Power of Women

In early images from the Gothic period genre subjects or "classical" ones such as Phyllis Riding Aristotle and Virgil in his Basket, in fact both medieval legendary accretions, were more popular than the biblical ones predominating later. They often appear on the same pieces as the Assault on the Castle of Love, as on a casket in Baltimore. This and similar subjects of courtly love mostly survive on ivory objects for female use, such as caskets or mirror-cases. It shows ladies defending a castle against men, generally unsuccessfully.[14] These images are essentially light-hearted romantic fantasy given a comic treatment; such scenes were sometimes staged as light relief at tournaments.[15]

The Power of Women theme is especially popular in Northern Renaissance art from the sixteenth century, which depicts "images drawn from historical, mythological, and biblical sources that illustrate women's power over men, specifically as a result of their sexual attractiveness".[16] Several of the stories involve the killing of the male, and this and their religious context effectively remove much of the comic potential of the group, but by no means the erotic possibilities exploited by many artists.

The question of the attitudes shown towards violence by women in the cause of virtue is perhaps best seen in the figure of Jael, whose killing of Sisera by hammering a tent peg into his head makes an especially graphic image. According to some feminist critics, depictions of her turned hostile in the Renaissance, and like Judith she is certainly grouped with "bad" figures such as Herodias and Delilah. Yet she was included, with Judith and Esther, as one of Hans Burgkmair's "Drei Gut Judin" ("Three Good Jewesses") trio of Biblical heroines in his Eighteen Worthies, adding nine women to the traditional male Nine Worthies.[17]

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, version in Florence, 1621

The Power of Women subjects are seen in painting and other media, but prints were their special home. Lucas van Leyden made two sets of woodcuts known as The Large and Small Power of Women. The subjects featured include Adam and Eve, Samson and Delilah, King Solomon, Herod and Herodias, Jael and Sisera, and, less usually, Jezebel and King Ahab. The woodcuts have somewhat static compositions, and it has been suggested that they draw from tableaux vivants of the scenes.[18] Another set by Hans Burgkmair (1519) is known as the Liebestorheiten or Follies of Love.[19] At the same time there was also an interest, often among the same artists, in women from similar settings who were powerless, or only able to escape their situations by suicide, such as Susanna, Dido of Carthage, Lucretia, and Verginia.[20] The story of Esther lay somewhere between these two extremes.[21]

The Little Masters were among those artists greatly interested in both groups. The treatment of both groups, especially in prints, was often frankly erotic, and these groups took their place alongside female saints and lovers both mythological and realistic in the common treatments of women in art. Interest in such themes spread to Italy, affecting Venice first, and the subjects became common in Late Renaissance Italian painting, and even more so during the Baroque, perhaps culminating in the work of Artemisia Gentileschi, who painted nearly all the biblical Power of Women subjects, most more than once. While her choice of subjects is assumed to be driven by her difficult life, Cristofano Allori's best known work, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, uses as models his former mistress for Judith, with her mother as the maid, and a self-portrait for the head of Holofernes.[22]

In Northern painting, the Cranachs were the first artists to paint the subjects often.[23] In 1513 Lucas Cranach the Elder decorated the nuptial bed of John, Elector of Saxony with a set of scenes including The Idolatry of Solomon as well as Hercules and Omphale (see below) and the Judgement of Paris. The respective sons of the patron and artist, John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony and Lucas Cranach the Younger, generated another set of paintings, now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.[24] The possibility has been raised that some of the Cranach workshop's many Judiths are portraits of ladies at the Saxon court;[25] some other paintings of Jael certainly are portraits.

Themes and context

Phyllis Riding Aristotle, Lucas van Leyden

Several of these subjects contain a part-comical element of role reversal in a society that was essentially patriarchal, above all the "quintessential image from the Power of Women topos, Phyllis Riding Aristotle."[26] The story of Phyllis and Aristotle dates from the early 13th century (when the Lai d'Aristote was written) and became the subject of popular poems, plays and moralizing sermons.[27] The theme was first analysed by Natalie Zemon Davis in 1975,[28] who concluded that the "overall functions" of these reversals was that "they afforded an expression of, and an outlet for, conflicts about authority within the system; and they also provided occasions by which the authoritarian current in family, workshop, and political life could be moderated by the laughter of disorder and paradoxical play. Accordingly they served to reinforce hierarchical structure".[29]

The role reversal subject of Hercules and Omphale did not fit the main Power of Women trope, as Hercules' period serving Omphale was not caused by interaction between them, and they later married. It became popular from the 16th century, and the Cranach family painted many versions showing Omphale and her ladies dressing Hercules in drag.[30]

Phyllis Riding Aristotle was painted on the walls of several German town halls,[31] though the design Albrecht Dürer made for Nuremberg, as part of a Power of Women cycle, was never carried out.[32] Some sets of prints have ornamental borders that suggest they were intended to be pasted to walls, as many larger prints were. While many of the smaller prints were probably mostly seen by male collectors and their friends, these paintings and wall-mounted prints "must have been intended to entertain or amuse both men and women".[33] Some of the Florentine Otto prints, essentially designed for a female audience, show women triumphing over men, though most show pacific scenes of lovers.[34]

Other large prints intended for walls, where Power of Women subjects are especially common, adopt a different type of composition from the small prints with a few figures, showing large and well-populated panoramic scenes where the key figures can be hard to pick out. David and Bathsheba or Salome's story are set amid wide townscapes, and Judith kills Holofernes in a corner of a huge battle scene in front of a walled city.[35]

The association of witchcraft specifically and almost exclusively with women was a novelty of the late 15th century, for which the book Malleus Maleficarum (1486) remains an emblem, though its significance has been questioned. The interpretation of the many images of witches has been the subject of considerable scholarly interest in recent decades, and many differing interpretations have been put forward. As well as allowing scope for imaginative fantasy, an erotic element is clear, above all in the work of Hans Baldung Grien, the artist most associated with the subject. The seriousness with which either the artist or their audience took the reality of witchcraft has been questioned; to some extent these seem to have been the horror movies of their day.[36] The Witch of Endor was a previously obscure subject that allowed the combination of biblical and witchcraft interest.

• 
  French Gothic ivory writing tablet cover with Phyllis seducing Aristotle and Virgil in his basket, 1340–60
• 
  Assault on the Castle of Love, ivory mirror case, 1340–60, France
• 
  Master of the Housebook, Aristotle and Phyllis, 15th-century engraving
• 
  Phyllis and Aristotle by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1530
• 
  Master E.S., Samson and Delilah, 1460s
• 
  The "Battle for the Trousers" motif: Israhel van Meckenem, The Angry Wife, genre engraving, 1490s[37]
• 
  Another van Meckenem; here the man performs the normally female work of spinning while his partner threatens him with an elaborate object suggesting power.
• 
  Juan de Flandes, Herodias' Revenge, 1496
• 
  Early 16th-century misericord of two women jousting, mounted on men, Walcourt, Belgium
• 
  Lucas van Leyden, The Idolatry of Solomon, inspired by his pagan wife, from the "Large Power of Women" set of woodcuts, 1514[38]
• 
  Detail of a design for Nuremberg Town Hall, Albrecht Dürer, 1521
• 
  Bewitched Stable Groom, Hans Baldung Grien, c. 1534[39]
• 
  Sebald Beham, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 1547[40]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Power of Women.

• Timoclea
• Master of the Weibermacht

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• Wolfthal, Diane. "Susan L. Smith, The Power of Women: A Topos in Medieval Art and Literature. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995" Medieval Feminist Newsletter 22 (1996)

• Smith, Susan L., The Power of Women: A 'Topos' in Medieval Art and Literature., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-8122-3279-0
• Tal, Guy, Witches on Top: Magic, Power, and Imagination in the Art of Early Modern Italy, Dissertation, Indiana University, 2006, Proquest, ISBN 0542847914, 9780542847912