Figuring faith and female power in the art of Rubens / J. Vanessa Lyon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lyon, J. Vanessa, author.

Series:

Visual and material culture, 1300-1700 ; 22.

Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700 ; 22

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rubens, Peter Paul, 1577-1640--Criticism and interpretation.

Rubens, Peter Paul.

Rubens, Peter Paul, 1577-1640.

Women in art.

Human figure in art.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

248 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press [2020]

Summary:

This book argues that the Baroque painter, propagandist, and diplomat, Peter Paul Rubens, was not only aware of rapidly shifting religious and cultural attitudes toward women, but actively engaged in shaping them. Today, Rubens's paintings continue to be used-and abused-to prescribe and proscribe certain forms of femininity. Repositioning some of the artist's best-known works within seventeenth-century Catholic theology and female court culture provides a feminist corrective to a body of art historical scholarship in which studies of gender and religion are often mutually exclusive. Moving chronologically through Rubens's lengthy career, the author shows that, in relation to the powerful women in his life, Rubens figured the female form as a transhistorical carrier of meaning whose devotional and rhetorical efficacy was heightened rather than diminished by notions of female difference and particularity.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Samson and Dilemma: Rubens Confronts the Woman on Top

2. Making Assumptions: Marian Tropes after Italy

3. Maria de' Medici and Isabel Clara Eugenia

pt. 1 Recycling Sovereignty

Maria de' Medici

pt. 2 Figuring Faith and Female Power

Isabel Clara Eugenia

4. Peace Embraces Plenty: Queering Female Virtue at Whitehall

5. All That Depends on Color: Feminizing Rubens in the Seventeenth Century.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Electronic version: Lyon, J. Vanessa. Figuring faith and female power in the art of Rubens.

ISBN:

9789462985513

9462985510

OCLC:

1151897580