HIST 354: Amazons and Viragos: Gender and Power in Early Modern Europe (HC)

Ad la de Labille-Guiard (1749-1803), a remarkable portraitist, was among the small number of women ever granted membership in the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1654 or later) is the most celebrated woman artist of the baroque period. Often featuring heroic female subjects, her paintings were predominantly intended for private clients. Today they are recognized for their dramatic power and originality. This book includes essays, critical discussions, and personal letters to explore Artemisia's life and career.

The first full study of "birth figures" and their place in early modern knowledge-making. Birth figures are printed images of the pregnant womb, always shown in series, that depict the variety of ways in which a fetus can present for birth. Historian Rebecca Whiteley coined the term and here offers the first systematic analysis of the images' creation, use, and impact. Also available in print.

This volume accompanies the first exhibition to recreate Casanova's visual world, from his birthplace of Venice to the cultural capitals of Paris and London. Summoning up the people he met and the cities, salons and masked balls he frequented, it provides a survey of important works of eighteenth-century European art.

Under Francis I and later Jean Clouet and his son François produced remarkably individualized portraits of royal children. The rediscovery of two exceptional painted portraits of a daughter and a son of the sovereign adds to the fascinating story. Also covers the children of Henri II and Catherine de’ Medici.

This book studies female portraits made by Jean and François Clouet. They come mainly from Queen Catherine de Medici's collection. and are devoted to the most famous ladies of the court. They not only reflect the beauty of their models, but also their rank.

This is a catalog from a recent art exhibit at the Grand Trianon. The Versailles website describes the show in this way:
"In addition to rulers from Queen Maria-Theresa of Austria to Empress Eugénie of France, portraits of women in the royal or imperial family – mothers, sisters, daughters and granddaughters – are on display in the gallery. Beside them, you can see paintings of women whose lives were interwoven with power – princesses and royal favourites – and of lesser-known figures: ladies of the royal court and women in the service of queens and empresses. A procession of three centuries of women in French history streams past the eyes of visitors, who can observe changing tastes in fashion and portraiture in famous works by Gobert, Rigaud, Nattier, Gérard, Gros and Winterhalter."

This volume explores the life and legacy of Elisabetta Sirani, one of the most celebrated women artists of 17-century Italy, as a painter, printmaker, and teacher. Drawing on extensive primary sources, including Sirani's work diary, the author focuses on agency and professionalization of women's artistic practice.

Caroline of Ansbach (1683-1737), Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1719-1772), and Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Strelitz (1744-1818) were three German princesses who became Queens--or, in the case of Augusta, Queen in Waiting, Regent, and Princess Dowager--of Great Britain, and were linked by their early years at European princely courts, their curiosity, and investment in Enlightenment thought. This sumptuously illustrated book considers the ways these women left enduring marks on British culture. Objects included range from spectacular state portraits to pedagogical toys to plant and animal specimens, and reveal how the new intermingled with the traditional.

This comprehensive book brings to light the portraits, private collections and public patronage of the princesse de Lamballe, a pivotal member of Marie-Antoinette's inner circle. The book sheds new light on the agency, sorority and taste of Marie-Antoinette and her friends, a group of female patrons and model of courtly collecting that would be extinguished by the coming revolution.

Fragonard, perhaps the most significant French painter of the eighteenth century, was condemned first as a purveyor of luxury items and later as an artist who abandoned noble subjects for the erotic genre. In this revisionist, art-historical study, Mary D. Sheriff challenges such pejorative views of Fragonard by arguing that he is better understood as an artist whose unsurpassed technical skill and witty manipulation of academic standards established a dynamic relation with the audience his art both courted and created.

This website supports sustained, interdisciplinary consideration of the role Early Modern women played in the hands-on production of visual and material culture in the courts of Europe and Asia (c. 1400-1750).
This collection of studies, Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts of Europe (c. 1450-1700) (Amsterdam University Press, 2021) was edited by the website's co-founder. See the college icons above for the Tripod catalog book records.

Borin, Françoise. "Judging by Images."

Directing his pointed wit at the upper echelons of 18th-century British society, William Hogarth, a painter, printmaker, and social critic, mocked the politics and customs of his day. His series of satirical paintings and engravings, which still absorb viewers after nearly three centuries, record human vice and folly with a sharp eye and cutting intelligence. This compelling book, with an accompanying DVD narrated by Alan Bennett, examines Hogarth's best-known series of paintings,Marriage A-la-Mode, and unlocks many mysteries that have surrounded this gripping artistic commentary.

A richly illustrated literary anthology that explores the fantasies, seductions, and intrigues of the eighteenth-century French lover. This sumptuous volume presents more than eighty selections from eighteenth-century French literature, each concerning some facet of the game of love as practiced by the libertine, or the freethinking aristocratic hedonist, a type that flourished-not least in literature-in the declining years of the Ancien Regime. Each selection is illustrated by well-chosen period artworks, many rarely seen, by Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, and numerous others.

The life and career of Louise Moillon (1609/10-1696) offers a case study of a talented artist whose posthumous reputation was ignored. Offering a sweeping exploration of the genre of still life, this book also chronicles how a woman in early modern France was able to capture the attention of the artistic world while dissecting why her prominence waned in the centuries following her death.

In this important re-examination of early modern European art, an international team of scholars and curators assess the critical concepts that have shaped Western culture's understanding of what constitutes great art. The result is a dynamic introduction to scores of women artists whose names are entirely new and a long-overdue reassessment of the art, culture, and history of early modern Europe.

Mary of Hungary's extensive art patronage and collections she formed of artworks, objects and books were by no means an isolated phenomenon in the Habsburg dynasty. On the contrary, this Regent of the Netherlands and loyal adviser to her brother, Emperor Charles V, emulated the examples of Habsburg women who preceded her, and in turn provided an exemplar for those that came after.

Collectively, these essays by art historians and museum professionals argue for a more complex understanding of the relationship between objects and subjects in gendered terms. The objects under consideration include beds, guns, fans, needle paintings, prints, drawings, mantillas, almanacs, reticules, silver punch bowls, and collage. These material goods may have been intended to enforce and affirm gendered norms, however as the essays demonstrate, their use by subjects frequently put normative formations of gender into question, revealing the impossibility of permanently fixing gender.

In the early modern period, rulers demonstrated their power and influence through carefully curated "display"--their presence in court ceremonies, their palaces and their contents, and their portraits. Henrietta Maria of France (1609-1669), queen consort of King Charles I of England, embraced these opportunities for display with particular flair. This richly illustrated book follows Henrietta Maria to chart her patronage and engagement with the visual arts, building works, and the luxury trade. It develops a powerful picture not just of the images, fashions, interiors, and buildings shaped by the queen's directorial influence but also of the political and religious factors that governed her choices and policies of court display.

The Renaissance woman, whether privileged or of the artisan or the middle class, was trained in the expressive arts of needlework and painting, which were often given precedence over writing. Pens and Needles is the first book to examine all these forms as interrelated products of self-fashioning and communication.

Wonderfully engaging, this unique study shows how art reveals a misogynistic medical establishment's attitudes toward women. Dixon traces the origins of 'hysteria,' richly illustrating her analysis with more than 100 paintings from the 13th through the 18th centuries, focusing primarily on 17th-century Dutch works.-Publishers Weekly

Portraits of Queen Marie Leszczinska (1703-1768) were highly visible in eighteenth-century France. Her earliest portraits negotiated aspects of her ethnic difference, French gender norms, and royal rank to craft an image of an appropriate consort to the king. Later portraits by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Carle Van Loo, and Jean-Marc Nattier contributed to changing notions of queenship over the course of her 43 year tenure. Whether as royal wife, devout consort, or devoted mother, Marie Leszczinska's image mattered. It engages feminist theory while setting the queen's image in the context of portraiture in France, courtly factional conflict, and the history of the French monarchy.

This volume considers pictured and picturing women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy as the subjects, creators, patrons, and viewers of art. Women's experiences and needs (perceived by women themselves or defined by men on their behalf) are seen as important determinants in the production and consumption of visual culture. By using a variety of approaches the contributors demonstrate the importance of adopting an interdisciplinary approach when studying women in Italy from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries.

In this comprehensive interdisciplinary biography, James Winn tells the story of Anne's life in new breadth and detail, and in unprecedented cultural context. Demonstrating the extent to which Anne's patronage was informed by her practice, Winn shows how poets, painters, and musicians used the worksthey made for Anne to send overt and covert political messages to the queen, the court, the church, and Parliament. Richly illustrated with visual and musical examples, Winn draws on works by a wide array of artists, among them composer George Frideric Handel, poet Alexander Pope, painter Godfrey Kneller, and architect Christopher Wren, to shed new light on Anne's life and reign.

As queen consort and dowager in Sweden, Hedwig Eleonora (1636–1715) was a major patron of art and architecture. Her dynastic network among the Northern European courts was extensive. Despite her high profile, she experienced little of the animosity directed at many other foreign queens. The analysis of her circumstances adds a substantial dimension to the study of early modern queenship.

The rich collections of paintings and sculptures in the Louvre, Versailles, Fontainebleau are featured. The female artists were active from 1750 through 1848. Published to accompany a major exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, this beautifully illustrated book examines eighteenth-century French theories of sexual difference and their influence on the 'woman-artist question'; paradoxical Revolutionary attitudes toward women artists, who encountered as many new limitations as opportunities; and the complex ways that women marketed their reputations and managed their cultural positions in France's intricate social and artistic hierarchy.

This book, based on a major exhibit, challenges the popular assumption that Rubens only painted one type of woman. Instead it shows a range of proud and complex heroines, full of character and gravitas. Essays focus on topics such as the identities of Rubens' sitters, 17th century artistic theory and practice, and Rubens' treatment of the human body

This volume highlights the social, political, and cultural preconditions surrounding Anguissola's role in the court of King Philip II of Spain and her ascent to becoming an internationally acclaimed painter. Gamberini draws on archival documentation, as well as her own original research, to shine a new light on Anguissola's life, career, and work.

In this unusual and original study, Marcia Pointon examines the cultural effects and consequences of the participation by women in acts of representation in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She explores their lives and work, and a cultural environment in which images of female saints and goddesses established indices of femininity in the homes of wealthy men. Did the women portrayed also possess artifacts, and did they use the power of gifts and bequests to determine social relations? Did they themselves participate in the processes of creating images of the seen world? Pointon sets out to answer some of these questions through a series of novel and vividly recounted case studies of women such as Emma Hamilton (wife and mistress), Mary Moser, the artist, and Dorothy Richardson, the antiquarian.

Seduction and eroticism were central themes of 18th Century French art. This book draws from the collection of the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg to illustrate this theme.

Quinten Massys' An Old Woman ('The Ugly Duchess') is one of the Renaissance's most famous faces. In a fresh review of the iconic image, this book unveils the painting's original context: its status as a pioneering work of satirical art, its debt to Leonardo da Vinci's grotesque drawings, and what it tells us about the period's complex attitudes towards women, age and normative beauty.

Chapters address works by women who occupied a range of social and economic positions within and around the courts and across media, including paintings, sculpture, prints, and textiles. Both individually and collectively, the texts deepen understanding of the individual artists and courts highlighted and, more broadly, consider the variety of experiences of female makers across traditional geographic and chronological distinctions.

Catherine the Great's reign marked a watershed in Russian history, with vast territorial expansion, town planning, and construction across the empire, and civic, educational, and social reform. This book reveals the remarkable role that women artists played in Catherine's pursuit of these ambitions, and the way in which their commissions from a glittering array of Russian patrons extended artistic practice and enriched cultural life.

This book explains why women artists were far more numerous, diverse, and successful in early modern Bologna than elsewhere in Italy. They worked as painters, sculptors, printmakers, and embroiderers; many obtained public commissions and expanded beyond the portrait subjects to which women were traditionally confined.

Between c1350 and c1650, Italian urban societies saw much debate on women's nature, roles, education, and behaviour. This book fills a gap in the still burgeoning literature on all aspects of women's lives in this period. Using a broad range of material, most of which never translated before, this book illuminates the ideals and realities informing the lives of women within the context of civic and courtly culture in Renaissance Italy. The text is divided into three sections: contemporary views on the nature of women, and ethical and aesthetic ideals seen as suitable to them; life cycles from birth to death, punctuated by the rites of passage of betrothal, marriage and widowhood; women's roles in the convent, the court, the workplace, and in cultural life.

Highlights the impact of Burgundian noble women on life at the court and in the city around 1500. Margaret of York, the English princess married to Duke Charles-the-Bold, and Margaret of Austria, the only daughter of Mary of Burgundy, both lived in Mechelen as well-to-do widows and are therefore the focal point of this publication.

This is an exhibition catalog concerning three remarkable women, whose high social position permitted them to act as influential patrons and collectors of art: Archduchess Margaret of Austria (1480-1530), Archduchess Mary, Queen of Hungary (1505-1558), and Archduchess Catherine, Queen of Portugal (1507-1578).