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The document discusses the historical focus of art history on male artists, tracing its origins to the Renaissance and the ideal of the solitary genius. It highlights how this perspective has marginalized women artists and undervalued their contributions, leading to significant gaps in the historical record. Case studies of Marietta Robusti, Judith Leyster, and women artists from Jacques-Louis David's circle illustrate the impact of these biases on the understanding of artistic collaboration and market valuation.

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11 views1 page

Document

The document discusses the historical focus of art history on male artists, tracing its origins to the Renaissance and the ideal of the solitary genius. It highlights how this perspective has marginalized women artists and undervalued their contributions, leading to significant gaps in the historical record. Case studies of Marietta Robusti, Judith Leyster, and women artists from Jacques-Louis David's circle illustrate the impact of these biases on the understanding of artistic collaboration and market valuation.

Uploaded by

mkkrockstars
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© © All Rights Reserved
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INTRODUCTION

Art History and the Woman Artist

The origins of art history’s focus on the personalities and work of exceptional
individuals can be traced back to the early Renaissance desire to celebrate
Italian cities and their achievements by focusing on their more remarkable
male citizens. The first formulation of the new ideal of the artist as a learned
man, and the work of art as the unique expression of a gifted individual,
appears in Leon Battista Alberti’s treatise, On Painting, first published in
1435. Modern art historical scholarship, beginning in the late eighteenth
century and profoundly influenced by Idealist philosophy with its emphasis
on the autonomy of the art object, has closely identified with this view of the
artist as a solitary genius, his creativity mapped and given value in
monographs and catalogues. Since the nineteenth century, art history has
also been closely aligned with the establishing of authorship, which forms
the basis of the economic valuing of works of Western art. Our language and
our expectations about art have tended to rank art produced by women
below that by men in “quality,” and thus their work is often of lesser
monetary value. This has profoundly influenced our knowledge and
understanding of the contributions made by women to painting and
sculpture. The number of women artists, well known in their own day, for
whom no work now exists is a tantalizing indication of the vagaries of artistic
attribution.

A review of attribution problems in the work of several women artists reveals


one reason why any study of women artists must examine how art history is
written and the assumptions that underly its hierarchies. Let us consider
three paradigmatic cases from three centuries: Marietta Robusti, the
sixteenth-century Venetian painter; Judith Leyster, the seventeenth-century
Dutch painter; and a group of women artists prominent in the circle of
Jacques-Louis David, the eighteenth-century French painter. Their stories not
only elucidate the way that art history’s emphasis on individual genius has
distorted our understanding of workshop procedures and the nature of
collaborative artistic production, they also illustrate the extent to which art
history’s close alliance with art market economics has

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