Female Artists in History

Women Creating Culture: Sofonisba Anguissola, Mary Wollstonecraft and Emily Dickinson
Introduction
While the patriarchal heritage of the West commonly references the contributions of men to history and culture, the West would not be what it is today without the contributions to culture made by women as well. This paper will look at the contributions of three women in particular—Sofonisba Anguissola, the Italian Renaissance painter whose skill caught the attention of Michelangelo and ultimately won her a position in the court of King Phillip II of Spain; Mary Wollstonecraft, whose Vindication of the Rights of Women in the 18th century opened the door for the 19th and 20th centuries’ women’s movements; and Emily Dickinson, whose poetry of the 19th century was lauded by second wave feminists such as Adrienne Rich, who identified Dickinson as an important inspiration in her own work. These women helped shape but were also shaped by their cultures. This paper will explain how that happened, how gender roles impacted their creativity, how their creativity made important contributions to culture in their own era and how their contributions reverberated to different disciplines and different eras and time periods so that they are even being felt today in the 21st century.
How the Women Shaped Their Culture
Sofonisba Anguissola
There were not many celebrated female artists of the Renaissance, but Sofonisba Anguissola was one of them and her artistry helped pave the way for other female artists, who were inspired by her works. Her skill, however, was not just admired by women. Michelangelo—the artist responsible for David, the Pieta, the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Last Supper—was deeply impressed and gave her considerable guidance, as was the Dutch painter Van Dyck, who as a young artist visited with her when she was in her late 90s in order to learn the “true principles” of painting from a true master (Chisholm, 1911). Her 1565 portrait of Queen Elisabeth of Valois was considered a masterpiece by many and was copied by numerous artists. Her ability to paint exquisite facial features and depict fine clothing set her quite apart from many others of the age.
Were it not for Sofonisba Anguissola even today’s female artists like Georgia O’Keefe would have no forerunners and no foundation for women creators in the field of painting. After having an aristocratic marriage arranged for her by Phillip II himself, Sofonisba became a wealth patroness of the arts in her old age when her husband passed. Having produced dozens upon dozens of works of powerful patrons, she is still regarded as one of the finest Renaissance artists and her portraits hang in museums all over the world, from Madrid to Milwaukee. Though Sofonisba came from a lower class family, her talent and artistry enabled her to rise up through the patronage of kings, queens and princes.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Wollstonecraft’s contribution to culture at the end of the 18th century was her monumental work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman—a philosophical response of sorts to Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man. Wollstonecraft’s argument was that women are believed by Enlightenment society to be inferior to men by the fact of their very nature and that this is wholly wrong. Women are not inferior to men by nature and were they to be given the same access to education that men have, Wollstonecraft argues, women would prove that they are just as capable of intelligent discourse as men. The fact that she was able to argue her point so well proved that women were not naturally inferior and that a monopoly on education was really the only thing propping men up as their actions often proved them to be most irrational, self-centered, emotional, inconsiderate and unkind in a number of ways.
Wollstonecraft argued for women’s rights by focusing on the importance of increasing access to education for women and allowing them to develop the minds God gave them: She explicitly protested that a “false system of female manners [has] been reared, which robs the whole sex of its dignity, and classes the brown and fair with the smiling flowers that only adorns the land. This has ever been the language of men, and the fear of departing from a supposed sexual character, has made even women of superior sense adopt the same sentiments. Thus understanding, strictly speaking, has been denied to woman; and instinct, sublimated into wit and cunning, for the purposes of life, has been substituted in its stead” (Wollstonecraft, 1792). Wollstonecraft used this line of thinking to convey to society just why the men were wrong to limit the woman’s development. In so doing, she inspired activists in the following century, which saw women more and more coming to the fore to argue against social trends that they believed to be harmful—such as slavery, drinking, and voting being a male institution only.
Emily Dickinson
Dickinson’s poetry was never published during her own lifetime, but once it was published it became generally revered particularly among second wave feminists like Adrienne Rich, whose own poetry pushed the boundaries of norms. Dickinson wrote with an aching honesty that no one had ever seen before. With poems like “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” and “I Like a Look of Agony,” she revealed a strain in womanhood that none had ever been bold enough to put in verse.
Rich would argue a century later that Dickinson empowered women because she embraced her identity as a poet even if it meant being shunned by the popular presses and the public in general, who never knew her during her own time (Juhasz, 1983). The fact that she made the choice was what Rich found inspiring. Emily did seem to embrace the idea of being ignored. For instance, she wrote one poem, which starts, “I’m Nobody! Who are you? / Are you—Nobody—too? / Then there’s a pair of us! / Don’t tell! They’d advertise—you know! / How dreary—to be—Somebody! / How public—like a Frog— / To tell one’s name—the livelong June— / To an admiring Bog!” In short, Dickinson’s disdain for the limelight was not incidental: it was part and parcel with who she was and what she wanted to write about. She was true to herself and to her nature.
How the Culture Shaped the Women
For Sofonisba Anguissola, prescribed gender roles impacted women’s creativity in very real ways. Most women were expected to be homemakers and wives or else religious in the Renaissance world. Sofonisba did not exactly fit into either mold as her vocation was to be an artist. Though many women undoubtedly had artistic pretensions in the 16th and 17th centuries, they were not so commonly initiated into the guilds that protected the arts. A female artist was much more the exception than the rule. The female intelligence, even by the 18th century when Mary Wollstonecraft penned her Vindication of the Rights of Women, was not held in high esteem by patriarchs who believed a woman’s role consisted of being silent and supporting her husband by maintaining the home and rearing the children. Wollstonecraft’s Vindication was an effort to show the leaders of the Enlightenment that women were capable of intellectual thought and often had more sophisticated and more sensible ideas than their male peers enjoyed. It also advocated for respect for womanhood—a respect that the men of the Enlightenment were not much willing to give (Jones, 2000).
For Emily Dickinson it was much the same. As an unmarried woman and one not particularly interested in joining any sort of religious institution, she was essentially confined to the home. That situation mostly satisfied her as she embraced her role as a hermit of sorts. However, it did not give her the opportunity for fame or adulation that other artists enjoyed. She would have very much liked the satisfaction of having some admirers, and the loneliness of her situation comes through often in her poetry. She writes of isolation and despair the way Whitman wrote of grandiose feeling: but whereas Whitman was admired by and large by the public, Dickinson’s sole attempt at publication resulted in some critical words of an uncritical editor—words that even inspired a retort from Dickinson in verse. Dickinson had originally submitted four poems to him for review with a letter in response to his public call for more poetry written by women. Her letter simply stated, “Mr. Higginson, Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive? The Mind is so near itself – it cannot see, distinctly – and I have none to ask…” (Sewall, 1974, p. 541).
The images that defined women in Emily’s day were similar to those that defined them in the days of Wollstonecraft and Sofonisba: women were wives and mothers, educators of the young—but never professionals or leaders in the public sphere. Wollstonecraft’s out-spoken Vindication was about as bold as a woman could get in the 18th century. It left a mark because it was so far outside the norm. It was not customary for a woman to rebuke the mass of men in general in so public and rational and direct a way. Wollstonecraft’s daughter Mary went on to marry one of the most notorious Romantic poets of the following generation—Percy Bysshe Shelley—a marriage that inspired the gothic horror work Frankenstein. Had her mother not inspired her to pursue such a life, one of the all-time great works of gothic fiction would never have been written.
The narrowly-defined gender roles and images of the 18th and 19th centuries essentially meant that Wollstonecraft and Dickinson would have very limited roles in the public world. Dickinson was simply not even known—aside from a few acquaintances and Thomas Higginson; and though Higginson had asked for female poets to step up, he was a bit taken aback by Dickinson’s rather startling and honest poetry and was not even quite comfortable promoting it until she had passed on to the next world. Women who rocked the boat in the 18th and 18th centuries simply were not long for this world. For Sofonisba it was a bit different: she did not set out to rock the boat or redefine gender roles or norms. She did not engage in an artistry that was radical (like Dickinson) or in a public discourse that cut against the grain (like Wollstonecraft). She accepted teaching from the finest artist of the Renaissance (Michelangelo) and went on to tutor some of the finest artists of the Baroque (such as Van Dyck). Sofonisba offended none and did not ever attempt to rock the boat. She was admired for her skill and esteemed for her work by the highest of dignitaries, including a pope. According to the customs of her time, she accepted an arranged marriage, made by Phillip II, and when her first husband died, she married another—a sea captain she met and fell in love with. Her life was without controversy in many ways, which indicates that in spite of her sex she was able to win fame and prestige totally because of her skill and craft—and the fact that she painted according to the norms of her times.
For Wollstonecraft, the narrowly defined gender roles and images of her times are what prompted her to fight back and write her Vindication of the Rights of Women (Jones, 2000). Her views were shaped precisely because her society wished to restrict the role of intelligent women. If anything, Europe had taken a step back from the regard it had held for women during the Renaissance. Part of that may have to do with the advent of Protestantism and Enlightenment philosophy, both of which tended to be somewhat sexist and tyrannically patriarchal.
Conclusion
The Renaissance did not deny a woman artist’s talent just because she was a woman. The story and contribution of Sofonisba is evidence enough of that. Respect for womanhood, however, was linked to respect for the Virgin Mary, revered as the Mother of God. Once the Protestant Reformation (and its general dislike of the Virgin Mary) had wrecked the whole of Christendom, tension between the sexes grew by leaps and bounds along with the inherently disordered philosophy of the naturalists. It reached such a point by the end of the 18th century that Wollstonecraft had had enough and wrote her Vindication to silence the critics of womanhood in general and to show that women were not naturally inferior to men. As a result, the seeds of feminism were sewn—and they were not welcome seeds in the views of most men. By Dickinson’s time, women who dared have a public life were seen as agitators in most cases—women like Angelina Weld, the abolitionist, and Sojourner Truth: they were not viewed highly by many men. Dickinson’s poetry, however, took on the honor it deserved—much like Wollstonecraft’s Vindication: both were finally seen as instrumental in the development of a new culture, one more honest, open, and vivid—one that was fair to all God’s creatures, including women.
References
Chisholm, H. (1911). Sophonisba Angussola. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2 (11th ed.), Cambridge University Press, p. 44.
Jones, E. M. (2000). Libido dominandi: Sexual liberation and political control. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’ Press.
Juhasz, S. (1983). Feminist Critics Read Emily Dickinson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Sewall, R. B. (1974). The life of Emily Dickinson. NY: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
Wollstonecraft, M. (1792). Vindication of the Rights of Woman. https://www.bartleby.com/144/4.html