Workshop 14

14.
Constructing the Female Body:
Debased, Mutilated, and Dead Bodies in Religious Images

Organizers:

Touba Ghadessi, Art History, Northwestern University
Meredith TeGrotenhuis, Art History, Northwestern University

Description:

In Early Modern Europe, the female body as a subject of corporeal intrusion and degeneration did not fit within the normative canon of representation. Therefore, when artists depicted a female religious figure who was dead, whose body had been mutilated, or who was considered morally debased, they often resorted to a visual language that deviated from the accepted visual standards. Instead of relying on anatomy and objectivity, they stressed the external form. Instead of constructing the body from the inside out—as artists commonly did for male bodies—they constructed the body from the outside in.

This workshop will be concerned with this artistic treatment of the female religious figure as it relates to social conceptions of women, the contemporaneous interest in anatomy, and the role of the degenerate female body in Christian thought and practice. In a ten-minute introductory period, we will survey the individual interests of the participants, allowing us to tailor the discussion and tap into the expertise of those in the room. We will also run through the visual material on hand so that participants know what is available to refer to during the discussion.

In the first half-hour, we will focus the discussion on artworks originating in Northern Europe before the Reformation. The female body appears repeatedly in the figures of Eve, the virgin martyrs, and women in Last Judgment scenes, where the physicality of the female body restructures the narrative and meaning of religious images in order to instruct and inspire the viewer. How does the mode of representation reinforce the popular understanding and the sacred perception of the female body? How does the image function within the context of the Pre-Reformation period? What do the artworks teach about the theological status of women in the North?

The second part of our discussion will concentrate on Southern Europe. The female body, particularly epitomized by the figure of the Virgin Mary, followed very specific canons of representation following the edicts of the last Council of Trent. However, exceptions, such as Caravaggio’s 1605 Death of the Virgin, reevaluated the theological qualities assigned to female bodies in Post-Tridentine images and instead emphasized the corporeality of the female body. We would like to raise questions pertaining to the shift that occurred when the actual physicality of the Mother of Christ, or of a female saint, was highlighted: did such an emphasis effectively generate responses such as religious emotions in the viewer? How would an artist have treated a male body differently in a Post-Tridentine religious image? How did the theological and anatomical environments influence depictions of the female body in sacred images?

The final segment of our discussion will be reserved for a comparative analysis of the inflected representation of women in Europe. By addressing the degree to which the treatment of women bodies redirected the focus of religious imagery, this workshop wishes to raise new questions in the fields of art history, history of medicine, and religious studies. By considering the primacy of the sacred female figure as a physical body, we hope to explore the priority of the gendered body as a rhetorical device within a religious image. Therefore, the second plenary, Degree, Priority and Place would be the best platform for the expansion of this particular workshop. We encourage participants to bring their own questions and images which may further the discussion.

List of Readings:

Grössinger, Christa, Picturing Women in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997: 12-19. (8 pages)
Park, Katharine, “The Life of the Corpse: Division and Dissection in Late Medieval Europe,” Journal of the History of Medicine, 50.1 (January 1995): 115, 119, 126. (3 pages)
Sawday, Jonathan, The Body Emblazoned – Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture, London and New York: Routledge, 1995: 3, 6-7, 9-11. (6 pages)

Recommended Readings:

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art and Society. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1990. (Chapters 2 and 3)
Dresen-Coendèrs, Lène, ed. Saints and She-Devils: Images of Women in the 15th and 16th Centuries. London: Rubicon Press, 1987.
Miles, Margaret R. Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989.
Nead, Lynda. The Female Nude – Art, Obscenity and Sexuality. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
Suleiman, Susan Rubin, ed., The Female Body in Western Culture – Contemporary Perspectives, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1986. (Introduction)