subjects alarmed many, especially those who found the overt humanization of Biblical and allegorical subjects as crude and immoral. Further, art had become a solidly capitalist venture. We see the beginnings of it in Titian's Venus of Urbino, and again in Velaquez's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary -- class was at the forefront of the culture, and it was becoming inextricably intertwined with artistic expression and interpretation. The lives of lower-class individuals were becoming alluring to audiences because of the truths being expressed; this is a major contrast to 600 years prior, where visual art existed only to bolster hegemony. Art was now being disseminated that challenged the status-quo. Within the 18th century, the freedom for artists to paint daringly for a patron and display their work widely was now being tightly controlled by benefactors who had political aims. Artists who wished to be known had to adhere to stricter conceptual guidelines, or they would not be paid. This is a far cry from the days of the Rennaissance, where even the Catholic chruch gave artists like Da Vinci and Michaelangelo freedom to impart personal meanings and readings onto their work.

Fearful of the power that humanist depictions could inspire among the working class, the ruling class became heavily involved in the conceptual salability of art. Instead of scenes that showed the divine as human, sometimes poor, the art in France during the late Baroque period, also known as Rococo, focused on passing off wealthy human as divine. It, like the art of Medieval Italy, again focuses on social hierarchy. It does not, however, shy away from female subjects. Indeed, Rococo art relies heavily on depictions of women -- but rather as creatures of leisure, vacancy and beauty than of intellectual multitudes. The Rococo movement in France especially characterized this, with artists like Jean-Honore Fragonard becoming the emblem of the style. His piece, The Stolen Kiss  (1787), represents a swing in the attitudes towards women as subjects.

The Stolen Kiss, Jean-Honore Fragonard, 1786

The woman depicted, obviously pulling away, with an alarmed and worried expression, is uncomfortably accepting a kiss from a man in secret. While Fragonard highlights the obvious surprise or even distress on the woman’s face, this is a symbolic subjugation of women as worthy intellectual subjects of the time; they are once again being reduced, possessed, presented for consumption, in the most delicious, sumptuous, and attractive way possible. While she is not an allegory, she is nameless, without identity or agency, existing merely to celebrate the spoils of wealth and freedom that can be enjoyed only by a man. Her existence is rendered as a tool, an idea. While not religious, this reduction of women’s identities is similar to the artistic conditions created by the Church. This particular shift sets the multi-dimensional depiction of women back solidly, as now their existence, their feminine fickleness and freedom, has been likened to the cruel and careless ways of aristocracy.

Delacroix 

The reaction against this exaltation of wealth was swift, as social conditions were changing. Rococo art died with the French Revolution; the scenes depicted by people like Fragonard or Watteau were exactly what the revolutionaries sought to destroy — and in a way, they did. For all of its frivolous beauty and “silly” feminine depictions, Rococo art showed women being free to enjoy, to exist, in ways that they hadn’t before. Though wrapped up in class issues, the liberty that ladies possessed in their renderings was at an all-time high. This is a convention that died by the hands of the revolutions taking place in the early 1800’s. Neoclassicism and eventually Romanticism, characterized by a focus on intellectuality and sense as opposed to pleasure, was now the movement dominating the hearts of European artists. This return to intellectuality, as it always is, was rooted in the return to the Greco-Roman classics. The use of allegory for depiction of women became once again popular. Nowhere is this idea better embodied than in Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830).

Liberty Leading the People, Eugene Delacroix, 1830

While the subject matter is very modern and radical, showing ordinary people’s triumph over an oppressive government, their victory is represented by a bare-breasted woman personifying Liberty herself. She is in classically antique dress, her form looking Michelangelesque. She is the only woman in the composition, and she is an idea, not a real woman. This return to early-Renaissance values, this watering down of the feminine identity to represent with her body one thing only, shows a stark shift in the progress being made towards women as human subjects. One could see this as recessive.

However, what she represents is novel; she herself is freedom, liberty, guided not only by rationality but by intense emotion. There is a case to be made that this woman, though a symbol, is a subversion of the nameless women subjugated by ruling class art. This woman rips off her modern dress, returns to a time of goodness and reason, and, in doing so, refuses to assume to role that artists were making her play in their compositions (such as The Stolen Kiss). She inspires, yet leads. She teaches. She, in this pyramid made by Delacroix's composition, does not only sit at the top, but charges it -- the men below her following. As much of a symbol as Mary, she too is not passive anymore. Just as Mary directly inspires Jesus and John's goodness in Rafaello's Madonna and The Goldfinch, their goodness being the catalyst for worldwide change, Lady Liberty directly inspires these men's morality and the world's change the same.

The return to allegory is tricky and slippery, but we see that its use here is different than it had been in the past; grown men look to a woman. This figure has been rendered not because she is mythical, but because she is real -- not in the sense of real that we have seen before. Lady Liberty here did not live and die as we do, but she singularly represents the multitudes of not just a woman, but a country. She represents something real, something burning through the hearts of every subjugated Frenchman -- not a moral or an unchanging virtue expressed in perpetuity (think of the nine muses), she represents the feelings of the people, men and women, as they existed in that moment. A woman at the head of the revolution, with men looking to her paves the way for truly representative and democratic art that expresses real truths -- real the we see, as well as that we feel.

Manet

There is no one who ushers in this modern truth better than Edouard Manet. Taking the emotional and rational interconnection of Romanticism and combining it with Baroque exploration of identity, Manet revolutionized the concept of a subject, and what is worth rendering. His 1882 piece, A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, shocked critics with its tackling of such a mundane subject in such a careful way. Manet, known for pieces like Olympia and The Railway, skillfully and tenderly depict women of different social statuses and calibers, always capturing the multitudes they possess.

A Bar at Follies-Bergere Edouard Manet, 1882

The woman in this painting, attractive and young, stands behind a bar. She is a waitress. Behind her reflects a mirror, and a man is revealed as standing near the viewer. Perhaps this is a nod to Velazquez and his revolutionary use of mirrors, especially in Jesus at the home of Martha and Mary. As the man talks passionately, looking to her for answers and a drink, the woman looks away longingly, tired, checked out. Wide and fluffy brush strokes make up the background, the crowd blurred, but the woman and all that surrounds her rendered in stunning realism. She is important. She is worth witnessing. This is a woman, a whole individual, with a life -- preferences, likes, dislikes, dispositions, varying in the same way you or I might. She is choosing to ignore the man we see in the mirror. She is not a queen, not a virgin, not a patroness, nor a woman of great means -- yet she is worth rendering, authentically. This is a feat of art, and a feat for women as subjects. The woman is no longer just an allegory or a symbol. She has an inner life, artfully and realistically depicted through just a look.

Manet also comments on what it means to be seen in this way, in the modern world. Where the women subjects in the paintings earlier all visually assume some sort of responsiblity for the hierarchy they find themselves a part of: Mary sitting proudly above her son, Venus smiling at the forefront with her maids to the rear, Lady Liberty fearlessly leading the charge of a nation. Images, over the course of the millenium we have combed through, went from being sparse and rare to more and more saturating. Ordinary women were now subjects -- and the camera made that a reality. In 19th century art, we start to feel an uneasiness from all subjects, not just women. They no longer understand the world they are in, or their place in it as a subject -- why they are being asked for things, focused on, looked at. The woman in this painting forms her own triangular hierarchy, yet it is obscured by the man looking to her in the mirror, revealing an unchanging world beyond this woman's inner life. Perhaps Manet is saying that these multitudes no longer matter in the face of an industrialized, individualist and capitalist society. Perhaps there is no responsibility that can be taken for your place in a foreign hierarchy you do not understand.

Picasso

By the time we emerged into the 20th century, this idea permeated art. People felt increasingly alone, alienated by an industrialized world that they had never been promised nor wished for. Observations and feelings no longer mirrored reality -- the chasm between the individual and the community had become too large to traverse. In the art world, because of the artistic mastery of physical reality as well as emotional realism by artists like Manet, in conjunction with the development of the camera, depicting accurate reality became less of a priority; now, the only priority of art is to capture, fervently, the emotion of the artist and their subject.

Artists like Cezanne, Matisse, Kirchner, and Picasso became the leader's emotional expression, focusing much on the evocative power of an image to render a person’s own individual reality. In a piece like Femme au cafe (Absinthe Drinker) (1901) by Picasso, the shifting and uncomfortable emotional realities of the modern world are rendered in the physical. The woman in the forefront, while her expression is so complex and poignant, is completely out of correct anatomical proportion; her arms seem to wrap around herself, as if we can watch the hallucinogenic properties that she feels take place as a viewer. She sinks deeper and deeper into herself, consumed by blue.

Femme au Cafe (Absinthe), Pablo Picasso, 1901

If this woman contains multitudes, then the modern world has silenced them -- her morality doesn't matter, nor her identity -- not to the viewer, but to the world. We see through 20th century art subjects isolated by society, their wills numbed and senses dulled in order to blow off steam from the speed and demand of an industrialized culture. Her autonomy is in use; Picasso makes it clear that we have never had more autonomy than in this moment. But, what use is autonomy in a world that has stripped you of your multi-dimensionality? Well, Picasso states that this is the use, and will be for the rest of modern times. We have the freedom to dull harsh realities, but no freedom to escape them. The world is now abstract -- irregular, unnatural, dark, lonely. It does not matter how reality is viewed; this is how it feels, man or woman.

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The loss of the classic allegorical and Biblical woman in art, though it assisted in women's social gains, removed much of the illusion imbued into our culture. We are left with radically honest pieces depicting lived experiences for women -- and the picture is not always pleasant. I am left wrestling with this outcome. Do I truly wish for the truth, or do I wish for beauty? Have we lost hierarchy for good and replaced it with autonomy? Have we lost reality in search of being known? Have we lost beauty in search of truth? Or have we rendered something different altogether?

Though the women in Manet and Picasso's pieces express autonomy, their namelessness still in the face of this autonomy gives way to new questions: in characterizing these women and refusing to name them do we rob them of their power? Or is namelessness in a world of increased recordation the truest form of power available? In changing social climates, is it more powerful to be named once, or not at all? Is connecting a woman's name to a male artist's rendered concept simply reducing them to their depiction? But, is that not what all subjects are? Are all women allegories?

I can say for certain that for all the changing tides, Picasso's abstracted Absinthe-drinker is most definitely one, just as much as Venus, just as much as the Virgin. She has been rendered to prove a posited truth, an expression of reality at the hands of a man. Yet, she exists on her own plane alone, no triangular adherence, untethered to form or history, with an unwillingness on her part as a woman and a subject to perform for her viewers. Perhaps we did not destroy allegorical subjugation -- perhaps, rather, we destroyed the hierarchy.

This destruction was not swift, as we saw, and not always noticed until hundreds of years later; the Friars who commissioned Madonna of the Rocks certainly did not view Mary's physicality as revolutionary, nor Christ's fingers as paganistic. Most likely, however, they revered it for unknown reasons -- an intangible feeling of being seen and known by art, instead of reprimanded by it sterily. His work, and work like it, express something new -- a reaction to a lack in culture, not the abundance. Though it is easy to feel that mysticism and multi-dimensional truths have been lost in representative visual culture, perhaps we must look to the lack rather than the abundance. Perhaps the gap and discomfort we feel from the loss of visual hierarchy, the loss of rules in art, can inspire something radical -- something, to us now, intangible.