VII ART, POWER AND GENDER CONFERENCE. IMAGERY AND FEMALE DEVOTION IN RENAISSANCE EUROPE

CONFERENCES

Erasmo de Rotterdam y la piedad en femenino

Palma Martínez-Burgos García

 Universidad de Castilla la Mancha

“Just like artists surpass themselves in their later works, God, created women after men, forcibly surpassing himself by making this a more perfect creation.”

This Erasmian syllogism, loaded with evident irony, is useful to praise women even though his discourse is full of ambiguity and contradictions. Many scholars who specialize in Erasmus have pointed out his insistence on playing, ironizing, and poking fun at the female condition since he believed it is the only one that incurs in foolishness. Erasmus’ stance towards women is stated in many of his writings and can be traced in the Colloquia, in the treaties dedicated to Christian instruction, in his correspondence with friends and, of course, in the In Praise of Folly.

Despite of these examples, in the rest of his works we can trace an admiration towards the female gender defending their education based on certain works that alarmed a large sector of the church that did not view them as suitable. In some sense, Erasmus’ purpose was to reinstate the dignity that women had been denied during the Middle Ages. From a moral point of view, Erasmus wanted to show the best image and set goals for women to achieve a “Christian ideal” that is present in his correspondence. He was inspired by real women like Catherine of Aragon who he described as a woman with an exceptional education, and also as “scholarly.” He dedicated to her the work The Instruction of Christian Matrimony published in 1526.

¿Por qué callan las mujeres? Reinas, santas y monjas

predicadoras en la cultura visual renacentista

Juan Luis González García

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

The New Testament, according to the Catholic hermeneutics –and even up to date–, forbids women from sacerdotal and priestly tasks. In the first centuries of Christianity, these duties didn’t have as much relevance as preaching, which, at that time, consisted in teaching the gospel to non-believers. If we acknowledge the differences between the evangelical meanings of the terms “priest” and “preacher”, and not pay attention to the interchangeable use they had over time, we will notice that between Antiquity and the Renaissance, there certainly were illustrious women who convinced non-believers with the power of gospel and who made an impact in the mediaeval visual culture. There were some precedent iconographical references taken from biblical heroines, especially the Queen of Sheba, who travelled from a faraway land to test King Salomon’s sapiency with difficult riddles and to offer him gifts. In contrast with other biblical queen consorts such as Abigail or Esther, the Queen of Sheba was queen regnant. That condition would be essential for the definition of her visual depiction and her later influence as a key character in the Mirror for Princesses literary genre, started by Boccaccio and continued onwards. The Bible showed, at least, two preachers: the Samaritan woman and Mary Magdalen, Apostola Apostolorum and missionary in the Gaelic territories. Early mediaeval saints such as Cecilia and Catherine of Alexandria, also served as role models for nobles, Iberian queens, and women artists of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Furthermore, women like Rose of Viterbo and Catherine of Siena, members of Italian mendicant orders, would be referenced by nuns considered as “living saints” in Castille and Aragon such as Juana de la Cruz and Isabel de Villena, who at the same time, had a strong presence in important all-female and courtly monasteries founded by the Hispanic Monarchy.

Women, Saints and Patronage in Early Renaissance Florence

Catherine Lawless

Trinity College

In this paper I would like to explore the patronal relationships between Florentine women and the saints. In patrilineal Florence, the male-dominated pantheon of saints quickly populated the visual landscape of painted piety, with the name saints of grandfathers, fathers and sons being used as markers of space and memory. Looking at altarpieces like the Acciaiuoli-Cavalcanti Annunciation with Saints by Giovanni del Biondo, this paper will investigate how and when women acted as patrons, and how through the choice of particular saints they could assert some devotional agency of their own in reinforcing or interrupting familial memories. I will look at the commissions of elite women, but also at the information that can be gleaned from testaments revealing devotional choices for masses and anniversaries of women of lesser means and, by using a gendered analysis, attempt to investigate the dynamics between women and their saints in art.

Estrategias de poder: comitencia artística de María de Luna-Mendoza

Olga Pérez Monzón

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

The life circumstances of María de Luna suggested that she was going to have a quiet life. Her father Álvaro de Luna, John II’s powerful privado, died in 1453 in the pillory in Valladolid’s main plaza. It was a death without honor or good memory, which were determining factors in this time, and it was perpetuated with the acquiescence of important noble factions like the Mendozas. The Luna and the Mendoza families were rival lineages, and these events influenced the political direction of the kingdom.

By a turn of fortune, some years later María married Íñigo López de Mendoza, II Duke of the Infantado, son of the Marquis of Santillana, a key member in the rival lineage. There were several economic factors that determined this wedding that could have ended up being a marriage of convenience, but María did not chose anonymity. She took advantage of her political family’s patronage, cultural, and artistic networks, to promote her own personality. She established an understanding and several connections with other female members of the lineage while she defined her own imprint both artistically and in the construction of memory. This is proven in the works carried out in the Palace of the Infantado in Guadalajara, the couple’s palatine residence, especially in the project commissioned for the funerary chapel that her father had constructed in the chancel in the cathedral in Toledo. She orchestrated a polish and elaborate strategy to vindicate the memory of the former maestre of Santiago. The surviving works and contract documents allow the analysis of the guidelines used to transform the humiliated Álvaro de Luna into an example, a model of good ruler, a scholar and an enlightened military figure following the duality Humanist/Soldier established by the Marquis of Santillana. With astuteness and knowledge, she employed her political family’s cultural resources to vindicate her own lineage. The powerful personality of María de Luna-Mendoza emerges from her actions.

Escenarios para la devoción: ejemplos en el monasterio

de las Descalzas Reales

Ana García Sanz

Patrimonio Nacional

The Monastery of Las Descalzas Reales was founded by female initiative since it was the personal project of Juana of Austria. There were other women from court and the Habsburg family who also exerted their influence in this monastery later. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were several interior spaces designed like scenery. They were dedicated to specific devotions like The Dead Christ, or amongst others, the Virgin of the Miracle, of Monteagudo, or of Guadalupe. The presence of women who belonged to a network tied by family, political, and cultural ties in the development of these devotions and their staging was constant. These artistic creations and these spaces evoke the relations between courts amongst women that belonged to the same dynasty. They also serve as an example of how local devotions were transferred to distant locations having, on occasion, a marked political significance.

El paraíso en el palacio. Reliquias, trabajos textiles

y roles de género en los oratorios privados de los inicios de la Época Moderna

Aintzane Erkizia Martikorena 

Unviersidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea

Since the end of the Middle Ages, the introduction of the Devotio Moderna encouraged an intimate and individualistic religious practice conducted in solitude. During this period, private devotion reached an important height and, with this, the presence of private oratories to express this piety became generalized in the palaces of the nobility. These private spaces had relics and artworks of notable material, artistic, and spiritual quality, giving their owners prestige. To endow these oratories, numerous high-ranking Spanish soldiers who survived the Eighty Years' War were entrusted to ‘rescue’ relics from convents and monasteries in Rhineland, especially those of the Eleven Thousand Virgins and the Theban Legion. This was the area where most of the deposits of relics of these saints were. The relics, saved from being profaned and destroy by the Protestants, were dressed in rich materials in their place of origin or in Flanders before being transported via the Atlantic maritime route to palaces and private oratories in Spain.

This migration of relics from Rhineland to Spain via Flanders constitutes a historical process that speaks about different gender roles in the development of this type of devotion in these artistic relations in the early Modern Age. On the one hand, the transportation of relics was carried out via the stable administrative and commercial network organized from the court in Brussels; the soldiers would rescue the relics, the prelates would authenticate them and would authorize their transportation; and the noblewomen would receive them in the palatial oratories they managed. In this sense, it is interesting to see which relics were preferred and what this means in devotional terms. In the case of the virtuous martyrs in the entourage of Saint Ursula, these were models for women’s behavior. In the case of the courageous Theban soldiers who accompanied Saint Maurice, they were examples to be imitated by men, especially the soldiers that were fighting in the Low Countries. On the other hand, this movement of relics generated an interesting textile artistic production that originated in the female convents and beguinages in the Low Countries. This dressing of the relics with richly embroidered garments to visually manifest their sanctity was a task carried out by women. This talk will present some magnificent examples of this type of lesser-known art form.

Libros que poseyó Juana I en el palacio real de Tordesillas

Miguel Ángel Zalama Rodríguez

Universidad de Valladolid

Books had an important presence amongst the objects that were part of the treasures of powerful people. In 1509, Joanna I arrived in Tordesillas and her goods were accounted for in an inventory ordered by Ferdinand the Catholic. More than one hundred items with diverse topics were documented, but the majority were devotional books. When the Queen died in 1555 the bulk remained in the palace something that contrasts with the general plundering that her goods suffered during her lifetime. Despite this, the most expensive ones, that were richly illuminated, were taken away by her family members on several occasions while those for reading purposes were not given too much attention.  

Gender, Dynasty and Devotion: The Religious Books

of Anne of Brittany and her Circle

Elizabeth L'Estrange

University of Birmigham

This paper considers some of the religious books and related artefacts made for or associated with Anne of Brittany, twice queen of France, and other women in her circle, such as her mother Marguerite de Foix, her sister-in-law Anne of France, and Anne’s two daughters, Claude (later queen of France) and Renée. It explores how these women used artistic patronage – especially that of the book – to express not only their devotional interests but also their political and dynastic concerns. It is often easy to see late-medieval aristocratic women as pawns on the chessboard of European royal houses, for whom the birth of legitimate male heirs was a primary concern. This paper discusses how Anne of Brittany and her entourage, while necessarily implicated in these patriarchal concerns, were also able to harness and influence devotional trends, such as the cult of St Anne, to manage society’s expectations as well as to play an active role in the politics of the French court.

The Function of the Female Supplicant Figure in an Early

Renaissance Manuscript of Bonaventure’s Life of St Francis of Assisi

Holly F. Flora

Tulane School of Liberal Arts

A little-known illuminated manuscript of Bonaventure's Legenda maior made for an unnamed laywoman in Milan ca. 1350 (MS 411 at the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome) contains several images of a kneeling female supplicant. In MS 411’s highly personalized image cycle, the female devote appears four times kneeling before either Christ or Francis who expose their side wounds. In this paper, I will argue that in MS 411, the privileging of the side wound as an object of the reader’s prayer was key to this manuscript’s re-imagining of the Legenda maior as a devotional text. 

Retablos y poder femenino en los albores del Renacimiento:

la devoción de las últimas infantas Trastámara

Melania Soler Moratón

Universidad de Murcia

Since the end of the fifteenth century Spanish historiography has been defined by a woman: Isabella I of Castile (1451-1504). The political, social, cultural and religious actions carried out by the ‘Catholic Queen’ have been widely studied, being one of the most referenced topics since the nineteenth century. However, her legacy in relation to those women around her is still an unresolved issue. This is the case of the Infantas of Aragon and Castile who, despite their close relationship with their mother, have only been the subject of different studies in recent decades. This paper will address the relationship that Isabella (1470-1498), Joanna (1479-1555), Maria (1482-1517) and Katherine (1485-1536) had with devotional imagery and more specifically with the altarpiece. The religious representations that these women treasured would not only exemplify their pious concerns, but also those moral components connected both to their gender and their dynasty. The study of their inventories, wills, letters of payment, and other documents, will show the wide symbolism that these images harbored. In the private sphere, these were models of salvation and faith, and at the same time they were moral representations in public. Their presence in the treasures of the last Trastámara women show different artistic, religious, and cultural transformations of this era.

Women’s Discernment and the Ghent Altarpiece

Andrea Pearson

American University, Washington, D.C.

This presentation reinterprets the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) through its representations of its understudied co-patron Elizabeth Borluut and the Annunciate Virgin. The recent cleaning of the panels revealed visual effects by painter Jan van Eyck that connect the figure of Borluut more deeply than her husband Joos Vijd to the holy figures represented above, especially Mary with whom she is in closest proximity. This approach to figuration, I will argue, suggests for Borluut an adherence to Marian ideals expressed in conduct literature, including the skill of discernment—the capacity to recognize truth from falsehood, a cultivated ability that underpinned the Christian virtue of prudence—that theologians assigned to Mary in her declaration of consent to Gabriel’s message.

The advancement of women’s discernment in the Altarpiece was hardly coincidental, for the subject was both familiar and contentious during the polyptych’s development. This was especially true of holy women who claimed the power to discern their own prophesies, a practice contested by influential clerics who were threatened by these declarations of spiritual understanding and privilege. Rather than opposing women’s visionary discernment, however, the Altarpiece embraced it, in part through a fundamental reliance on the writings of the prominent visionary Birgitta of Sweden. The supportive view suggested by van Eyck’s visual adaptation of Birgitta’s visions may have seemed advantageous, for it aligned with the perspectives of certain individuals in whom the patrons and artist were invested, including the presumed theological advisor of the Altarpiece and the duchesses and dukes of Burgundy. For Borluut, however, certain visual strategies by van Eyck suggest her compliance with established gender hierarchies of ideal wedlock, thereby defining her discernment as operating within the bounds of normativity.