One reason why women artists become more easily lost throughout history is because they have traditionally changed their names when married. Some records have even been deliberately altered. Collectors and dealers may re-sign paintings with the names of better-known artists who worked in similar styles to make them more valuable. Works done by women have often been re-assigned to their male teachers or relatives under the assumption that no first-class art could have been produced by a woman (Heller, 11).
It is sruprising that female artists existed during the middle ages considering that most medieval women married by fourteen and became indulged with a life of domestic chores, childbearing, and childrearing. But in some ways they were better off than their antiquity or Renaissance counterparts. Present-day documents reveal that medieval women, especially those not married, held a range of jobs working as brewers, butchers, and merchants. Of those who made art, specific works assigned to specific women is rare, since they made mostly embroideries and manuscript illuminations (Heller, 12).
The women who worked with manuscripts were generally either literate, wealty with sufficient leisure time to perfect their skills, or nuns who had access to training, materials, space, and time. Some works have been identified by a few medieval women painters, including manuscript illuminations by Ende, who was a tenth-century Spanish num; by Guda, a German nun active in the twelfth century; and Claricia, a Bavarian lay woman who worked in a twelfth-century convent scriptorium (Heller, 12).
Most art of the Middle Ages was done in the monastaries. Access to convents, the intellectual and artistic center for women during the periods between the sixth and sixteenth centuries, and education was usually determined by a noble birth. Historians have divided the history of the medieval church into two periods separated by the late eleventh-century reforms of Pope Gregory VII. The division is important because the Gregorian Reform, coinciding with the dvelopment of feudal society, greatly inhibited the role of women in the church and led to the emergence of a new tradition of female mysticism. The division also emphasized an ideology of divine womanhood. This reached its peak in the twelfth-century cult of the Virgin Mary (Chadwick, 39).
The founding of a convent by Bishop Caesarius of Arles in 512 A.D. headed by the bishop's sister, Caesaria, marks the origins of female monasticism in Western Europe. Caesarius wrote, "Between psalms and fasts, vigils and reading, let the virgins of Christ copy holy books beautifully." The foundation of this convent initiated a tradition of learned women as nuns. Within the convent women had access to learning even though they were forbidden to teach (Chadwick, 39).
Traditional art history has omitted women from discussions of the production of the double monasteries, but there is evidence from the eighth century that powerful and learned abbesses from noble families ran scriptoria in which manuscripts were copied and illuminated. Documents from the time reveal a list of women's names attatched to manuscripts after 800 A.D. when the convent of Chelles, directed by Charlemagne's sister Gidela produced thirteen volumes of manuscripts (Chadwick, 40).
Despite the evidence of active women in British and Carolingian scriptoria, the first documented example of an extended cycle of minatures was worked on by Ende, who assisted in the painting of a manuscript depicting the Apocalyptic vision of St. John the Divine compiled by the Spanich monk Beatus of Liebana around 786 A.D. She had also been identified with a school of illuminators in medieval Spain. Her involvement proves the modern assumption that only monks worked in the scriptoria as false (Chadwick, 41).
The development of feudalism and the effects of church reform by the tenth and eleventh centuries began to deprive women of powers they excercised in the earlier Middle Ages. It is soley in Germany, where the Ottonian Empire fostered the flowering of female intellectual and artistic culture, that the work of individual women can be traced (Chadwick, 41).
The output of Ottonian scriptoria was voluminous. Diemud of the Cloister
of Wessbrun in Bavaria was among the many women illuminators in the Middle
Ages involved in such scriptoria. We know to 45 books completed by her,
each distinguished by ornate initial lettering. The contributions of such
women to the history of illustrated books are well documented. They range
from the illuminated astronomical treatise from Alsace, which includes
a representation of the Abbess Hitda offering her Gospel Book to St. Walburga,
the Cloister's patron, to a self-portrait by Claricia, who dangles as the
tail of the 'Q' in a German psalter from Augsburg (c. 1200). Based on Claricia's
dress, it is assumed that she was probably a lay student at the convent:
This image is shown below (Chadwick, 44-45).
During the twelfth century, a new type of Christian illuminated encyclopedia emerged. It provoked a new interest in cosmological, ethical, and eschatological aspects of the world. The fullest expression of such aspects were found in the work of Herrad of Landsberg and Hildegard of Bingen. This includes Herrad's illustrated encyclopedia. the Hortus Deliciarum(Garden of Delights), written between 1160 and 1170; and, Hildegard's visionary book of knowledge, The Scivias, completed after ten years of work in 1152. These are two of the most magnificant religuous compilations by women in western history (Chadwick, 45-46).
Hildegard left behind a body of work unparalleled by all others in its range. The texts in which she describes her religious experience are of particular importance to art historians due to their visionary images. The Scivias ( Know the Ways of the Lord) consists of 35 visions relating and illustrating the history of salvation. It appears to be one of the first medieval manuscripts in which line and color are utilized to reveal the images of a supernatural contemplation. The paintings are characterized by a highly individualized sensibility (Chadwick, 52).
The miniature shown here from The Scivias presents Hldegard and
the monk Volmar in the monastery at Bingen. Hildegard sits in a large room
enclosed by two smaller ones. The vision descends in a great flash of light
from heaven and pierces her head and eyes. Volmar and Hildegard prepare
to record the vision on a wax tablet (Chadwick, 53).
Aside from illuminations, many medieval women were involved in embroidery.
In England, an international market for Opus Anglicanum, a kind
of ecclesiastical embroidery, led to a shift from domestic production,
mainly by women scattered around the country, to an organized guild workshop
headed by males in London. The "Syon Cope" (taken from Chadwick, 54-55),
worked on between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, examplifies
this hightly developed form of medieval art. It equalled painting and sculpture
in status at the time (Chadwick, 56).
Opus Anglicanumincorporated silk and metal threads, pearls, jewels, and gold on a ground of velvet or linen. This "intricate" and "wonderfully expressive" art form portrayed glissening scenes of everyday life and Biblical events. After the mid thirteenth century, women disappeared from its professional production and modern accounts that identified this form of needlework with feminine achievemnet have obscured the means of its production (Chadwick, 57)_.
The rise of secular scriptoria also occurred in the thirteenth century. The production and illustration of books moved outside the monestary. Book making became a "luxury industry", and was carried out close to urban centers of money and power. Ther term imagier appears, referring to a broad spectrum of art from painting to sculpture, making it difficult to determine specific activities of women. Tax rolls in Paris, however, between 1292 and 1313 reveal women in these fields as being considerably low (Chadwick, 57).
Much of the works completed by Medieval women have not even been descovered yet. Because of their name changes due to marriage and the delilberate disappearance of their signatures on works by pompous-assed men, much of their recognition goes unclaimed. This is such a shame. Because of such barriers, finding information on women artists in the Middle Ages can be quite a task. They did not even achieve major international reputations until the mid-sixteenth century, since they individually "did not compare" to their male counterparts before that time (Heller, 13). Hopefully within the next few years, more can be discovered about individual women in art and compilations can be formed so art students, like myself, can trace the roots of my craft.
References:
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. New York: Thames and Hudson Inc., 1990.
Heller, Nancy G. Women Artists, An Illustrated History. New York:
Abbeville Press, 1991.
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