Barbara Cummings

Art and Women

3/7/17

The roles for women change throughout the Renaissance has emerged up to 19c.  To answer this question, we can look at the challenges that women artist during the Renaissance . These times was not a promising place for female artists to emerge.  Women during these times were only suppose to have children and help  their husbands. The were not welcomed in male-dominated professions nor  did  they receive formal art training. As stated in Guerrilla Girls stated the women in the Renaissance would divorce her husband only if she could prove him impotent. She could salvage her reputation by marrying any man who raped her. She cous were  under only if she was an aristocrat, a prostitute, an acceptor or a widor washer.(Guerrilla Girls pg 32)

Mary Beale

The only way these women were emerged is due to their fathers teaching them privately. Their father only did this to help their business excel. Through this there were many women that became prominent artist. Here are some women painters who are recognized as being among the leading artists of their time. They date from the late Renaissance period (1500s) and from the Baroque era (1600s). Mary Beale  26 March 1633 – 1699)  Had a  successful professional  portrait business.female Baroque era portrait painters of the 17th century and was  Mary was a trailblazer, known as sole financial provider for her family She was the  wrote the first  instructional book ever called  Observations. The book gave her notice although it was never published. Mary Beale was  very outspoken but had great business tactics

Early 1600s -- French Corset "Woman At Her Toilet"

The expected roles of Women in Europe during the Middle Ages  he only known primary source for details of Marietta Robusti life is Carlo Ridolfi Life of Tintoretto, first published in 1642, although she is mentioned briefly in Raffaello Borghini Il Riposo della Pittura e della Scultura of 1584. Marietta Robusti was probably born in 1560 and died when she was thirty during childbirth, she lived in Venice all her life, she was the eldest daughter of the painter Jacopo Robusti. Her achievements were buried under the success and fame of her father, brother and her short life.

After Marietta Robusti death she soon became a muse for Romantic painters; such as Léon Cogniet who produced Tintoretto Painting His Dead Daughter, following his influence both Karl Ridolfi describes Robustus close relationship with her father at great length. Not only did she learn at his knee, as a child she also liked to dress like a boy so that she could go everywhere with Jacopo. She died of unrecorded causes in 1590, and was buried in Santa Maria dell'Orto in Venice.

Portrait of Ottavio Strada (c. 1567-68), attributed to Robusti Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdan

The only painting that can be conclusively attributed to Marietta Robusti is her Self Portrait (c. 1580; Uffizi Gallery, Florence). This portrait depicts Marietta posed before a harpsichord, holding a musical text that has been identified as a madrigal by Philippe Verdelot, "Madonna per voi ardo".

Since the nineteenth century art history has been closes aligned with the authorship which forms the basis of the economics valuing of Western Art. Through the times the attributes of women are and how the knowledge of gender affect the ways in which we literally see works in arts.  In moving forward to the 19th century we see strong presence of a male dominated world.

Katherine A. McIver, "Lavinia Fontana's 'Self-Portrait Making Music'," Women's Art Journal 19, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1998): 3-