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1150
The Middle Ages - Hildegard von Bingen, “Scivias” From Scivias.
Hildegard Von Bingen was a saint, composer, poet, and artist. She’s a remarkable figure of German Romanesque Art, and she created her first major work the “Scivias” in 1152. It recorded the visions Hildegard expressed she experienced as a young woman. The purpose of this illustration was to convey the messages of her dreams to others especially for women to follow. The “Scivias” demonstrates her immense talent and visionary work conveyed through artistic and literary elements. -
1200
The Middle Ages - Herrad von Landsberg, “The Seven Liberal Arts” From Hortus Deliciarum (Garden of Delights).
Herrad von Landberg was a 12th-century Alsatian nun and abbess of Hohenburg Abbey in the Vosges mountains. Her artwork, “The Seven Liberal Arts” was added to the Hortus Deliciarum which was a compendium of sciences studied at the time. In Romanesque style, “The Seven Liberal Arts” is a medieval ink drawing created in 1180. The purpose of this piece was for the nuns of the abbey. The Seven Liberal Arts demonstrates her artistic talents and ability to convey ideas through artistic elements. -
1555
The Renaissance - Tintoretto, “Susanna and the Elders”
Tintoretto was an Italian painter identified with the Venetian school. “Susanna and the Elders” is a painting about a young woman named Susanna who bathed in her pool daily. One day, two elderly men rushed forward propositioning her to have intercourse with them. The painting shows a naked Susanna sitting in her garden while she gazes into her mirror, two elderly men peer around the corner stalking her. This canvas is part of six paintings depicting this tragic story that women experience daily. -
The Renaissance - Elizabeth Sirani, “Portia Wounding Her Thigh”
Elizabeth Sirani was one of the first women artists in early modern Bologna. She spent her life in Bologna successfully becoming a famous woman artist. “Portia Wounding Her Thigh” is a baroque oil on canvas painting created in 1664. The painting demonstrates Portia wounding her thigh with a sharp blade. This is a powerful painting with strong, clear brushstrokes and forceful colors. This was a political painting for Sirani, meant to show the lengths women must go to to be taken seriously. -
The 17th Century - Angelica Kauffman, “Zeuxis Selecting Models for His Painting of Helen of Troy” From 1764.
Angelica Kauffman was a Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome.“Zeuxis Selecting Models for His Painting of Helen of Troy” is a painting that tells the story of Zeuxis, who portrays the world's most beautiful women, chooses five becoming models from whom to distill an ideal synthesis. Kauffman shows Zeuxis in the act of anatomical study, inspecting one of the models as three others prepare for the master's gaze. -
The 17th Century - Jean Baptiste, “Maman” or “The Good Mother” From 1765.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze was a French painter of portraits, genre scenes, and history painting known for having sentimental subject matter. “The Good Mother” is a painting of his mother caring for other children, it documents a tender reunion of mother and son. The technique used was engraving with watercolor elements. It demonstrates the care the artist’s mother provides for others in a home setting. This painting shows what mothers do for their children and others as their love is pure and strong. -
The 18th Century - Rebecca Soloman, “The Governess”
Rebecca Solomon was a 19th-century English Pre-Raphaelite draftsman, illustrator, engraver, and painter of social injustices. In “The Governess”, the young and well-dressed woman is the ideal feminine image, while the plain governess is the epitome of fleeting beauty. Her adverted gaze symbolizes her desire and longing for a family of her own while also acknowledging that her failure in finding a suitor has forced her to pursue the few acceptable alternatives: the position of a governess. -
The 18th Century - Alice Walker, “Wounded Feelings”
"Wounded Feelings" of 1861 depicts women and men in traditional Victorian-style dress at a social gathering, presumably a ball. The woman in the foreground of the painting has tossed her glove and fan down as she seeks solace from the crowd inside. Walker, through Wounded Feelings, encompasses the Victorian notion that a woman’s existence was centered around men’s approval and attention. -
The 20th Century I - Paula Modersohn-Becker, “Mother and Child Lying Nude”
Known for the many self-portraits the artist produced, including nude self-portraits. The mother and child face each other in this painting, completely oblivious to the viewer. She was staged to titillate the male gaze. This is a woman’s sensuality and animal-like love for her child. The mother curls around her child, offering warmth. There is a sense of protection here, in the drawn-up legs of the mother. There is tenderness in the gentle cradling of the head. -
The 19th Century - Gabriele Münter, “Portrait of Marianne Von Werefkin”
In “Portrait of Marianne Von Werefkin”, Gabriele portrays her fellow artist Marianne von Werefkin in this painting. Together they were members of the "Neue Künstlervereinigung München". Her influences from Bavarian glass painting are evident in the joyful colors in this painting such as pink, orange, and deep blue as well as the thick black outlines. The “bold patterns and the broad planar simplification” of this work are manifestations of a decisive move with Kandinsky to Murnau. -
The 19th Century - Vanessa Bell, “The Tub”
Bell's painting “The Tub” of 1917 features a naked woman on the right, in a room with an open window, a flower vase with drooping tulips, and a filled Tub. The woman is taking a bathThe woman in this piece is naked to the world and therefore could be seen as open and vulnerable. She doesn't seem happy and averts her eyes from the viewer. She seems to be on display to the viewer. She does not engage with the tub, which is the reason for her nakedness, and distractedly plays with her braided hair. -
The 20th Century I - Suzanne Valadon, “The Blue Room”
In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The painting is so unusual for a portrait of a woman of this time. This model is not just to be either admired, or eroticized, as so many of the portraits were. Instead, she has interests and independent viewpoints. The portrait is dignified, the model shows strength in her femininity. A celebration of actual womanhood, not one that is clouded by expectation. -
The 20th Century (America) - Alice Neel, “Pregnant Maria”
Painted while Alice Neel was living at 300 West 107th Street - Upper West Side. Maria was a friend of students who attended Columbia University and lived in Neel’s building on West 107th Street. When she was living in New York, she made several portraits of pregnant women. In this painting, she addresses attention to the unresolved tensions in her subject by breaking the expectations of the viewers. The subject is framed within a set of references that are not familiar in this context. -
The 20th Century (America) - Monica Sjoo, “God Giving Birth”
Monica Sjoo Swedish-born British-based painter, writer, and radical anarchy/eco-feminist who was an early exponent of the Goddess movement. This painting shows a nude woman whose face is half dark and half light, with the head of a child emerging from her birth canal. Sjöö was an exponent of second-wave feminism and the Goddess movement. This is her most famous work, painted in 1968, which depicts a woman giving birth and it is inspired by a goddess-worshipping religion. -
The Late 20th Century/21st Century - Marta Maria Peréz Bravo, “Protection”
At the center of the photograph is the artist’s naked chest, while against it she holds a sacred bundle called macuto. This is a protective charm in Palo Monte practices and it comprises two small statues, which act as a power source. The artist holds the macuto at the center of the cosmogram, equating the chest of a woman with the center of sacred cosmology, in relation to maternity. This creates a powerful reference to motherhood as a source not just of power, but also of spiritual protection. -
The Late 20th Century/21st Century - Jenny Saville, “The Mothers”
Saville can capture the wild and free spontaneity of the human body in a new, more expressive language than ever before, one that taps deeper into the reality of what it is to be a woman, mother, and artist in the contemporary world. The artist made paintings and drawings of herself throughout her pregnancies and asked several expectant mothers to model for her while working on this series of compositions.