This next video focuses more on women as scandalous. So women have often been
discussed as troublemakers and seducers, and so this video focuses more on
representations of women fulfilling that kind of stereotypical role. So I have
-- I have the title as "Women as Scandalous" -- Supine nude -- which means
reclining nude and these women have often been seen as possible courtesans
or prostitutes and then we'll also look at other historical or biblical accounts
of women as troublemakers. So starting off with an idea of a biblical
account of a woman as troublemaker, we'll look at the example of Salome who was
the daughter of Herodias. The two of them [Herodias and Salome] conspired to request the head of John
the Baptist. So she asked her stepfather for this [the head of John the Baptist], and he had already declared
that he would give her whatever she wanted. Salome dances for him as well
in order to get this request. So she's seen as this very seductive young woman.
And she does receive what she asked for, so even though Herod Antipas doesn't
really want to do it apparently because he's made a promise to Salome he decides
he must go through with it and kill John the Baptist. So we often see Salome as
this sinful individual -- this woman who causes trouble and how the artist here
has done that is to really show her with over-the-top wealth with riches and with
this very sneaky look on her face. So this is created by Lucas Cranach the
Elder -- a German Renaissance painter. And there was a long history of Salome being
represented in art and also the scene with John the Baptist's head being
presented to Herod and the kind of reactions that it gets because obviously
it's a very gruesome scene. And so here we see Salome who seems unaffected by
the fact that she's holding this decapitated head on a platter and then
she's wearing just a huge amount of jewelry that she's laden with these
gold chains, her dress is over-the-top ornate, the collar that she's wearing is
covered in gemstones, her hat seems almost ridiculous and
the feathers that are represented. So there's this idea that women can be
represented as wealthy and virtuous, as we saw in the representation of Giovanna
Tornabuoni where she has, you know, jewelry and it's very nice and she has a
beautiful dress that she's wearing, but it's not to that extent that we see with
Salome and also that kind of sneaky look on Salome's face where she's gazing
out towards us is quite different from the very refined profile that we see
with Giovanna Tornabuoni. This idea that she's turning away from us is much more
modest than the way we're seeing Salome. Here I'm showing you another
representation by Lucas Cranach the Elder where you see that Feast of Herod
and where you see again Salome presenting the head and her mother
Herodias who has encouraged her to ask for the head and the kind of disgust
when Salome brings this to Herod -- so that kind of surprised and disgust. And again
she's really encrusted with gemstones in this particular example, and there you
can see a close-up. And again with that kind of sneaky look -- the eyes that
are nearly closed -- things like that. We do have representations of saints too that
are somewhat confusing in the way we interpret them now because they almost
have a kind of erotic charge to them or a very seductive quality to them. So
there are examples before the counter-reformation really took hold in
Rome where we see really an embracing of nudity and seductive forms for figures,
for representations of saints. This particular image was actually created
for a cardinal it then moved into other collections but it was for a cardinal
who actually had the Church of St. Agatha in Rome under his kind of domain
or control, and so it was a image that made sense for him to collect, but he
actually kept it in his private quarters, so it doesn't seem to have been a public
image. So some people wonder if there is kind of a secret sexual meaning within
this image, which one would think would be very holy. So St. Agatha is a very
well-known saint because of the fact that her breasts were cut off in this
kind of torturous process of trying to get her to renounce her
faith -- her Christian faith -- so she's one of these many early Christian
martyrs, early Christian saints where someone is trying to get her to renounce
her faith. This particular man here the proconsul in a city in Sicily is quite
interested in her and so you see him gazing longingly at her you can see that
he's clearly it's supposed to be more of the bad guy here. And they they start
torturing her in order to try to kind of turn her over to the dark side and so
you just see these immense pincers that are going on to her nipples and they're
about to cut off her breasts. You see the knife featured here rather prominently
as it juts out towards the viewer. The painter here, his name is
Sebastiano del Piombo and again probably created for a cardinal and
probably meant to have a certain kind of erotic quality to it but the actual
subject matter is rather gruesome. And you can even see a fire in the
background because there was said to be an earthquake -- kind of a natural disaster
in reaction to her martyrdom. Just to show you another work by Sebastiano
dell Piombo where you can see this idea of a figure kind of twisting and
turning in reaction to suffering and punishment, and so he also created a very
famous image of the flagellation where Christ is attached to a column and
beaten and so just the positioning of the bodies is actually quite similar
between St. Agatha who has this rather masculine, muscular body and which was
quite common for followers of Michelangelo, and then you can see that
muscular body obviously for Christ as well. And here I'm just comparing it to
another image of St. Agatha. And saints like these are often invoked by
breast-cancer survivors as very important patron saints. One of the most
famous troublemaking women of course is Eve. The idea that when they're in the
Garden of Eden it is Eve who accepts the forbidden fruit and it is Eve who offers
it to Adam. And so here we see an example of that where we have one of these
supine nudes so one of these women that is lying upon the ground
and lying horizontally. And so you see you're here extending the her hand to
give the fruit to Adam. So just to show you the two of them together. This is the
whole composition. It's by an artist named Bugiardini, an Italian artist.
You see here Eve upon the ground giving the fruit to Adam, who
accepts it, and then you can see the snake -- the devil -- who's convincing them to
take the fruit is also a woman. So this idea of the troublemaking women on one
side. The idea also that she's closer to the ground. She doesn't really have this same
kind of intermediary that Adam has. So Eve was often associated with the snake
herself, and so in this early Romanesque representation, you can see her almost
slithering along the ground to give Adam the forbidden fruit. So Eve herself was
often connected to the snake. And if you look at the two heads together you can
see that they're nearly identical -- the idea that the woman and the snake. They
are both very, very similar. So Eve is a very common representation in art
history and, of course, she's the one who leads Adam astray. And again there's the
two together. We have quite a bit of wedding imagery in Renaissance Italy
that has some pretty heavy sexual implications as well. And many scholars
have argued that we should really shouldn't see these two as separate -- that
the idea of sexuality and then the ideal of a chaste bride really shouldn't be
two separate things -- that they could be analyzed together. That a woman could be
a wonderful and qualified bride and still have a sexual element because, of
course, you want your bride to bear children. And she was often linked to
Venus -- this goddess of love and lust in Roman history, in ancient Rome. So here we
see an example of a bride. We see a woman with a veil. Obviously she's undressed, so
her body is revealed, so the importance of the female body, the body that's ready
to bear children. The shell is supposed to have sexual connotations. Here we see
Venus with a little Cupid, and the Cupid is probably urinating through
a myrtle wreath, which was often a sign of marriage and myrtle
was a plant that was connected to Venus. You have a lamp here as well, so lots of
marriage iconography, but a very unusual image, a little bit of a disconcerting
image with the urination going on, but just lots of connections to fertility.
And that was really the expectation of a bride -- the idea that you would bring
forth children but that you would come to your husband as chaste, that you would
come as a chaste bride. And this is by Lorenzo Lotto. Another marriage image is
called "Sacred and Profane Love" and so many people assume that the profane love
is the nude woman and the sacred love is the properly dressed woman, but it's
actually the opposite. So the idea is the profane love -- the woman of this world -- the
woman wearing the bridal dress, some authors including Rona Goffen have
argued she should just be called "the bride" because she's wearing the bridal
garments of that time, she's wearing a white dress, she has a belt, the red
sleeves -- all of these are really markers of someone going into marriage. And we
believe this was commissioned for the marriage of a specific couple in the
early 16th century. And then you also have this more celestial or sacred love
off to the side, this almost goddess-like form where she's represented in the nude.
This figure who's not of this world. Again the image hints a lot of fertility,
at beauty. This is not supposed to be an exact portrait of the bride, Laura, who
was getting married same as Lorenzo look though these are really idealized
beauties of the time. Again blonde hair and pale skin were ideal, so these
artists are just replicating that same idea. Lots of hints -- fecundity or
fertility. So there's water pouring forth from this sarcophagus that
has been turned into a fountain. And the idea of pouring water is often an
allusion to fertility. You also see the small cupid, the child of Venus
represented here, and he's stirring up the water. You see
connections to bridal gifts. Brides often received gifts in silver caskets. The
flowers, the roses that are here are also connected to bridal practice. And the
myrtle plant is also here, as well. There's also very large rabbits which
are also a sign of fecundity or fertility, so that's another sign as well.
So just to remind you -- this is what's called the profane love or you can call
her "bride". And this is the sacred or celestial love -- these kind of two aspects
of going into marriage. Moving on to more holy images -- we're seeing an image of the
penitent Magdalene. So over time Mary Magdalene became known as this repentant
prostitute although history has now told us that
she probably wasn't originally a prostitute and may have been conflated with
another individual in biblical stories, but that was how she was known in
medieval and Renaissance Europe. So after the death of Christ, she goes into the
desert and essentially is in the nude and that her hair covers her body and
often she's shown as this older kind of withered woman -- but Titian, the same
artist who created Sacred and Profane Love -- who was really interested in
representing these curvaceous fleshy women has definitely highlighted her as
still a very youthful woman, but a prayerful woman she's gazing up at the
sky -- but she instead of looking withered and wrinkled
she still has this youthful quality, her hair is very shiny in full, and it kind
of caresses her body in this very sensuous way. So some people have assumed
that this is supposed to be again kind of an erotic private devotional image,
but it was probably commissioned for a woman so there still are a lot of
questions as to if it was for a woman why was it created in this particular
way and there may have just been certain kind of sensuous faith to it and also
the idea that our expectations today can be different than how they were in the
16th century -- just like the previous bridal image to us today often seems
very odd but this was an acceptable image in the 16th century, just
as this image may have been an acceptable devotional image around this
time -- again before the Counter-Reformation really took hold and
made some serious changes to the artwork in Catholic Italy. Yet another bridal
image is called the "Venus of Urbino". We're not 100% sure it was for a wedding,
but many people assume it was commissioned around the time of the
marriage of the Duke of Urbino Guidobaldo when he was marrying a much
younger woman -- so a couple years after their
their official marriage, we think this painting was delivered. His
bride was still very young at that time, so this may have been around the time
the marriage was finally about to be consummated or going to be consummated.
Again we don't think this is an exact portrait of the bride -- more of an ideal
representation of a woman. Again flowers -- we also have a dog that's a sign of
loyalty, so that idea of loyalty to one's husband. But again, the importance of -- the
importance of fertility, of procreation. Maybe images like this would get you in
the proper mood to have children, and Rona Goffen, again a scholar of Titian,
has talked about how this idea of the woman caressing herself
may have been in order to help ensure procreation -- that many medical treaties
at the time encouraged women to engage in this behavior in order to assist in
becoming pregnant. So in addition to the flowers and the dog as marriage symbols,
many people have often seen these chests which are called casone or that's what
we call them now in museums these large chests which were often commissioned in
pairs to deliver the bridal goods to the bride's new household and to kind of
carry her trousseau. And so here you see these women possibly getting a dress in
order to get her dressed after a sexual encounter -- or, you know, after an encounter
which seems to be about to happen. We're not exactly sure of the timeline here
but it's interesting how she seems to be in one realm of the palace and they seem
to be in a separate more real area of the palace. So this kind of imagined,
beautiful, supine Venus is probably supposed to be kind of an ideal of
Titian imagination. So we've been looking at a lot of ideals of female beauty from
Italy and I just wanted to add a comparison to a work by Giovanni Moroni,
which is called the "Tailor / Portrait of a Man" from later in the sixteenth century,
and this is just intended as a comparison because women were really
expected to be chaste, to be obedient -- those were the ideals of Christian
society around this time and they were expected to be beautiful. However, men
were much more defined by their professions, and so in this particular
case we see a man, rather than having his body exposed or having to wear a lot of
jewelry or have blonde hair, instead he's engaged in his craft. So he's about to
start cutting some fabric. We see him with the tools of his trade so to speak.
So I just wanted to end with this particular image to show how different
the expectations were for men and women. So we've looked at a lot of different
images where women have been classified as possible troublemakers or problematic
figures, but I wanted to have a comparison to a man so you could have
some broader context. Alright our next video will move on to more of the early
artists -- the early women artists -- so we'll start to look at examples of women
artists in the in the next video. Thank you very much.