Gender, Otherness, and Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Art (The New Middle Ages)

This collection examines gender and Otherness as tools to understand medieval and early modern art as products of their social environments. The essays, uniting up-and-coming and established scholars, explore both iconographic and stylistic similarities deployed to construct gender identity. The text analyzes a vast array of medieval artworks, including Dieric Bouts’s __Justice of Otto III,__ AlbrechtDürer’s __Feast of the Rose Garland,__Rembrandt van Rijn’s __Naked Woman Seated on a Mound,__ and Renaissance-era transi tombs of French women to illuminate medieval and early modern ideas about gender identity, poverty, religion, honor, virtue, sexuality, and motherhood, among others. Preface 6 Acknowledgements 10 Contents 11 Editors and Contributors 13 List of Figures 15 Chapter 1 Introduction to Gender and Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Art 18 Chapter 2 Facing Medusa: A Thirteenth-Century Reliquary of King David 31 The Origins of the Reliquary 36 Facing Medusa: Desire and the Monstrous Female 36 Relics and Amulets: The Power of Pieces 40 David’s Desire and Repentance 41 The Reliquary’s Aspectu Desiderabilis 46 Chapter 3 Picturing Maternal Anxiety in the Miracle of the Jew of Bourges 58 The Jewish Boy’s Mother—A Pivotal Character 60 Books for Mary de Bohun 61 Mother as Interpreter of Violence 64 Mary de Bohun and the Virgin Mary 65 Textual Sources of the Miracle of the Jew of Bourges 65 Reading the Jewish Mother 66 Mothers as Mediatrix Figures 68 The Vernon Manuscript 68 The Neville of Hornby Hours 71 The Smithfield Decretals 72 Mother as Boundary Marker and Interpreter 73 The Jewish Mother as Role Model 74 Chapter 4 Representing Women and Poverty in Late Medieval Art 81 The Current Study 82 Definitions of and Attitudes Towards the Poor 83 Ideology and Medieval Images of the Poor 85 Involuntarily Poor Women as Recipients of Charity 87 Voluntarily Poor Women as Givers of Charity 94 Conclusions 97 Chapter 5 Forms of Testimony in Dirk Bouts’s Justice of Otto III 104 The Justice of Otto III: Narrative, Sources, and Audiences 109 Structures of Judgment 111 Representing the Female Witness 114 The Ordeal and Its Image 118 Words and Pictures 124 Chapter 6 Dürer’s Feast of the Rose Garland and the Scuola dei Tedeschi as Strategies for Mediating Foreign, Masculine Identity 133 The Germans in Venice 138 Sequestering the Germans in Venice 141 Performing Dual Identities: Germans as an “Other” in Venice 144 Tensions in the German Community 146 Performing Dual Identities: Equality and Brotherhood 150 Chapter 7 “The Monster, Death, Becomes Pregnant:” Representations of Motherhood in Female Transi Tombs from Renaissance France 163 Monstrosity, Otherness, and Gender 166 The Monstrosity of Motherhood in Renaissance France 168 The Transis of Anne of Brittany and Claude of France 172 The Transis of Catherine de Medici 179 Chapter 8 Embodying Gluttony as Women’s Wildness: Rembrandt’s Naked Woman Seated on a Mound, c. 1629–1631 191 The Naked Woman and Women’s Appetites 195 Nakedness and Wildness: Fat or Fashion? 204 Embodying the Wildness of Women in the Northern Print Tradition 208 Bibliography 222 Index 252 Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii Introduction to Gender and Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Art (Sherry C. M. Lindquist)....Pages 1-13 Facing Medusa: A Thirteenth-Century Reliquary of King David (Beth Fischer)....Pages 15-41 Picturing Maternal Anxiety in the Miracle of the Jew of Bourges (Carlee A. Bradbury)....Pages 43-65 Representing Women and Poverty in Late Medieval Art (Holly Flora)....Pages 67-89 Forms of Testimony in Dirk Bouts’s Justice of Otto III (Jessen Kelly)....Pages 91-119 Dürer’s Feast of the Rose Garland and the Scuola dei Tedeschi as Strategies for Mediating Foreign, Masculine Identity (John R. Decker)....Pages 121-150 “The Monster, Death, Becomes Pregnant:” Representations of Motherhood in Female Transi Tombs from Renaissance France (Marian Bleeke)....Pages 151-178 Embodying Gluttony as Women’s Wildness: Rembrandt’s Naked Woman Seated on a Mound, c. 1629–1631 (Michelle Moseley-Christian)....Pages 179-209 Back Matter ....Pages 211-244 This collection examines gender and Otherness other as tools to understand medieval and early modern art as products of their social environments. The essays, uniting a diverse array of up-and-coming and established scholars, explore both iconographic and stylistic similarities deployed to construct gender identity. The text analyzes a vast array of medieval artworks, including Dieric Bouts’s Justice of Otto III, Albrecht Dürer’s Feast of the Rose Garland, Rembrandt van Rijn’s Naked Woman Seated on a Mound, and Renaissance-era transi tombs of French women to illuminate medieval and early modern ideas about gender identity, poverty, religion honor, virtue, sexuality, and motherhood, among others. "This collection examines gender and otherness as tools to understand medieval and early modern art as products of their social environments. The essays, uniting up-and-coming and established scholars, explore both iconographic and stylistic similarities deployed to construct gender identity. The text analyzes a vast array of medieval artworks, including Dieric Bouts's Justice of Otto III, Albrecht Dürer's Feast of the Rose Garland, Rembrandt van Rijn's Naked Woman Seated on a Mound, and Renaissance-era transi tombs of French women to illuminate medieval and early modern ideas about gender identity, poverty, religion, honor, virtue, sexuality, and motherhood, among others."--Back cover