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.
Italy pre-renaissance, being the center of Catholicism, was filled with flat, anatomically incorrect, emotionless portraits 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 — signaling a visual hierarchy of power. The mother and woman look small even compared to her baby son. She acts as a throne for her son, and is seen as the means of his arrival, the deliverer of divinity. In almost all compositions, she reveres him — both of them looking rather somber and physically strange, inhuman. Their figures are stiff and separate. Yet, they are bathed in gold leaf. 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. The roles are plainly spelled out: the 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. Her son, although he is her creation, is revered -- not her, the creator. 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 God, a man, a less religiously educated viewer could indeed infer that she is the object of worship in this painting, and not her son. This visual exaltation and therein societal power of Mary is only weakened in this painting through misogynistic principles of Catholicism. 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.
And, 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. But many born into this climate of intellectual shadow yearned for the return of a society that prioritized human discovery and innovation, a world that was determined by man, 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 perhaps 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, 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. 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 as humans. No — here, 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.
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 rendition The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (1510). Their complex depiction of mother and child opened doors for whom 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 experience. This is especially potent in the later painting, where the three of them sit together sans John. Mary sits on her mother’s lap as she looks after her new baby. Anne holds Mary like a mother would their small daughter, underscoring the tenderness and delicacy of this scene, further emphasizing the wonder and anxiety of the reality they have assumed with their gift of Christ. Mary is a young girl, perhaps daunted in the task of raising her baby. Anne protects them both as matriarch, still seeing Mary as her baby. 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 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 as if it’s their own.
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 a technical 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. Mary, in this moment, seems to revere not the two boys’ holiness, but instead the tenderness of this childlike act. Her face emanates pride and love for both boys, but especially her son. 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 associated inaccessibility, but rather her relatability. This is a scene every woman and child, every human, can place themselves in, perhaps simultaneously, for perpetuity. These three works specifically are emotional innovations that opened doors for women, albeit mythological or allegorical women, to be rendered thoughtfully and humanely.
This exploration of the humanity and multi-dimensionality of these 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 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. She rests on her bed, seducing the viewer with direct eye contact — her room and decoration are era-appropriate. By bringing Venus into the modern world, Titian is able to challenge conceptions associated with the nude female body. He makes it clear that, though 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. It is an intimate moment between her and whoever is looking at her, presumably her lover, giving her agency despite her perceived physical vulnerability. The viewer is forced to imagine not just female sensuality, but the power associated with it. It is not only this modern depiction of Venus, but her 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 taking place in one female body, instead of each emotion or virtue being doled out to one, allegorical, inhuman nymph-like being.
Titian’s dismantling of these ideas was essential for the work to come. Without the foundation that a woman 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. 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 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.
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. 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. 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 work 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. Their perspectives matter, they took place. The experience 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.
Caravaggio and Velazquez’s deep search into the divinity of the ordinary and exploration of unconventional subjects alarmed many, especially those who sought to still exalt art as it relates to status. Baroque art and its contrasting illumination of life that was not picturesque caused many artists to react with opposite depictions. Rococo art, also known as late Baroque, focused much on depicting women, but rather as creatures of leisure 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 woman depicted, obviously pulling away, with an alarmed and worried expression, is being forced to accept 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 only to celebrate the spoils of wealth and freedom. Her existence is rendered as a tool, an idea. While not religious, this reduction of women’s identities is similar to the artistic conditions 400 years earlier 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.
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). 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. 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. However, what she represents is novel; she herself is freedom, liberty, guided not only by rationality but by intense emotion. Despite the symbolization of the woman’s body, because of the importance placed on complex emotions in the Romantic period, we can see that the past 300 years and its ebb and flow have amounted to something monumental — the beginning of candid and intimate, true art that will eventually include real human people, real women.
There is no one who ushers in this modern sensibility 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. 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, 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. It is this attention to human emotion that makes Manet superb in this respect and is what truly liberates women as the participants of art, not just the subject of it.
And, as we traverse towards modernity as we know it, the 20th century, because of the mastery of physical as well as emotional realism by artists like Manet, as well as 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. 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. This piece, as well as many others, are the beginnings of what we know as art today: interpretative, conceptual, and emblematic.
For all of the different directions taken in the history of art and its depiction of the female subject, when presented, it is clear that the gains of one artist could not be made without the feats of another. While compared to Manet’s depiction of a woman, Titian’s feels perhaps surface level, we must know that without Titian’s daring we would never have the exemplary individuality afforded to women by Manet or Picasso; we would not have the brilliant and brave contemporary art inspired by both of them, either. The progress of one piece or artist may seem mundane, minute — but if this retrospective demonstrates anything, it is that the capturing of the mundane, the minute, is what matters.
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