The biographer Luigi Crespi recorded over twenty-eight women artists working in the early modern period in Italy, in the city of Bologna alone. What were the factors that contributed to the unique confluence of women with art at this time? Many of these women and their works were lost to contemporary art criticism, despite being given prestigious commissions from important patrons, popes, and scholars, at least until the recent “Me Too” movement when the value for old master works by women skyrocketed at auction houses.

The focus of this course will be to reframe the visual culture of the period through the lens of gender discourse, and to examine both the construction of the identity of the woman artist and the production and reception of images of women against the prevailing ideas of gender in the early modern period. Topics will include the medieval and renaissance notion of woman, the birth of the woman artist, mannerism as artifice and other, gender, marriage, and behavioral norms, the femmes fortes in the Counter-Reformation, and the diffusion of popular prints. This course combines methodologies such as iconography, feminism, patronage, and reception studies to look at paintings, sculpture, prints, and textiles against the background of the emergence of women artists and the nature of women in the Renaissance.

Develop critical reading, writing and research skills necessary to analyze artwork via weekly readings, class discussion, writing assignments and essay exams.

Evaluate an object within its appropriate social and historical context, while engaging with theories of gender, identity and patronage critical to the production of visual culture in the Renaissance and early modern period.

Interpret the visual culture of the period through the lens of both iconography and formal analysis, as well as gaining a broad methodological framework.

Engage with research materials and secondary sources by writing a research paper on a Renaissance topic of their own choosing.

Give an oral presentation of their final paper to the class.            

Schedule of Classes and Readings

Week 1 (July 3, 5, 6, 7):                Introduction to Gender and Mannerism in the Early Modern Period; Leonardo, Naturalism, and the Renaissance Notion of Woman

Readings:

                      Christine de Pisan, excerpt from City of Ladies

Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”

                                                                               Vasari, “Lives”, preface to part 3

 Clark, selection from Leonardo’s “On Painting”

                       Garrard, “Female Portraits, Female Nature”                                                 

                      Jacobs, “La Donnesca Mano”

Week 2 (July 10-13):                     The Formation of the Female Artist in the Early Modern Period

Readings:

Murphy, “Lavinia Fontana and Le Dame della Citta”

                      Garrard, “Here’s Looking at Me”

                      Rocco, “Stitching for Virtue”

                      Parker, “The Subversive Stitch”

Week 3 (July 17-20):                     Mannerism, Eroticism, and Violence: the Construction of Gender

Readings:   

                      Healy, “Bronzino’s London ‘Allegory’”

                      Thomas, “Fabric and Dress”

                                                                               Selection from Cellini’s autobiography

                                                                               Even, “Loggia dei Lanzi”

                      Zirpolo, “Botticelli’s Primavera”

Topic for final paper due; Midterm exam

Week 4 (July 24-July 27):             Women, Behavioural Codes, and the Visual Culture of Marriage; Virtuous Heroines and the Construction of the Femmes Fortes

Readings:

Syson (in Bayer) “Belle: Picturing Beautiful Women”

Goffen, “Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love and Marriage”

                      Ciletti, “Patriarchal Ideology … Judith”

                      Garrard, “Artemisia and Susanna”

Week 5 (July 31- Aug 3)                Museum/Archival visit;

                                                          Film on Women in the Renaissance: Critique and Discussion

                                                          Student Presentations and Final Exam