Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D Part 1

Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D.

by Clara Erskine Clement.

PREFATORY NOTE

As a means of collecting material for this book I have sent to many artists in Great Britain and in various countries of Europe, as well as in the United States, a circular, asking where their studies were made, what honors they have received, the t.i.tles of their princ.i.p.al works, etc.

I take this opportunity to thank those who have cordially replied to my questions, many of whom have given me fuller information than I should have presumed to ask; thus a.s.suring correctness in my statements, which newspaper and magazine notices of artists and their works sometimes fail to do.

I wish especially to acknowledge the courtesy of those who have given me photographs of their pictures and sculpture, to be used as ill.u.s.trations.

CLARA ERSKINE CLEMENT.

INTRODUCTION

In studying the subject of this book I have found the names of more than a thousand women whose attainments in the Fine Arts--in various countries and at different periods of time before the middle of the nineteenth century--ent.i.tle them to honorable mention as artists, and I doubt not that an exhaustive search would largely increase this number. The stories of many of these women have been written with more or less detail, while of others we know little more than their names and the t.i.tles of a few of their works; but even our scanty knowledge of them is of value.

Of the army of women artists of the last century it is not yet possible to speak with judgment and justice, although many have executed works of which all women may be proud.

We have some knowledge of women artists in ancient days. Few stories of that time are so authentic as that of Kora, who made the design for the first bas-relief, in the city of Sicyonia, in the seventh century B. C.

We have the names of other Greek women artists of the centuries immediately preceding and following the Christian era, but we know little of their lives and works.

Calypso was famous for the excellence of her character pictures, a remarkable one being a portrait of Theodorus, the Juggler. A picture found at Pompeii, now at Naples, is attributed to this artist; but its authors.h.i.+p is so uncertain that little importance can be attached to it.

Pliny praised Eirene, among whose pictures was one of "An Aged Man" and a portrait of "Alcisthenes, the Dancer."

In the annals of Roman Art we find few names of women. For this reason Laya, who lived about a century before the Christian era, is important.

She is honored as the original painter of miniatures, and her works on ivory were greatly esteemed. Pliny says she did not marry, but pursued her art with absolute devotion; and he considered her pictures worthy of great praise.

A large picture in Naples is said to be the work of Laya, but, as in the case of Calypso, we have no a.s.surance that it is genuine. It is also said that Laya's portraits commanded larger prices than those of Sopolis and Dyonisius, the most celebrated portrait painters of their time.

Our scanty knowledge of individual women artists of antiquity--mingled with fable as it doubtless is--serves the important purpose of proving that women, from very ancient times, were educated as artists and creditably followed their profession beside men of the same periods.

This knowledge also awakens imagination, and we wonder in what other ancient countries there were women artists. We know that in Egypt inheritances descended in the female line, as in the case of the Princess Karamat; and since we know of the great architectural works of Queen Hashop and her journey to the land of Punt, we may reasonably a.s.sume that the women of ancient Egypt had their share in all the interests of life.

Were there not artists among them who decorated temples and tombs with their imperishable colors? Did not women paint those pictures of Isis--G.o.ddess of Sothis--that are like precursors of the pictures of the Immaculate Conception? Surely we may hope that a papyrus will be brought to light that will reveal to us the part that women had in the decoration of the monuments of ancient Egypt.

At present we have no reliable records of the lives and works of women artists before the time of the Renaissance in Italy.

M. Taine's philosophy which regards the art of any people or period as the necessary result of the conditions of race, religion, civilization, and manners in the midst of which the art was produced--and esteems a knowledge of these conditions as sufficient to account for the character of the art, seems to me to exclude many complex and mysterious influences, especially in individual cases, which must affect the work of the artists. At the same time an intelligent study of the art of any nation or period demands a study of the conditions in which it was produced, and I shall endeavor in this _resume_ of the history of women in Art--mere outline as it is--to give an idea of the atmosphere in which they lived and worked, and the influences which affected the results of their labor.

It has been claimed that everything of importance that originated in Italy from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century bore the distinctive mark of Fine Art. So high an authority as John Addington Symonds is in accord with this view, and the study of these four centuries is of absorbing interest.

Although the thirteenth century long preceded the practice of art by women, its influence was a factor in the artistic life into which they later came. In this century Andrea Tan, Guido da Siena, and other devoted souls were involved in the final struggles of Mediaeval Art, and at its close Cimabue and Duccio da Siena--the two masters whose Madonnas were borne in solemn procession through the streets of Florence and Siena, mid music and the pealing of bells--had given the new impulse to painting which brought them immortal fame. They were the heralds of the time when poetry of sentiment, beauty of color, animation and individuality of form should replace Mediaeval formality and ugliness; a time when the spirit of art should be revived with an impulse prophetic of its coming glory.

But neither this portentous period nor the fourteenth century is memorable in the annals of women artists. Not until the fifteenth, the century of the full Renaissance, have we a record of their share in the great rebirth.

It is important to remember that the art of the Renaissance had, in the beginning, a distinct office to fill in the service of the Church. Later, in historical and decorative painting, it served the State, and at length, in portrait and landscape painting, in pictures of genre subjects and still-life, abundant opportunity was afforded for all orders of talent, and the generous patronage of art by church, state, and men of rank and wealth, made Italy a veritable paradise for artists.

Gradually, with the revival of learning, artists were free to give greater importance to secular subjects, and an element of worldliness, and even of immorality, invaded the realm of art as it invaded the realms of life and literature.

This was an era of change in all departments of life. Chivalry, the great "poetic lie," died with feudalism, and the relations between men and women became more natural and reasonable than in the preceding centuries.

Women were liberated from the narrow sphere to which they had been relegated in the minstrel's song and poet's rhapsody, but as yet neither time nor opportunity had been given them for the study and development which must precede noteworthy achievement.

Remarkable as was the fifteenth century for intellectual and artistic activity, it was not productive in its early decades of great genius in art or letters. Its marvellous importance was apparent only at its close and in the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the works of Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Raphael, t.i.tian, and their followers emphasized the value of the progressive attainments of their predecessors.

The a.s.sertion and contradiction of ideas and theories, the rivalries of differing schools, the sweet devotion of Fra Angelico, the innovations of Masolino and Masaccio, the theory of perspective of Paolo Uccello, the varied works of Fabriano, Antonello da Messina, the Lippi, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, the Bellini, and their contemporaries, culminated in the inimitable painting of the Cinquecento--in works still unsurpa.s.sed, ever challenging artists of later centuries to the task of equalling or excelling them.

The demands of the art of the Renaissance were so great, and so unlike those of earlier days, that it is not surprising that few women, in its beginning, attained to such excellence as to be remembered during five centuries. Especially would it seem that an insurmountable obstacle had been placed in the way of women, since the study of anatomy had become a necessity to an artist. This, and kindred hindrances, too patent to require enumeration, account for the fact that but two Italian women of this period became so famous as to merit notice--Caterina Vigri and Onorata Rodiana, whose stories are given in the biographical part of this book.

In Flanders, late in the fourteenth and early in the fifteenth centuries, women were engaged in the study and practice of art. In Bruges, when the Van Eycks were inventing new methods in the preparation of colors, and painting their wonderful pictures, beside them, and scarcely inferior to them, was their sister, Margaretha, who sacrificed much of her artistic fame by painting portions of her brothers' pictures, unless the fact that they thought her worthy of thus a.s.sisting them establishes her reputation beyond question.

In the fifteenth century we have reason to believe that many women practised art in various departments, but so scanty and imperfect are the records of individual artists that little more than their names are known, and we have no absolute knowledge of the value of their works, or where, if still existing, they are to be seen.

The art of the Renaissance reached its greatest excellence during the last three decades of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century. This was a glorious period in the History of Art. The barbarism of the Middle Ages was essentially a thing of the past, but much barbaric splendor in the celebration of ceremonies and festivals still remained to satisfy the artistic sense, while every-day costumes and customs lent a picturesqueness to ordinary life. So much of the pagan spirit as endured was modified by the spirit of the Renaissance. The result was a new order of things especially favorable to painting.

An artist now felt himself as free to ill.u.s.trate the pagan myths as to represent the events in the lives of the Saviour, the Virgin and the saints, and the actors in the sacred subjects were represented with the same beauty and grace of form as were given the heroes and heroines of h.e.l.lenic legend. St. Sebastian was as beautiful as Apollo, and the imagination and senses were moved alike by pictures of Danae and the Magdalene--the two subjects being often the work of the same artist.

The human form was now esteemed as something more than the mere habitation of a soul; it was beautiful in itself and capable of awakening unnumbered emotions in the human heart. Nature, too, presented herself in a new aspect and inspired the artist with an ardor in her representation such as few of the older painters had experienced in their devotion to religious subjects.

This expansion of thought and purpose was inaugurating an art attractive to women, to which the increasing liberty of artistic theory and practice must logically make them welcome; a result which is a distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of sixteenth-century painting.

The sixteenth century was noteworthy for the generous patronage of art, especially in Florence, where the policy of its ruling house could not fail to produce marvellous results, and the history of the Medici discloses many reasons why the bud of the Renaissance perfected its bloom in Florence more rapidly and more gloriously than elsewhere.

For centuries Italy had been a treasure-house of Greek, Etruscan, and Byzantine Art. In no other country had a civilization like that of ancient Rome existed, and no other land had been so richly prepared to be the birthplace and to promote the development of the art of the Renaissance.

The intellectually progressive life of this period did much for the advancement of women. The fame of Vittoria Colonna, Tullia d'Aragona, Olympia Morata, and many others who merit a.s.sociation in this goodly company, proves the generous spirit of the age, when in the scholastic centres of Italy women were free to study all branches of learning.

The pursuit of art was equally open to them and women were pupils in all the schools and in the studios of many masters; even t.i.tian instructed a woman, and all the advantages for study enjoyed by men were equally available for women. Many names of Italian women artists could be added to those of whom I have written in the biographical portion of this book, but too little is known of their lives and works to be of present interest. There is, however, little doubt that many pictures attributed to "the School of" various masters were painted by women.

Art did not reach its perfection in Venice until later than in Florence, and its special contribution, its glorious color, imparted to it an attraction unequalled on the sensuous plane. This color surrounded the artists of that sumptuous city of luxurious life and wondrous pageants, and was so emphasized by the marvellous mingling of the semi-mist and the brilliancy of its atmosphere that no man who merited the name of artist could be insensible to its inspiration.

The old Venetian realism was followed, in the time of the Renaissance, by startling developments. In the works of Tintoretto and Veronese there is a combination of gorgeous draperies, splendid and often licentious costumes, brilliant metal accessories, and every possible device for enhancing and contrasting colors, until one is bewildered and must adjust himself to these dazzling spectacles--religious subjects though they may be--before any serious thought or judgment can be brought to bear upon their artistic merit; these two great contemporaries lived and worked in the final decades of the sixteenth century.

We know that many women painted pictures in Venice before the seventeenth century, although we have accurate knowledge of but few, and of these an account is given later in this book.

We who go from Paris to London in a few hours, and cross the St. Gothard in a day, can scarcely realize the distance that separated these capitals from the centres of Italian art in the time of the Renaissance. We have, however, abundant proof that the sacred fire of the love of Art and Letters was smouldering in France, Germany, and England--and when the inspiring breath of the Renaissance was wafted beyond the Alps a flame burst forth which has burned clearer and brighter with succeeding centuries.