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Gayatri Khatwani
Ms. Santos
English 9 Honors
14 March 2016
Women Artists During the Renaissance
Whenever a topic such as Renaissance artists comes up, women are left out. People will
always mention great artists such as Michelangelo or DaVinci, but do they ever mention
Sofonisba Anguissola or Caterina van Hemessen? Chances are , they dont. In fact, they probably
have never heard those names, or they have a faint memory which reminds them of that name,
but they dont know much detail. There were definitely women artists during the Renaissance,
but the true reason that they arent known today remains unknown. Societys restriction on
women affected the life of female artists, but women artists did get support from others, which
caused a rise in their fame. During the Renaissance, there were several female artists, but their
fame rose as well as decreased and then disappeared.
The major reason that female artists couldn't experiment with art as much as they would
like to was because of the restrictions that was placed on them by society. In the twelfth century,
during the birth and development of the Renaissance, there were several changes that occurred in
society, yet the role of women of the Renaissance were still subjected. Women artists weren't
recognized by society, for they were expected to just serve the role of a mother and housewife;
they were looked down upon and many didn't encourage women to take up art as a profession or
even a hobby (Anonymous). Society also made sure that the behaviour of women was put in a
way that made them inferior to men. "In sixteenth-century Italy, the terms "woman" and "artist"
simply did not go together. In fact, the "feminine" virtues desired of one were the opposite of the

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"masculine" virtues expected of the other. Women, by reason of being female, should be silent,
passive, and private." (Jacobs, Fredrika Herman). Women, especially housewives and mothers,
were expected to stay inside their homes the entire day, taking care of the household and being
hidden from the public.
While women were subjected to being mothers and housewives, those who were allowed
to practice art were further restricted from several things. For example, as I mentioned earlier,
women were always hidden from public and they were prohibited to paint using the fresco
technique, in which an artist paints on wet plaster. Aside from not being able to use the fresco
technique, women werent allowed to study the male nude, and that was considered very
important for an artist to study.
You may be thinking, with all these restrictions, how did those few women artists that
existed learned to paint? Any male artist would usually be an apprentice for another artist, but
apprenticeships were not available to women. People expected women to paint as good as the
men who were apprentices, but women couldn't do that, since apprenticeships were considered
inappropriate and weren't available for women, so they only learned what their fathers wanted
them to learn (Masters, Rachel D.). Because of this, the only acceptable thing that women could
paint would be any religious scene, even though the Renaissance was a period where people
started shifting from religious scenes and moving towards making their own individual
masterpieces (Masters, Rachel D.). Even with these restraint on female artists, some of them
were able to paint as well as other male artists, and many people recognized their talent, but
refused to acknowledge it.
Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1635) was an Italian painter who was an apprentice for
Bernardino Gatti, but only because her father wanted her and her sisters to be trained to become

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artists. According to ArtCyclopedia, in 1554 she traveled to Rome and met Michelangelo, who
recognized her talent. Michelangelo even sent her some of his own drawings so that she would
copy them and send back to him for critique (Anonymous). From her visit to Rome, we can see
that the great artist Michelangelo himself recognized her talent in the arts and tried to boost this
talent. By giving her some of his own drawings, he supported her and inspired her to keep on
being an artist. In 1559, she was invited to join the Spanish court of Philip II where she became
the painting tutor to Queen Elisabeth of Valois.
Another famous female artist is Caterina van Hemessen (1528-1588). She was taught to
paint by her father, Jan Sanders van Hemessen. Unlike other women, she painted portraits of
wealthy elites instead of religious scenes. She was even a teacher to three males aspiring to
become artists, and she was patronized by Maria Theresa of Austria (Anonymous). We see that
both fathers of these female artists supported them and started teaching their daughters how to
paint. Caterina van Hemessen, however, had a little more fame and was able to teach three males,
but both female artists were patronized by a person in the royal family.
Levina Teerlinc, another important female artist, was a Flemish artist who was trained by
her father, the well known Simon Bening. According to ArtCyclopedia, "She limited her output
to portrait miniatures, which are personal mementos which tend to become widely dispersed and
are not formally displayed like full-sized paintings are. As a result, she is less well known than
her predecessors and it is more difficult to attribute her works authoritatively. In fact, despite the
fact that she is known to have painted many members of the court, there is only a handful of
works which are attributed to her and none which is definitively known to be by her hand."
During the Renaissance, it was more common for artists to sign their name at the bottom of their
artwork because the Renaissance allowed more individuality for the artists, but since Teerlinc

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didnt sign hers, only a few of her paintings are attributed to her. Levina Teerlinc, just like van
Hemessen and Anguissola, limited herself to portraits of the wealthy elite.
Not everyone restricted women from painting what they wanted. As I mentioned earlier,
Michelangelo supported Sofonisba Anguissola when he saw her talent in painting. He didnt just
acknowledge that, but he also gave her a few of his drawings to boost her. In a quote from
Gender in the Art, we have more evidence that other artists supported females: "following the
Aristotelian approach, women were perceived as imperfect, created inferior to men. In his De
claris mulieribus (Concerning famous women), Giovanni Boccaccio (13131375), the Italian
Renaissance poet and writer, introduced women as powerful role models. Nevertheless, the
virtues that Boccaccio saw women capable of achieving were established "male qualities" of the
time." People divided both the genders with different characteristics. Females were supposed to
be quiet, peaceful and submissive, while males were masculine, strong, and intelligent, but
Boccaccios beliefs were accepted by other males that supported female artists.
The talent of female artists were always compared to male artists by others, regardless if
they were better or not. Nowadays, when a person sees a painting from the Renaissance they
would normally think that it was painted by a male artist. Also, when people find new paintings
the credit for the painting is often given to men rather than women, but nowadays, research is
being done on newlyfound paintings, and people have discovered some paintings that were made
by women, not by men. As I mentioned earlier, apprenticeships werent available to women, yet
others expected them to be as good as the males, or else they shouldnt paint at all. Usually
women were apprentices with the approval of their father, which most likely was an artist
himself.

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Several factors contributed to the rise as well as decrease in the fame of female artists.
Female artists werent completely blocked from art; they were patronized by the wealthy elite
and support from other artists allowed them to pursue their artistic talent with more interest, but
still, the number of female artists were few. In the book Defining the Renaissance: Virtuosa by
Fredrika H. Jacobs, it is written, "An artist's inclusion in this study depends upon her having been
active in Italy during the sixteenth century. This criterion is flexible only to the degree that her
activity extended into the seventeenth century" (2). Even the little amount of women artists had
to keep on painting for a long while for her fame to pass on to the next century, but due to the
small numbers and restriction put by society, for a woman to be artistically active during the
Renaissance was not a possibility. Another excerpt from Fredrika H. Jacobss book states,
approximately half of the forty women artists discussed in this book survive only as a name on
a printed page. (1). This book concentrates on women artists, and if only 40 are mentioned in
this book, then we can see how tiny the amount of female artists they were and how the credit
given to them is even more tiny.
There were several female artists during the Renaissance, but their fame disappeared after
a rise and decrease. The different way that women portrayed themselves through art could have
been what gave them more freedom and what allowed them to spread feminism (Anonymous).
Artists such as Anguissola presented women in a fiercer and independent way, creating a sense of
strength among women. Even though there were many female artists during the Renaissance, the
lack of support and resources caused them to not achieve the goals they could have achieved.

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Sources

1. Anonymous. "Gender in Art: Renaissance." Net Industries. Net Industries, 2016.


Web. 6 Mar. 2016. <http://science.jrank.org/pages/9459/
Gender-in-Art-Renaissance-Baroque.html>.
2. Anonymous. "The Hidden Women of Art." Woman With Drive. Ed. Anonymous. Porsche
Cars Australia, 10 Apr. 2013. Web. 4 Mar. 2016.
<http://www.womanwithdrive.com.au/the-hidden-women-of-art/>.
3. Anonymous. "Italian Women Artists from Renaissance to Baroque." More Women
Artists. N.p., 2007. Web. 7 Mar. 2016. <http://moorewomenartists.org/
italian-women-artists-from-renaissance-to-baroque/>.
4. Anonymous. "Women Artists of the Renaissance." ArtCyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 6
Mar. 2016. <http://www.artcyclopedia.com/hot/
women-artists-of-the-renaissance-1.html>.
5. Jacobs, Fredrika Herman. Defining the Renaissance Virtuosa: Women Artists and
the Language of Art History and Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.
Print.
6. Masters, Rachel D., "The Portraiture of Women During the Italian Renaissance"
(2013). Honors Theses. Paper 118.

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