There was a time when if a woman was seen picking up a paint brush to pursue art, she would be seen as out of the ordinary by society, and even sometimes punished for doing a "man's" job. In the book,
Women, Art, and Society by Whitney Chadwick, the author paints a vivid image of the mistreatments women artists are faced with throughout history. From the middle ages to the nineteenth century, Chadwick explains in his chapters that women artists are always facing tremendous obstacles, fighting their way against the gender roles of the time period. It is very rare and very hard for a woman to pursue art in these time periods, but despite all that, some artists are able to carve their name into history and build the road for future generations of women to walk on. Through the middle ages and into the nineteenth century, women’s roles illustrated the revolution of how society viewed them and how women artists struggled to try to fit in a world where art is controlled by a male dominated system.
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Domenico Ghirlandaio, Giovanna
Tornabuoni neé Albizzi, 1488.
A depiction of the two dimensional
style of portraits during the
Renaissance and the colorful
imagery to convey the wealth of
subjects as mentioned below.
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During the middle ages, women living at that time were viewed as mere insignificant beings with the sole purpose of being objectified by men. Unless women were born in a noble class or women entered the clergy service as nuns, almost all women in the middle ages were illiterate. In fact, mostly everyone at that time was illiterate due to the fact that the printing press wasn’t invented yet, and books were only afforded by the wealthy. As a result, people found no purpose in learning to read or write. If women thought about defying the gender roles at the time, they were not only looked down upon by society, they were punished, because “for most of history, women have, by law, been considered the property of their fathers, husbands, or brothers, who almost always believed women were put on earth to serve them and bear children” (Chadwick 8). Clearly, women were depicted, by the government and the catholic church, as negligible, serving as pets to serve men’s needs. With the turn of the fifteenth century, the Renaissance was a time period when new innovative art techniques and methods were introduced. Although women, during the Renaissance, were still inferior to men, more and more women were educated. However, women weren’t allowed to be in public unless they are accompanied by a man, and on top of that, women were expected to be private, and hide their emotions from society. Furthermore, during this time period, society had more leeway towards women artists where “painting became one of a growing list of activities in which women had intuitive, but not learned, knowledge and to whose laws they remained outsiders” (Chadwick 74). Men dominated over women and prevented them from learning all the techniques that were taught to male artists, and in addition, it was almost impossible for a woman to become a successful artist unless her father was a painter. Moreover, Women weren’t as oppressed as in the middle ages when they pursued art, but they were highly restricted in pay and what they can and can’t draw. For example, women were not under any circumstances allowed to become sculptors or even paint male nudes. When nineteenth century struck, “wider opportunities for exhibiting accompanied expanded art education for women…” (Chadwick 178), but they were still viewed as the less dominant species compared to male artists. However, employment and legal rights toward women were common at that time where a middle class woman could get an education as a governess and support herself. Women had to follow a strict life cycle where they would mature to a certain age, get married, and have children. Women who stepped out of this cycle or women who did not get married before a certain age were looked on by society as trash to be thrown out.
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Sofonisba Anguissola, Portrait of Queen
Anne of Austria, 1570.The artist is conveying
the queen in a humble fashion by the
dark background and neutral clothing. |
Despite the constant dehumanization women went through in times where men were the dominant figures of the time, some women were able to fight the oppression and break barriers for the next generation of women. During the late middle ages, Christine de Pisan was the first woman to make a living as a writer, and not be part of a celery. In the text, Cité des Dames (1405), Pisan wrote about a fictional city where women lived independently and took all the positions of men in society. The Cité des Dames is arguably “the first ‘feminist’ text of the French canon for its courageous defense of women in the face of centuries of misogynist writings” (Chadwick 36). As an outspoken and a highly political person, she set an example as one of the first feminist women to fight for the inequality of her sex. At a time when women were viewed as a
nuisance, it was rare for a woman to make money as a writer let alone be as rebellious as Pisan was to the gender roles of the middle ages. Besides Pisan, during the renaissance, Sofonisba Anguissola “opened up the possibility of painting to women as a socially acceptable profession…” (Chadwick 77). During this period, portraits were mostly painted by male artists and depicted subjects in a flat manner as in Domenico Ghirlandaio’s painting, Giovanna Tornabuoni neé Albizzi (1488). In this portrait, Ghirlandaio conveyed a woman from a side view where the painting looks flat and two dimensional. In addition, the women is shown wearing multiple colors and jewelry to demonstrate her wealth at the time. In contrast, Anguissola’s portraits took the regular portrait at the time and took it a step further by painting her subjects turned 3/4 to give the painting a three dimensional look. As a result of Anguissola’s undeniable talent, she was sent to spain where she served as a court painter and a lady in waiting for the queen. Because of the restrictive role the government put on her, Anguissola spent most of her time painting portraits of
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As mentioned in the text, Emily Mary Osborn,
Namless and Friendless, 1857, painting
the struggle of a single woman artist in the nineteenth century. |
royal subjects such as the portrait of Queen Anne of Austria (1570), depicting the queen in a humble fashion to win the support of her people. Although, Anguissola’s work was highly recognized at time, all the money she made from painting went straight to her father, because she was a woman. This highly exemplified how gender roles of the Renaissance influenced women artists such as Anguissola as compared to male artists. Moving away from the Renaissance, and entering the nineteenth century, women artists were under a lot of pressure by society to follow the patriarchal norms of getting married and having a family. Artists like Rebecca Solomon and Emily Mary Osborn depicted the gender roles of women through their paintings to illustrate the issues and hardships middle class women had to go through. In the painting by Osborn, Nameless and Friendless (1857), the artist conveyed the “...isolation and hopelessness of the single woman in patriarchal society” (Chadwick 188). Osborn was able to fight back against the norms of society by painting what it is like for a woman artist, especially a single woman to sell her work or make a living in a world where the man was viewed as the only person capable of such a thing. One major similarity between all the women artists living from the middle ages through the nineteenth century is how each woman artist puts the power and emotion back in the women depicted in their art work rather than painting women as sexual objects or weaklings.
Looking back at the timeline that Chadwick draws to the reader, it’s clear how women artists living in the middle ages, Renaissance, and nineteenth century had to struggle to let their voices be heard in a patriarchal society. Although, in today’s society women artists are not under the same torment as women artists who were living in the past, they still face discrimination in the art world today. Clearly, some of the
inequality that women had to go through in the past radiates to today’s generation of women artists who still face the same inequality such as not being acknowledged for their works and not winning as much awards as male artists. Looking at how women artists are mistreated in the past shows how far society has come and how far society still has to go for the equality of women in the art world. Reading Chadwick’s views on women artists throughout history give a parallel between the gender roles of women artists in the past and the women artists today.
--Peter Shafeek
Works Cited:
- Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. Langara College, 2016.
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