This study employs cognitive theory as a heuristic framework to interrogate the agency of female types in select Italian Renaissance paintings, with emphasis on Venus, Medusa, the Amazon, Boccaccio's Lady Fiammetta/Cleopatra, Susanna, the Magdalene, and the Madonna. The study disrupts assumptions about the identity of sitters and readings of paintings as it challenges paradigms of female representation. It interrogates why certain paintings were crafted, by whom and for whom. Works are placed in the context of meta-painting, with stress on the cognitive decisions negotiated between patron and artist. The ludic aspects of several paintings are examined with a fine grain semiotic approach to expand their iconographies. Psychoanalytic readings are unpacked, based on the flawed mythological metaphors and incomplete clinical studies of Sigmund Freud's theorizing. The rubric of female agency is deliberately selected to unify popular but enigmatic master paintings of disparate subjects.

This is the first book which gives a general overview of women as subject-matter in Italian Renaissance painting. It presents a view of the interaction between artist and patron, and also of the function of these paintings in Italian society of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Using letters, poems, and treatises, it examines through the eyes of the contemporary viewer the way women were represented in paintings.

Ostensibly, it would seem that during the Renaissance, subjects of mythological origin in the visual arts were almost exclusively created with the male patron in mind. While this is a highly visible trend, it is important to remember that women, too, were spectators of art steeped in mythological imagery in certain spheres and contexts. Cassoni and spalliere were marriage chests and wall panels customarily commissioned for elaborate wedding rituals of the era and were often painted with such stories. To determine how the female gaze differed from its male counterpart in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century, paintings meant for the eyes of a specific couple are most illuminating. A careful examination of frequently depicted mythological subjects and the manner in which they were presented compositionally will therefore allow for some insight into how the primary viewers of these objects perceived the imagery, and whether this supports the notion of a female gaze as separate and different from that of the default male gaze. Conjectures regarding whether it is possible to theorize a gendered way of looking can then be made, and if this is the case, how gender expectations and roles within marriage changed or conditioned the context of the subject that was being viewed. Contemporary texts, treatises, and pamphlets which broach the issue of proper female decorum are used in conjunction with an analysis of the objects and images themselves. This will allow for a discerning look into the politics of marriage, providing a more thorough understanding of how women were expected to conduct themselves, and based on this idealistic view, how mythological paintings found on marriage chests and wall panels would or should have been perceived.

This book examines the iconography of Judith, Esther, and the Shulamite in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first two decades of the twentieth century in the works of the Polish-Jewish artists.

The Book of Judith tells the story of a fictitious Jewish woman beheading the general of the most powerful imaginable army to free her people. The parabolic story was set as an example of how God will help the righteous. Judith's heroic action not only became a validating charter myth of Judaism itself but has also been appropriated by many Christian and secular groupings, and has been an inspiration for numerous literary texts and works of art. It continues to exercise its power over artists, authors and academics and is becoming a major field of research in its own right. The Sword of Judith is the first multidisciplinary collection of essays to discuss representations of Judith throughout the centuries. It transforms our understanding across a wide range of disciplines. The collection includes new archival source studies, the translation of unpublished manuscripts, the translation of texts unavailable in English, and Judith images and music.

Scholars have traditionally viewed the Italian Renaissance artist as a gifted, but poorly educated craftsman whose complex and demanding works were created with the assistance of a more educated advisor. These assumptions are, in part, based on research that has focused primarily on the artist's social rank and workshop training. In this volume, Angela Dressen explores the range of educational opportunities that were available to the Italian Renaissance artist. Considering artistic formation within the history of education, Dressen focuses on the training of highly skilled, average artists, revealing a general level of learning that was much more substantial than has been assumed. She emphasizes the role of mediators who had a particular interest in augmenting artists' knowledge, and highlights how artists used Latin and vernacular texts to gain additional knowledge that they avidly sought. Dressen's volume brings new insights into a topic at the intersection of early modern intellectual, educational, and art history.