The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages

Sep 17, 1179

Hildegard of Bingen 1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as Saint Hildegard was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages.
“Motherhood from the Sprit and the Water”, this piece of art shows the mother in four different stages. The mother of all who protects and cares. The father blessing the mother. The flames of the purgatory.

The Renaissance

1618

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Decapitating Holofernes, c. 1618. The most insistent feature of Gentileschi’s Judith Decapitating Holofernes—the ferocious energy and sustained violence of the scene the choice of the moment of the decapitation and the blood which jets from the severed arteries.

The Renaissance

1664

Elisabetta Sirani, Portia Wounding Her Thigh, 1664. Sirani chose the moment at which Portia wounded herself to test her strength of character before asking Brutus to confide in her. Stabbing herself deeply in the thigh, Portia has to prove herself virtuous and worthy of political trust by separating herself from the rest of her sex. She is physically separated from the women who spin and gossip in another room, betraying their sex by talk.

The 18th Century

1792

n the Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass), Apuleius tells the story of Cupid and Psyche. Venus was jealous of the the princess Psyche’s beauty and decided to take revenge on her by making her fall in love with the worst mortal man. She instructed her son Cupid to carry out her plan. However, he fell in love with the princess himself and they secretly married.