Faith Buenaventura 

Professor Caçoilo

Art and Women 

Evolution of the Role of Women

The Middle Ages was a period of time where women were still bounded by the male gaze and patriarchy. Long before freedom or equality was declared to women, they were forced to be prisoners in respect to the man. A woman during this time would worship the man she was with, tend to his care, and commit her life to him and her family. Women were also beaten if she disobeyed men and could only divorce her husband only if she was forced to have sex with another man. Men also thought education would interfere with her ability to become a perfect wife so they were not taught how to read or write. However, most women would join convents to free themselves of the duties of becoming a wife or mother. “Becoming a nun had an autonomy unknown to their sisters on the outside. They operated businesses, farmed, made tapestries, copied and illustrated manuscripts, and educated one another.” (Guerrilla Girls 21). Within the convent, women had access to learning even though they were prohibited from teaching. One of the most famous women during this time period was Hildegard von Bingen who was an infamous artist known for her illustrative work on Scivias. In her work she describes 26 religious visions on what she saw, experienced, and what she believed in when it came to the word of God. At one point she decided to put it off because of the advice she received from men and their judgement. More importantly, she refused to believe what she was hearing and was over flowed with doubt because she did not want to be humiliated. It wasn’t until her series of illness that she decided to complete her work. She worked on this masterpiece for ten years where she urged Christians to “lead a more spiritual life and nuns and priests to uphold their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience” (Guerrilla Girls 25). Hildegard believed in her religious faith and wanted to spread awareness in the word of God.

Frontispiece of Scivias, showing Hildegard receiving a vision, dictating to Volmar, and sketching on a wax tablet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scivias#/media/File:Hildegard_von_Bingen.jpg)

The role of women began to shift during the 14th and 17th century. Women were now allowed to divorce her husband if she could prove him impotent, qualified for legal abortion, and attend or taught in a university. “A tradition of educated and skilled women in religious orders persisted in the 14th and 15th century Italy despite an increasingly secularized society” (Chadwick 67). For example, the City of Bologna created a university where women were admitted into the school and was granted the right to learn and even lecture. A school of women artist boomed creating the most female artists in Italy to ever exist in Europe. The most famous artist of Bologna was Elisabetta Sirani known for Portia Wounding Her Thigh. Depicting a scene from Julius Caesar, Portia wants to prove she is strong enough to get involved with Caesar and Brutus and prove she is just as strong as them. Sirani paints her in a red dress to prove she is loyal and the stabbing of her thigh signifies she is in control of her body. Further, she paints her in private to separate herself from a stereotype that all women want to do is gossip. Sirani's painting depicts that not every woman wants to be confided in the small description that every man puts her in and the extreme measures a woman is willing to take to be taken seriously. Therefore, the theme is saying women are not prisoners of men for she is just as strong and capable.

Portia Wounding her Thigh, 1664 ; proves how strong and independent women can be (https://ama11blog.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/elisabetta-sirani-portia-wounding-her-thigh-2.jpg?w=1400(

The 19th century provided an outbreak in the industrial revolution, new inventions, and more importantly the fight to women freedom. Women in the 19th century were now used to symbolize democracy and could become a practicing lawyer or doctor. The 19th century personified the importance of women in today’s society. Artists such as Alice Barber fought to be heard and taken seriously. In her work The Female Class , Barber paints how she was taught and her experience to education. Her work depicts how segregated women were and how they were unable to learn alongside men. The conditions of the room were not as spacious nor provided suitable equipment like how men experienced education. During her time, women could only study nude women models however, men models were draped. The creation of photography also threatened the expansion of painting. “Photography was great for women artists: because it was brand new, there was no canon for them to be excluded from. As a result, women helped define the practice and continue to do so today” (Guerrilla Girls 47). Photography added to the many ways female artists wanted to express herself and her work. So the fight to women suffrage was fierce and it wasn't until the 1920s women were allowed to freely vote.

The Female Class, 1879 depicts how women were segregated when it came to education.
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/e0/47/90/e04790de4c9648b501f31504c9d002dc.jpg) 

Works Cited

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. London: Thames & Hudson, 2007. Print.

The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. London: Penguin, 1998. Print.