The Roles of Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Ayshat Micheal

October 17^th, 2017

The Roles of Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Since the beginning of time men have dominated everything that we could think of. Women had a hard time in the social world but even getting equality in the art world was difficult. The Middle Ages was a hard time from unlike any other time was easy. The roles that were set for women were to be wives, mothers, peasants, maids etc. Religion also played an important role in the roles of women in the Middle Ages because of how fast it was growing.  At this time women were shifting towards being nuns instead of getting married. Marriage in the Middle Ages limited women to do many things such as not being able to travel to places without their husband and basically not leaving the house without their husband. Women roles were also based on their beauty and status in the social class in other words they were objectified. They were only expected to please their husbands sexually, look “beautiful” for her husband, cook for the house, clean the house etc. Some houses had maids that took care of cleaning which also depended on their social class.

In this painting titled, "Swollen Woman, Shifting Canon: A Midwife Charm and the Birth of Secular Romance." by William D. Paden and Frances Freeman Paden (1400), there is a wife in bed holding her child which was expected of the wife. There is a maid bringing the wife in bed food so we can tell the wife is of a wealthy family because she has to be paying the maid for her services. There is also another woman by the bed who is holding another child so we can get a sense of women having the role of taking care of children as expected.

Nuns had a special privilege to books and they passed their knowledge off to other women. It was important that nuns educated other women because women could only help women. There was a small amount of men that believed in equality of men and women. In the painting, "Christine De Pizan in her study, from The City of Ladies.”(1405) by Christine De Pizan , there is a nun with a book open in front of her teaching other women how to read or whatever the case may have been.

As we shift in the Renaissance period, we see that women become more vocal on subjects that they have been silenced on but they had to deal with the male gaze. In the painting,“Queen Anne of Austria.” (1570) by Sonfinisba Aguissola, the artist escapes the male gaze and paints the Queen in a more majestic manner. The Queen is in black but the lace is in sight so her social class is apparent. The Queen is looking directly at the viewer and not looking away which is showing a sign of confidence. Her face is very assertive not passive. She has gloves on and one of her hands is on her chest. Looking at this painting, the Queen is the subject of matter and the light is directly on her face.

In the Renaissance period, women begin to work depending on their skills. Whitney Chadwick sates, “By the middle of the fourteenth century the Guild of Linen manufacturers was flourishing as one of the Seven Great Guilds which regulated cloth production. Noblewomen, as well as many regular workers in the linen thread, took up the art of lace making. Nuns were considered particularly proficient teachers of a skill across class lines by both amateurs and professionals.” (Chadwick, 68)  The art of lace making became a job that women flourished in and later on in the seventeenth and eighteenth century a painting by a male artist named Vermeer called “The Lacemaker” (1665 – 1668) surfaces. The only way women were able to get this job was if they were highly skilled but this was a problem because it left many unskilled women with not a lot to do. It was no surprise that men were highly skilled in everything so the less skilled jobs were left for women.

Although there were other well known Renaissance female artists such as Artemisia Gentileschi and Elisabetta Siriani, Sofinisba Aguissola was the superwoman of the Renaissance for women. Whitney Chadwick states, “Sofinisba Aguissola’s example opened up the possibility of painting to women socially acceptable profession, while her work established new conventions for self portraiture by women and for Italian painting.” (Chadwick, 77) Aguissola’s career had an influence in the possibility of female artwork getting accepted socially but it was not easy. Aguissola had many critics who were obviously men. There were comments on her work that she could not paint for the simple fact that she was a woman. It also had to do with her work escaping the male gaze.

Works Cited

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. Fifth ed. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2012. Print.

Swollen Woman, Shifting Canon: A Midwife Charm and the Birth of Secular Romance. by William D. Paden and Frances Freeman Paden 1400.

Links:

Male Gaze

Gender Roles