1 00:00:00,180 --> 00:00:04,800 Right. So lecture's called women patrons of the arts in early modern Europe. 2 00:00:04,800 --> 00:00:09,780 And that's what I will be talking about. Renaissance two for one, the price of one extra. 3 00:00:09,780 --> 00:00:14,880 Because we talk about women or men, we'll think about its gender. And that's something that we may be exploring. 4 00:00:14,880 --> 00:00:24,390 I think next time one of our. But also on a patron, someone that has an edge within the context of women and gender. 5 00:00:24,390 --> 00:00:32,260 I think in a way, you could probably use both of those concepts separately in other sort of situations to try to do two things at once. 6 00:00:32,260 --> 00:00:36,240 I have work. We'll see. OK, good. Let's get going. 7 00:00:36,240 --> 00:00:44,200 I might actually try to do a bit more because a lot of paintings and things, we are quite dark and. 8 00:00:44,200 --> 00:00:49,500 Yes. I mean, you get a better sense of what some of these images look like. Right. 9 00:00:49,500 --> 00:00:55,800 So before I start talking about women patrons, I just wanted to make a few comments about patronage in general. 10 00:00:55,800 --> 00:00:58,080 But to keep your eyes occupied while I'm doing that. 11 00:00:58,080 --> 00:01:05,400 I wanted to show you here on the right, a portrait of a woman patron and on the left, the self portrait of an artist who painted her and who, 12 00:01:05,400 --> 00:01:12,540 unusually, was herself a woman as well, namely the late 16th century Italian artist Lavinia Fontana. 13 00:01:12,540 --> 00:01:20,760 But first, a few words about the painting in general. There are many assumptions that we as 21st century beholders make about art. 14 00:01:20,760 --> 00:01:28,770 Perhaps one of the most persistent ones is that artists always have and always will use the works they produce to express their own personal thoughts, 15 00:01:28,770 --> 00:01:36,060 feelings, interests and concerns. This probably sounds a bit familiar from the tutorials we had earlier this week. 16 00:01:36,060 --> 00:01:39,570 Now we could debate whether this is wholly true even in the present day, 17 00:01:39,570 --> 00:01:43,350 but it was certainly not the case in the period I will be focussing on in this lecture, 18 00:01:43,350 --> 00:01:50,010 namely the early modern period, or what art historians usually refer to as the Renaissance and Baroque. 19 00:01:50,010 --> 00:01:56,580 Although the artist was clearly important, indeed even essential in the production of artworks in this period, nevertheless, 20 00:01:56,580 --> 00:02:04,170 one could argue that for much of this time it was the patron who was the initiator about almost all significant artistic projects, 21 00:02:04,170 --> 00:02:10,410 and that it was the patrons who determined and individual artworks most important features and characteristics, 22 00:02:10,410 --> 00:02:13,170 including what material it was made of, 23 00:02:13,170 --> 00:02:22,200 where it was displayed, what subject it depicted its size, and even to a certain extent, its design, style and composition. 24 00:02:22,200 --> 00:02:26,270 Indeed, simply by selecting one artist rather than another in the first place, 25 00:02:26,270 --> 00:02:32,520 a patron was already making a key decision about what the final work would look like. 26 00:02:32,520 --> 00:02:36,420 Francis Haskell, who was the second professor of history of art here at Oxford, 27 00:02:36,420 --> 00:02:43,110 wrote an important book on painters and their pieces in the early modern period in which he raised a key issue in Pasricha studies. 28 00:02:43,110 --> 00:02:44,910 When you asked, quote, 29 00:02:44,910 --> 00:02:54,350 Should my concern with patrons be determined by the intrinsic interest of their personalities and tastes or by the quality and importance of the art? 30 00:02:54,350 --> 00:02:59,760 The commission with the two do not always coincide. 31 00:02:59,760 --> 00:03:04,080 In other words, what can could in theory? Right. A very interesting history of patrons. 32 00:03:04,080 --> 00:03:07,830 That was illustrated with quite uninteresting works of art. 33 00:03:07,830 --> 00:03:14,810 And conversely, some very interesting artworks may have had rather uninteresting or perhaps now unknown patrons. 34 00:03:14,810 --> 00:03:21,330 So as art historians, we will inevitably have to decide on a case by case basis just how relevant it is to consider the 35 00:03:21,330 --> 00:03:26,100 patronage of a particular work and whether to vote proportionately more attention to the patron, 36 00:03:26,100 --> 00:03:35,470 the artist or the art object itself. In our writings. 37 00:03:35,470 --> 00:03:39,820 Although the role of the patron in the early modern period, one in particular, is clearly crucial. 38 00:03:39,820 --> 00:03:42,970 I must also keep in mind another point made by Housefull, 39 00:03:42,970 --> 00:03:48,610 namely the dangers of assuming that knowing about a patron explains everything about a work of art. 40 00:03:48,610 --> 00:03:53,890 Or better explains exactly why a completed work looks the way it does. 41 00:03:53,890 --> 00:03:58,390 Nevertheless, understanding of patrons circumstances can provide us with important insights 42 00:03:58,390 --> 00:04:02,650 into why particular work was commissioned and in some cases can suggest it. 43 00:04:02,650 --> 00:04:09,010 Never fully explain why it has some qualities and characteristics, but not others. 44 00:04:09,010 --> 00:04:14,920 These issues have particular relevance in the case of women patrons who will be the focus of my talk today. 45 00:04:14,920 --> 00:04:19,850 Although many of their habits and concerns as patrons parallel those of their male contemporaries. 46 00:04:19,850 --> 00:04:24,190 The important differences between being a female rather than a male patron and early modern 47 00:04:24,190 --> 00:04:30,400 Europe serve to highlight important features about the nature of artistic patronage in general. 48 00:04:30,400 --> 00:04:36,190 In other words, by considering women patrons, we gain new insights into the very practise of patronage itself, 49 00:04:36,190 --> 00:04:39,760 since it is only by comparing women patrons to their male contemporaries that 50 00:04:39,760 --> 00:04:45,430 the open gender specific assumptions underlying patrons studies come to life. 51 00:04:45,430 --> 00:04:49,450 This is a point that Linda Knopfler made in an influential article first published 52 00:04:49,450 --> 00:04:55,930 in the early 1970s and entitled Why Had There Been No Great Women Artists? 53 00:04:55,930 --> 00:04:59,860 Although, as their title suggests, her focus was on women artists, not patrons. 54 00:04:59,860 --> 00:05:05,830 Her basic point remains true, namely that the very fact that women, whether as artists or patrons, 55 00:05:05,830 --> 00:05:13,420 were clearly outsiders or exceptions to the rule in the early modern period means that examining the art of this period through the lens of women 56 00:05:13,420 --> 00:05:20,910 can provide us with a new understanding of the insiders of the male patrons and artists who stood at the very centre of early modern culture, 57 00:05:20,910 --> 00:05:27,280 as well as allows us to begin to question some of the central assumptions art historians have made about the nature of our patrons itself. 58 00:05:27,280 --> 00:05:34,900 In this period and throughout history. But now, finally, it's time to start looking at some real women patrons. 59 00:05:34,900 --> 00:05:46,030 So the first question we have to ask is exactly who were the women who commissioned works of art and architecture in the early modern period? 60 00:05:46,030 --> 00:05:52,690 Interesting enough. By far, the largest number of women whose patrons can be documented in this period were widows like the lady whose 61 00:05:52,690 --> 00:05:58,480 portrait we've been looking at on the right or nuns like those depicted kneeling in the image on the left, 62 00:05:58,480 --> 00:06:02,470 who either commissioned works as a group or who acted through the person of the abyss. 63 00:06:02,470 --> 00:06:10,680 The leader of a particular convent or female religious community. This is a well, whether he is a patron saint. 64 00:06:10,680 --> 00:06:15,360 You have various nuns in the work or lay down the ones who are not fully professed 65 00:06:15,360 --> 00:06:20,200 within within the community and some of us and others who are actually our community. 66 00:06:20,200 --> 00:06:26,650 These are the nuns who were the patrons of work. We're looking at here. 67 00:06:26,650 --> 00:06:30,790 And incidentally, this picture of nuns at prayer was like the portrait of the widow on the right. 68 00:06:30,790 --> 00:06:34,580 Also made by a woman artist, although in this case and the one on the left, 69 00:06:34,580 --> 00:06:42,880 it was produced by an unknown 15th century German nun who was herself part of the community community depicted in the image. 70 00:06:42,880 --> 00:06:48,520 The reasons for the prevalence of widows and nuns as patrons of the arts is quite simple. 71 00:06:48,520 --> 00:06:54,850 Only these women had the financial, legal and social independence to pay for works of art themselves. 72 00:06:54,850 --> 00:07:02,230 As a young girl or married lady, a woman was legally and financially under the control of first her father and then her husband. 73 00:07:02,230 --> 00:07:02,470 Indeed, 74 00:07:02,470 --> 00:07:10,450 it was only if a married woman outlived her husband that she could finally decide whether and how to spend more money on commissioning works of art. 75 00:07:10,450 --> 00:07:18,880 Likewise, until joining a convent, a young nun would've been unable to exercise any kind of independent artistic patronage within her family home. 76 00:07:18,880 --> 00:07:24,700 Only upon joining a female religious community could collective decisions about commissioning art and architecture be made, 77 00:07:24,700 --> 00:07:30,390 although in many cases it was the abbot who was in overall charge of any such projects. 78 00:07:30,390 --> 00:07:39,930 But just how truly independent or even nuns and widows and conversely, just how dependent were married women on their husbands? 79 00:07:39,930 --> 00:07:42,030 In the case of widows, especially younger ones, 80 00:07:42,030 --> 00:07:47,820 both their own birth families and those of their deceased husbands could often try to exert influence on a widows. 81 00:07:47,820 --> 00:07:51,300 Our patronage decisions. In the case of nuns, 82 00:07:51,300 --> 00:07:55,950 many converts in religious orders aborted by customs and statutes that meant they were overseen 83 00:07:55,950 --> 00:08:03,240 both legally and financially by the male branch that their order or by secular male advisers. 84 00:08:03,240 --> 00:08:10,530 But this raises a key question about studying female patronage in general, namely, how do we know when and how this actually occurred? 85 00:08:10,530 --> 00:08:17,730 I don't know if you picked up, but I did say that the largest number of documented women patrons in this period will widows or nuns. 86 00:08:17,730 --> 00:08:22,080 But what about the undocumented impact women had on artistic patronage? 87 00:08:22,080 --> 00:08:28,170 And your documents tell us everything about the decisions that were actually made when commissioning works of art. 88 00:08:28,170 --> 00:08:29,190 So, for instance, 89 00:08:29,190 --> 00:08:36,810 even if an abbess had to obtain the approval of a high ranking male priest before commissioning an artist to paint an altarpiece for her convent, 90 00:08:36,810 --> 00:08:42,690 does the signed payment record alone necessarily confirm that the Abbi's and the nuns she oversaw weren't 91 00:08:42,690 --> 00:08:47,940 actively involved in deciding which artist to choose or which subject to depict in the first place? 92 00:08:47,940 --> 00:08:52,920 In other words, we need to question the document that says, Oh, you know, so-and-so paid for this altarpiece. 93 00:08:52,920 --> 00:08:56,760 Well, paying isn't always the same as necessarily deciding and commissioning and thinking 94 00:08:56,760 --> 00:09:01,890 about what's going to be depicted and who might be doing a good job about it. 95 00:09:01,890 --> 00:09:06,480 Similarly, the fact that most of the official contracts and payment records relating to the art patronage of 96 00:09:06,480 --> 00:09:12,760 someone like the 16th century Florence to Rural or Cosmo Domenici were signed or approved by him alone. 97 00:09:12,760 --> 00:09:20,340 So the paperwork's always sort of in his name. But that does not necessarily mean that his wife, Eleanor of Toledo, you see here, was one of her sons, 98 00:09:20,340 --> 00:09:28,050 might not have had quite a lot to say about who was hired and what works for action may, in fact, the art historian, Roger Cromwell. 99 00:09:28,050 --> 00:09:31,860 I think that may be on your own, on your reading list there in the handout budget. 100 00:09:31,860 --> 00:09:40,880 Come has put it this way. If a future scholar who looked only at signed cheques or who paid the bills in many of our own present day families. 101 00:09:40,880 --> 00:09:43,240 One hundred two hundred a thousand years. Now, in our own time, 102 00:09:43,240 --> 00:09:49,530 the records that historian might well assume that all the decisions about how to say decorate the living 103 00:09:49,530 --> 00:09:55,050 room or what pictures to hang on the walls or homes had been made by the male head of the household, 104 00:09:55,050 --> 00:09:59,700 whereas in reality it might be the wife or mother who was the one who had actually chosen the furniture, 105 00:09:59,700 --> 00:10:05,520 pick the colour scheme and selected the artworks. And Roger come in his P says, you know, if anyone who's from his own family said, you know, 106 00:10:05,520 --> 00:10:10,550 he would look like my father had been the one who had made all the decorating vision because if he pays all the bills. 107 00:10:10,550 --> 00:10:15,730 But my dad had nothing to say. You know, what's hung over the sofa or what colour as a result might be. 108 00:10:15,730 --> 00:10:17,700 But it says you look just at the doctor records, 109 00:10:17,700 --> 00:10:24,840 even something very contemporary like Roger Brown's family might well get a very skewed view of who was actually, 110 00:10:24,840 --> 00:10:28,770 in a sense, doing what we might think of as the more interesting side of the patronage making the decisions. 111 00:10:28,770 --> 00:10:34,770 So just the bills and the signed documents don't always tell the whole story. 112 00:10:34,770 --> 00:10:41,790 And in fact, in the case of early modern married women who much more than today were legally and financially dependent on their husbands, 113 00:10:41,790 --> 00:10:47,670 it is thus often too simplistic to say that they had no influence on even major artistic or 114 00:10:47,670 --> 00:10:55,930 architectural commissions just because we don't have a trail of signed documents to follow up. 115 00:10:55,930 --> 00:11:01,420 But if we do stick to documented commissions, it becomes clear that at least in the secular sphere, 116 00:11:01,420 --> 00:11:08,800 the most common types of projects undertaken by women on their own related to the tombs of their deceased husbands, 117 00:11:08,800 --> 00:11:12,970 early modern widows were exhorted to follow the classical model of artemesia, 118 00:11:12,970 --> 00:11:19,960 the ancient widowed queen whose fabulous tomb for her keep her husband, King Marsalis, became one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. 119 00:11:19,960 --> 00:11:24,970 And in fact, gives us the word mausoleum like, quote, Mesia early. 120 00:11:24,970 --> 00:11:34,240 Modern widows were also often concerned first, foremost, and often only with commissioning an appropriate funerary monument for their husbands. 121 00:11:34,240 --> 00:11:38,320 Some monuments, like the one on the right, included an effigy of the deceased spouse. 122 00:11:38,320 --> 00:11:46,380 In this case, a prominent hedge. Your lawyer had been seen here, another burning man on the other side of Double-Sided, too. 123 00:11:46,380 --> 00:11:51,910 You would look at either side. I think he says to have. Certainly his law student tackles. 124 00:11:51,910 --> 00:11:57,550 So I expect you all to be gathered around my team in the future. Because he was sort of an academic as well as a lawyer. 125 00:11:57,550 --> 00:12:04,480 So you've got his little assistants and students from there around his two. 126 00:12:04,480 --> 00:12:09,430 The other on the left was for a foreign nobleman, Antonio Strutt seat, 127 00:12:09,430 --> 00:12:16,600 which included sculpted saints, but no image of a husband sculpted effigies of women were very rare. 128 00:12:16,600 --> 00:12:24,800 Although wives did sometimes appear as kneeling donors, together with their husbands and page altar pieces commissioned for funerary chapels. 129 00:12:24,800 --> 00:12:29,260 However, even if a widow did not make a personal appearance in her husband's funeral chapel, 130 00:12:29,260 --> 00:12:33,980 she could remind posterity of her role as a patron through an inscription or the case of 131 00:12:33,980 --> 00:12:38,330 a see tomb on the left by including her own coat of arms as well as that of her spouse. 132 00:12:38,330 --> 00:12:40,580 In the project. 133 00:12:40,580 --> 00:12:49,040 But showing you these two slides of all things considered to fairly uninteresting Toombs raises some rather more interesting general issues, 134 00:12:49,040 --> 00:12:55,430 because, as you can see, they're actually quite different in terms of style, in terms of whether they include an effigy of the deceased. 135 00:12:55,430 --> 00:13:02,390 Even in terms of the kind of stone that has been selected, I'm afraid it's always in colour, I think, which I'm I don't know, because it's easier. 136 00:13:02,390 --> 00:13:05,660 They're different also in terms of their colours, all sorts of other things. 137 00:13:05,660 --> 00:13:09,350 And this raises an important question about women patients in general, namely, 138 00:13:09,350 --> 00:13:14,060 just how significant was the fact that they were women to the final appearance of the works? 139 00:13:14,060 --> 00:13:18,530 That commission, in the case of these two tombs, they look, in fact, 140 00:13:18,530 --> 00:13:23,420 much more like tombs commissioned by male patrons in the same cities at the same time. 141 00:13:23,420 --> 00:13:25,700 They look like one another. 142 00:13:25,700 --> 00:13:32,990 So we need to be careful not to attribute all or even some of the differences we see between tombs or any other artworks commissioned by women, 143 00:13:32,990 --> 00:13:38,870 primarily to the gender of the patron. Indeed, other factors are often much more important. 144 00:13:38,870 --> 00:13:46,160 For instance, differences in regional styles, the availability of certain materials, family traditions, or even when works from May. 145 00:13:46,160 --> 00:13:52,370 In this case, about one hundred years apart. So that may explain more differences than with them. 146 00:13:52,370 --> 00:13:57,590 Any kind of possible similarities of those by being made commissioned by women. 147 00:13:57,590 --> 00:14:01,790 So we must think carefully before claiming that it is only or even mainly because 148 00:14:01,790 --> 00:14:07,280 the paper was a woman had a particular work of art looks the way it does. 149 00:14:07,280 --> 00:14:10,820 Perhaps even more crucial is to keep in mind the fact that for the most part, 150 00:14:10,820 --> 00:14:19,160 the artworks commissioned by early modern female patrons that survived this day are those associated with very wealthy elite women. 151 00:14:19,160 --> 00:14:26,660 Yes, there are a few scattered documentary references to the wives of bakers or stonemasons commissioning commemorative monuments for their husbands, 152 00:14:26,660 --> 00:14:33,500 but almost also twerps have now disappeared and would in any case have been restricted primarily to small commemorative plaques, 153 00:14:33,500 --> 00:14:39,620 not Life-Size effigies or entire decorative chapels, as in the examples we see here. 154 00:14:39,620 --> 00:14:43,390 So it was a secular woman's delete status rather than her gender. 155 00:14:43,390 --> 00:14:47,240 It was probably the single most important factor in determining whether she was 156 00:14:47,240 --> 00:14:51,620 able to commission significant works of art and architecture in the first place, 157 00:14:51,620 --> 00:14:56,630 something that, of course, is true for elite male patrons as well. 158 00:14:56,630 --> 00:15:03,860 So one of the questions to keep in mind when talking about when patrons is the extent to which gender actually is a factor, or in other words, 159 00:15:03,860 --> 00:15:07,760 is there such thing as a typically female style of patronage, 160 00:15:07,760 --> 00:15:14,420 either in terms of what kinds of things were commissioned or in terms of their style and iconography, as we shall see? 161 00:15:14,420 --> 00:15:23,830 The answer is it depends. For the rest of this talk, I like to look at three women from the very top of the social, political and economic hierarchy. 162 00:15:23,830 --> 00:15:29,050 One of Marchioness, the other two queens, in order to try to tease out what differences, 163 00:15:29,050 --> 00:15:35,600 if any, it made that they were female rather than male patrons. 164 00:15:35,600 --> 00:15:39,080 The first case I want to consider is the woman you see in these two portraits. 165 00:15:39,080 --> 00:15:48,200 Isabella Jested, the Marchioness of Mantua, a small but influential town in northern Italy dominated by the ruling Gonzaga family in this period. 166 00:15:48,200 --> 00:15:53,300 Unusually, Isabella was a wife, not a widow, and her very active patronage of artists, 167 00:15:53,300 --> 00:15:59,090 as well as her insatiable collecting habits are extremely well-documented by the more than twelve 168 00:15:59,090 --> 00:16:07,010 thousand letters she wrote and 28000 letters she received between 40 90 and her death in 15th or not. 169 00:16:07,010 --> 00:16:09,900 And we're talking about almost a level of kind of emails bouncing back and forth. 170 00:16:09,900 --> 00:16:13,880 You start to divide 12000 letters by her and twenty eight thousand over to her. 171 00:16:13,880 --> 00:16:17,300 And those are just the ones that have survived. There may well have been even more so. 172 00:16:17,300 --> 00:16:23,090 We know quite a lot. And in fact, we know from these letters that, like her early male contemporaries, 173 00:16:23,090 --> 00:16:30,050 she tried to buy the best antiquities she could afford and tried to hire the foremost artists of the day's work for her. 174 00:16:30,050 --> 00:16:35,180 So, for instance, she sought out artists such as Leonardo, George, Tony, Giovanni Bellini and Rafael. 175 00:16:35,180 --> 00:16:41,090 But never was able to get any of them to Painter, although they did draw her portrait, which you see on the left. 176 00:16:41,090 --> 00:16:45,320 And there's an interesting copy here. Here's what it is. 177 00:16:45,320 --> 00:16:49,790 This is a right very soon after this one. How did that actually hangs? 178 00:16:49,790 --> 00:16:53,930 Now in the front room in the National Museum. So this time you're in the room. 179 00:16:53,930 --> 00:16:58,250 Have a look around and you can see the sort of second version of the Xanatos one. 180 00:16:58,250 --> 00:17:03,310 This one is the one that's in the Louvre. 181 00:17:03,310 --> 00:17:09,250 However, despite mantle of the city where she married into the family and became part of the ruling family, Mantua, 182 00:17:09,250 --> 00:17:14,080 despite Mancillas relative poverty and fairly minor political status in the grand scheme of things, 183 00:17:14,080 --> 00:17:19,210 Isabella did manage to get artists such as Perugino, Antonya and Pareja to work for her. 184 00:17:19,210 --> 00:17:24,280 So she didn't get the pain caused by Leonardo Rafael Jovani immediate journey. 185 00:17:24,280 --> 00:17:26,980 But she did get her genome, Antonya and Correggio, 186 00:17:26,980 --> 00:17:34,500 and she amassed a truly impressive collection of antique works on what other aristocrats would have considered to be a shoestring budget. 187 00:17:34,500 --> 00:17:40,450 And Isabella's desire for big name artists and classical objects in back very similar to those of Rowly male contemporaries, 188 00:17:40,450 --> 00:17:45,880 including her own brother, Alfonzo Dusty, who ruled her hometown of Ferrare. 189 00:17:45,880 --> 00:17:49,450 So there ways that she's quite similar to other male patrons of the period. 190 00:17:49,450 --> 00:17:56,260 But the fact that she was an early woman patient does seem to have had an impact on the iconography she favoured in her artistic commissions, 191 00:17:56,260 --> 00:18:03,450 if not the types of work she tried to commission or the particular artists she tried to hire. 192 00:18:03,450 --> 00:18:08,320 Thus, while the elite male contemporaries commissioned portraits that emphasise their wisdom as well as their 193 00:18:08,320 --> 00:18:14,340 military and political power as seen in Titian's portrait on the left of the Duke of Urbino in Armour, 194 00:18:14,340 --> 00:18:23,020 Isabella's portrait by the same artist that is by Titian on the right makes visual references to typically female ideals of beauty and behaviour. 195 00:18:23,020 --> 00:18:30,490 For instance, unlike the Duke, Izabella doesn't brazenly look us directly in the eye, as befits a virtuous, married woman. 196 00:18:30,490 --> 00:18:39,850 She also has perfect white skin, luminous eyes, an elaborate yet still decorously covered hairdo and expensively elegant clothing. 197 00:18:39,850 --> 00:18:48,910 The fact that she was actually 60 years old when this particular portrait was painted, however, suggests that well before Botox and plastic surgery, 198 00:18:48,910 --> 00:18:55,660 a little bit of strategic airbrushing wasn't a central skill for an artist to commission to depict such a woman. 199 00:18:55,660 --> 00:19:03,040 Although Titian presumably also flattered his male suitors by making them look more wise and powerful than they perhaps actually were. 200 00:19:03,040 --> 00:19:09,760 We are probably safe in assuming that making a SIDOR look like a male or look like a pretty young teenager is something that he aimed for. 201 00:19:09,760 --> 00:19:14,630 Only when painting women. She looks good for 60, I think. 202 00:19:14,630 --> 00:19:19,470 Yeah, not bad at all. 203 00:19:19,470 --> 00:19:26,460 Gender may have also played a role in the kinds of subjects that Isabella chose and how she interacted with the artists she hired. 204 00:19:26,460 --> 00:19:32,010 In fact, some scholars have actually criticises about her being a meddling and overcontrolling patron, 205 00:19:32,010 --> 00:19:37,910 especially in relation to the Shihad, to DenTek, to decorator's to YOLO and Manchus Ducal Palace, 206 00:19:37,910 --> 00:19:46,110 the room you see here on the right who she used to display her collection of art and antiquities and the production of a painting she had around here, 207 00:19:46,110 --> 00:19:50,990 a little over macropod rockhouse. She kept lots of her collectables. 208 00:19:50,990 --> 00:19:56,510 So you get this reverse straight from quite recent, say, a typical woman. 209 00:19:56,510 --> 00:20:03,030 I mean, you say is a woman always meddling, always just leave the man alone and let him get on with the art. 210 00:20:03,030 --> 00:20:10,890 I mean, you sort of get this kind of rhetoric from quite recent writers, which I find a bit surprising. 211 00:20:10,890 --> 00:20:16,350 However, from our letters, we can see that she did, in fact, try very hard to make sure that artists like Perugino, 212 00:20:16,350 --> 00:20:26,100 whose painting for Isabella's studio you see on the left, that they stuck to her very detailed discussion instructions, in this case, Perugino. 213 00:20:26,100 --> 00:20:33,660 She specified to him not only that the subject of the painting should show an allegorical combat between erotic love and chaste love, 214 00:20:33,660 --> 00:20:37,650 but also gave detailed, written instructions along the lines of a quote, 215 00:20:37,650 --> 00:20:41,490 just a tiny bit of this very long letter where she says all the things that are supposed to be happening. 216 00:20:41,490 --> 00:20:48,810 This picture, quote, The Goddesses Palace, Athena and Diana should be depicted fighting vigorously against Venus and Cupid and Palace. 217 00:20:48,810 --> 00:20:55,440 Athena should seem almost to a vanquished Cupid, having broken his golden bow and cast the silver bow under foot with one hand. 218 00:20:55,440 --> 00:21:01,560 She is holding him by the bandage, which the blind boy has before his eyes. And with the other, she is lifting her lands and about to kill him. 219 00:21:01,560 --> 00:21:08,760 And on and on and on and on. With Isabella not only giving the artist a detailed drawing of what the entire composition should look like, 220 00:21:08,760 --> 00:21:15,410 but even at one point sending a piece of string to indicate exactly how tall the largest figure in the painting should be. 221 00:21:15,410 --> 00:21:20,930 She wanted made by the partisans. Ruth is wanted to show that they were fully proportioned rights as well. 222 00:21:20,930 --> 00:21:25,850 As you know, I'm having this piece of proof that the policy here is, you know, this. 223 00:21:25,850 --> 00:21:31,890 So pretty detailed, pretty hands on. 224 00:21:31,890 --> 00:21:41,550 In contrast, scholars have been much more praiseworthy, praising of a more highly similar project by Isabella's brother Ophthalmia for Best Day. 225 00:21:41,550 --> 00:21:48,910 This project was actually inspired by his sister's ambitious studio, which was decorated not just in the case of Alfonso with Pure Genius, 226 00:21:48,910 --> 00:21:57,090 was at the studio by Isabella, was decorated not just pure genius painting, but works by other well-known artists in imitation of this Afonso desk. 227 00:21:57,090 --> 00:22:01,830 They also commissioned famous artist to decorate his own studio in Ferrara. 228 00:22:01,830 --> 00:22:07,110 One of the pieces, the work you see here, Titian's painting of the classical tale of Bacchus and Ariadne. 229 00:22:07,110 --> 00:22:15,180 Now in the National Gallery in London, in comparison, Isabella Alfonz maintained a very hands off policy towards his artists. 230 00:22:15,180 --> 00:22:20,130 Once he gets elected, Titian and had pointed the artist to the classical text that he was illustrated. 231 00:22:20,130 --> 00:22:24,420 Afonso seems to have just let the painter get on with the job as he best saw fit, 232 00:22:24,420 --> 00:22:31,260 thereby confirm his own status as a forward thinking and broad minded patron who valued the artist's own initiative and innate 233 00:22:31,260 --> 00:22:39,990 genius that equips modern scholars with using modern or contemporary notions about art being the expression of an artist's own. 234 00:22:39,990 --> 00:22:44,680 Ideas have thus inevitably prefer Titian's painting, the one produced by Papageno. 235 00:22:44,680 --> 00:22:49,830 Does that nutrition's expressing, you know, his own genius as an artist worth Fujino. 236 00:22:49,830 --> 00:22:57,730 He's got to buckle under this sort of medalling female patron. 237 00:22:57,730 --> 00:23:03,520 But if we look at these works from the point of view of the early modern patron and in light of the patrons gender in particular, 238 00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:07,170 we gain a better understanding of why they look the way they do and why a woman 239 00:23:07,170 --> 00:23:11,590 patron such as Isabella may have wanted to control her artists so closely, 240 00:23:11,590 --> 00:23:15,280 even at the expense of their own self-expression. 241 00:23:15,280 --> 00:23:23,050 As a woman, she simply didn't have the freedom in the context of early modern social expectations to just let the painter get on with the job. 242 00:23:23,050 --> 00:23:31,330 Instead, she had to make sure that the final result wouldn't reflect badly on her own reputation as an educated but also chaste and decorous woman. 243 00:23:31,330 --> 00:23:37,150 So rather than going directly to a classical text, which is what her brother does in his painting that he commissions, 244 00:23:37,150 --> 00:23:44,860 she instead decided that she had to concoct her own subject by using classical figures such as Venus, Cupid, Diana and Athena. 245 00:23:44,860 --> 00:23:52,470 But then setting them into a moralising tale of her own invention in which chastity always triumphs over mere erotic sexual attraction, 246 00:23:52,470 --> 00:23:55,180 a most appropriately ladylike theme, 247 00:23:55,180 --> 00:24:01,150 but one that inevitably had to be carefully explained to the artist in order to avoid any embarrassing misunderstandings. 248 00:24:01,150 --> 00:24:04,540 And the final image, the she has other constraint. She is OK. 249 00:24:04,540 --> 00:24:11,890 She is medalling. But there's a reason. Because as a woman, she doesn't want to have pictures possibly misinterpreted. 250 00:24:11,890 --> 00:24:16,330 And in fact, Isabella's anxieties were not just based on unfounded paranoia, 251 00:24:16,330 --> 00:24:23,710 as demonstrated by one of the other paintings she commissioned for us to YOLO, an image for which she did not provide quite so detailed instructions. 252 00:24:23,710 --> 00:24:32,170 The painting in question is the one you see here. Her work by Montignac showing Venus and Mars ruling over the muses on Mount Parnassus. 253 00:24:32,170 --> 00:24:38,810 Apparently, some viewers misread the image as including a portrait of Isabella herself in the figure of Venus up at the top, 254 00:24:38,810 --> 00:24:43,900 who, although she is clearly supposed to be very beautiful, was also depicted completely in the nude. 255 00:24:43,900 --> 00:24:50,200 Not at all an appropriate association for a high ranking lady very concerned about her public image. 256 00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:55,990 So by considering the paintings by Perugino, Mantegna and Titian in terms of the gender of their respective patrons, 257 00:24:55,990 --> 00:24:59,410 we gain a better understanding of what each looks the way it does and has a 258 00:24:59,410 --> 00:25:04,060 genuine concerns of each patient played at least some role in the final result. 259 00:25:04,060 --> 00:25:11,410 In the case of Isabella, by reflecting her worries about commissioning works that might cost scandal and embarrassment in the case of Alfonzo, 260 00:25:11,410 --> 00:25:15,400 allowing the patient to show off his knowledge of the original classical sources and 261 00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:21,130 his far sightedness in giving a famous artist such as Titian a relatively free hand, 262 00:25:21,130 --> 00:25:26,530 something that was much more difficult for a female patron in Isabel's position to do those without 263 00:25:26,530 --> 00:25:32,500 understanding the cultural constraints and expectations under which both male and female patrons operated in, 264 00:25:32,500 --> 00:25:36,820 the only monitary would have only an incomplete understanding of the works. 265 00:25:36,820 --> 00:25:47,560 They commission. The problems of devising an appropriate iconography for a female patron were even more acute. 266 00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:54,610 A century later, in the case of money, Domenici, the second of our three case studies, who you see in these two portraits, 267 00:25:54,610 --> 00:26:00,460 one as a young mother, the one on the right and on the left, is slightly worse for wear widow. 268 00:26:00,460 --> 00:26:06,610 Unlike Isabel iDesk Day, who quite unusually was married during her most active phase as a collector and art patron. 269 00:26:06,610 --> 00:26:12,880 Maria was a widow by the time of her most prolific period of patronage, as her surname suggests. 270 00:26:12,880 --> 00:26:17,890 Murray admitted she was part of the famous Florentine medad she family, but she had married the king of France. 271 00:26:17,890 --> 00:26:22,000 Henry the fourth in sixteen hundred and moved to Paris. 272 00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:31,000 Henry, however, had become king only by agreeing to convert to Catholicism and then annul, knowing the marriage was first Protestant wife. 273 00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:32,140 So when Maria arrived, 274 00:26:32,140 --> 00:26:39,220 she was particularly concerned with asserting her status as the king's legitimate and very Catholic wife and equally importantly, 275 00:26:39,220 --> 00:26:45,830 as the mother in his legitimate and very Catholic children. Not surprisingly, right from the start. 276 00:26:45,830 --> 00:26:49,300 Maria emphasised both her religion for the patronage of Catholic churches, 277 00:26:49,300 --> 00:26:54,150 incumbents and her legitimacy as seen in images like a project portrait on the right. 278 00:26:54,150 --> 00:27:00,790 Made soon after the birth of her first son. The Future King Louis, the 13th, which an anagram of her name is meant to read, 279 00:27:00,790 --> 00:27:05,400 is made to read Judi's them and Amanda what I call myself the mother of the Kings. 280 00:27:05,400 --> 00:27:11,980 Little first as friends or somebody. This one is about old fashioned princes and queen. 281 00:27:11,980 --> 00:27:19,810 And then she takes the words and kind of changes and says, Know now that what the mother king and somebody here is. 282 00:27:19,810 --> 00:27:29,280 Obviously that's a mistake. And yet they are their horses until I take it off and it works. 283 00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:35,460 Cool. 284 00:27:35,460 --> 00:27:41,970 He gets the point of that was not just the IRA, but it was emphasising her role as the kind of mother of the king, the legitimate mother, the king. 285 00:27:41,970 --> 00:27:47,810 However, a fairly low key use of visual propaganda while living in the shadow of her charismatic husband. 286 00:27:47,810 --> 00:27:55,990 This came to a dramatic end in 16 10. So with Mary Tenure's at that point when just one day after her official crowning as queen of France, 287 00:27:55,990 --> 00:27:59,540 she'd only crown coronated Queen of France a decade after her. 288 00:27:59,540 --> 00:28:05,070 Her marriage, Nicholas Atlas's produce lots of ladies, which is what you're supposed to do if you could queen any case. 289 00:28:05,070 --> 00:28:10,470 One day after official crowning as Queen of France, Henry was murdered by a religious fanatic, 290 00:28:10,470 --> 00:28:15,870 leaving Maria as the Queen Regent since her son Louis was still too young to own zone. 291 00:28:15,870 --> 00:28:22,830 Suddenly, Maria was in charge not just of the country but also of all royal artistic patronage. 292 00:28:22,830 --> 00:28:26,700 And like a good widow. She immediately started planning her husband's, too. 293 00:28:26,700 --> 00:28:33,180 As you can see in this drawing, which includes a question, portrait of the King at the very top of an elaborate monument. 294 00:28:33,180 --> 00:28:42,790 But this project was never completed, something for which she was increasingly criticised by jealous political rivals at the French Quarter. 295 00:28:42,790 --> 00:28:47,590 Instead, Maria began an entirely new project called the Luxembourg Paris, which you see here, 296 00:28:47,590 --> 00:28:52,570 and an early bird's eye view and which still dominates the Luxembourg Gardens in central Paris to this day. 297 00:28:52,570 --> 00:28:56,050 Has anyone seen the Luxembourg Gardens been Glucksberg? That big? 298 00:28:56,050 --> 00:29:02,740 It's the big palace. At one end of it is Vlach reports that Maria commissions significantly. 299 00:29:02,740 --> 00:29:07,150 Murray herself referred to this massive building not at the time as that as Luxembourg Palace, 300 00:29:07,150 --> 00:29:12,010 but as the message she palace in her personal correspondence. And interestingly enough, 301 00:29:12,010 --> 00:29:20,290 she combined a typically French ground plan for a palace in which two wings jutting out from a central core with a pavilion pavilion at the front. 302 00:29:20,290 --> 00:29:24,430 So this is sort of a typical fresh palace plan. But the main building is two wings. 303 00:29:24,430 --> 00:29:31,270 And as I said, yes, there is a food bazaar on this front. 304 00:29:31,270 --> 00:29:39,280 That's combined with detail. It was very much for calling her own Italians and oppressive tiny house that she grew up in the pity palace. 305 00:29:39,280 --> 00:29:45,060 And for many of you, see that. OK. So, three, it's called rusticated, like a rough stone. 306 00:29:45,060 --> 00:29:51,820 And you can see a lot of the exterior of the Elysee Palace has that kind of rough stonework called Russification, 307 00:29:51,820 --> 00:29:55,600 which is something not typically French for quite typically Italian in particular, 308 00:29:55,600 --> 00:30:04,850 sort of her home when she grew up as a little girl and then in a pity palace in Florence. 309 00:30:04,850 --> 00:30:11,770 This thereby visually blended the culture into which she had married with her own native traditions, something that a male patron of Iraq, 310 00:30:11,770 --> 00:30:16,370 of course, would have never wanted or needed to do because he was sort of been in his own tradition and stay there. 311 00:30:16,370 --> 00:30:22,210 He mended and go out to marry and live in other countries or other kingdoms. 312 00:30:22,210 --> 00:30:26,080 Perhaps even more interesting is the discussion some of her artistic advisers had 313 00:30:26,080 --> 00:30:35,290 about her plans to put up statues around the entrance to the house this year. 314 00:30:35,290 --> 00:30:41,330 Maria had apparently wanted to have these statues be figures representing famous wives and mothers from the past. 315 00:30:41,330 --> 00:30:45,130 They're clearly hoping to link herself with these illustrious predecessors. 316 00:30:45,130 --> 00:30:51,010 But her suggestion to include Artemesia, the famous widow who had commissioned a mausoleum for her husband, 317 00:30:51,010 --> 00:30:54,100 was deemed to be a very bad idea by her advisers, 318 00:30:54,100 --> 00:31:02,580 since, unlike the ancient queen, Maria had in fact not yet completed a suitably grand funerary monument for her own deceased husband. 319 00:31:02,580 --> 00:31:06,550 One of her advisers on this matter was the famous Flemish painter, Peter Paul Reubens. 320 00:31:06,550 --> 00:31:12,330 And it was the paintings he produced for Maria that highlight just how complicated it was for a powerful widow in 321 00:31:12,330 --> 00:31:19,560 a delicate political situation to devise a visual iconography that was appropriate for her status and her gender. 322 00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:23,700 The problem can be summarised as follows. How could Rubins adapt the visual rhetoric? 323 00:31:23,700 --> 00:31:30,390 He usually deployed the male patrons, which consisted of nude or semi-nude female allegorical figures. 324 00:31:30,390 --> 00:31:34,620 How could this be adapted to very particular needs of a powerful female patient who, 325 00:31:34,620 --> 00:31:40,320 like Isabella best, they could not afford to be associated with anything scandalous or indecorous. 326 00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:49,260 This was an especially acute problem for Maria, so she had hard Rubins in the early 16 20s to paint a carefully edited version of her own life story. 327 00:31:49,260 --> 00:31:56,490 In response to the recent falling out she had with her now grown up son, Louis, who had by then assumed the throne for himself. 328 00:31:56,490 --> 00:32:03,820 Things have gotten so bad that at one point Maria had had to flee from Paris and had even been skirmishes between her son's troops and her own. 329 00:32:03,820 --> 00:32:08,940 And just imagine it was sort of an army of loyal to the queen, fighting an army loyal to Prince William. 330 00:32:08,940 --> 00:32:14,580 I mean, that would be a sort of hawk or Prince Charles of his room, an odd situation. And if you could think of that. 331 00:32:14,580 --> 00:32:22,290 Imagine how tense the situation must have been in France about time after mother and son sort of kissed and made up, though. 332 00:32:22,290 --> 00:32:26,850 Maria decided to commission Rubins to paint a cycle of 24 paintings for her new palace, 333 00:32:26,850 --> 00:32:31,290 the Luxembourg, illustrating her own life story, including the canvas you see here. 334 00:32:31,290 --> 00:32:36,300 So a kind of authorised you know, this is my side of the story kind of series. 335 00:32:36,300 --> 00:32:40,770 And again, some of you may have seen these in the loop there really massive paintings and significantly more. 336 00:32:40,770 --> 00:32:45,750 And we see there. Ptolemy's and this sort of whole world. 337 00:32:45,750 --> 00:32:53,270 But maybe this I've written for the Luxembourg Paris. But a big project. 338 00:32:53,270 --> 00:32:58,010 The series as a whole takes up a number of themes already encountered in the Queen Mother's artistic patron. 339 00:32:58,010 --> 00:33:03,530 Of course, by this time she's the queen mother because her son is actually king, because he's old enough now. 340 00:33:03,530 --> 00:33:08,390 So takes up themes like her role as wife and mother. The legitimacy of her claims to power. 341 00:33:08,390 --> 00:33:10,790 And the history, the method she family. 342 00:33:10,790 --> 00:33:16,670 At the same time, the difficulties involved in depicting a powerful woman oh well, demonstrated by the psycho paintings. 343 00:33:16,670 --> 00:33:19,880 And despite her wishes to the contrary. 344 00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:25,490 These images were apparently unable to prevent a final rupture of the truce between Louis and the Queen Mother. 345 00:33:25,490 --> 00:33:32,630 Indeed, only seven years after Rubins had finished the paintings, Maria was forced to flee France for good and had to live in exile until her death. 346 00:33:32,630 --> 00:33:39,650 And 16 42, one factor in the cycles apparent lack of success as an actor. 347 00:33:39,650 --> 00:33:45,920 Visual propaganda may lie in the tensions between Rubins as pictorial language and the cycles female subjects. 348 00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:48,230 That is Maria herself. 349 00:33:48,230 --> 00:33:55,100 These problems are well illustrated by examining some of the paintings in the series more closely in the education of Maria Domenici, 350 00:33:55,100 --> 00:34:00,890 which you see here. For example, Rubins uses the nude Gracies as an attribute of the Queen. 351 00:34:00,890 --> 00:34:05,860 I'm. I hope you're out of a drawing of life figures. 352 00:34:05,860 --> 00:34:16,670 Another short notice. That's actually Maria. Now, obviously, the graces were meant to attest to the queen's femininity is significant, however, 353 00:34:16,670 --> 00:34:23,870 that the young Maria is shown turning away from these women in order to divert her attention to the teachings of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom. 354 00:34:23,870 --> 00:34:29,150 And that's the figure whose name she kind of is is leading on. 355 00:34:29,150 --> 00:34:34,610 However, the male about Orpheus seated in the left foreground assumes the role of the implied male 356 00:34:34,610 --> 00:34:40,850 viewer by gazing directly at the seductive new graces rather than the future queen of France. 357 00:34:40,850 --> 00:34:44,780 Orpheus thus demonstrates inadvertently how distracting Rubins is use of their 358 00:34:44,780 --> 00:34:49,700 female bodies as allegorical figures could be contemporary male viewers, 359 00:34:49,700 --> 00:34:55,370 since the palaces most important visitors would have been male courtiers and of course, her son, the king himself. 360 00:34:55,370 --> 00:35:02,660 Such a distraction from the main subject of the cycle that as Maria had serious implications. 361 00:35:02,660 --> 00:35:06,380 The motif of the exposed female body, especially the exposed breast, 362 00:35:06,380 --> 00:35:13,430 occurs in several other paintings in the energy cycle in this painting, for instance, which depicts in highly allegorical terms. 363 00:35:13,430 --> 00:35:22,750 Maria's first meeting with her husband, the queen. And this is the kind of Jubera around the size of this would be very outdrive with portraits, 364 00:35:22,750 --> 00:35:26,210 recognisable portraits of both Maria and her husband, her deceased, of course. 365 00:35:26,210 --> 00:35:28,790 By this point in his painting. 366 00:35:28,790 --> 00:35:37,310 The queen looks humbly downwards wipers while presenting her own bare breasts, her husband as a symbol of her role as wife and future mother. 367 00:35:37,310 --> 00:35:42,200 The composition recalls images of the coronation of the Virgin Mary, Maria's holy namesake, 368 00:35:42,200 --> 00:35:46,040 which suggests that the Queens bare breasts like the Madonnas should be understood 369 00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:51,890 as proof of her virtuous motherhood and of her status as an ideal broad. 370 00:35:51,890 --> 00:35:57,110 Their breasts, however, could also have not just positive but also very negative associations in this period. 371 00:35:57,110 --> 00:36:00,380 By alluding to the dangers of female seduction. 372 00:36:00,380 --> 00:36:08,230 In fact, early modern culture in general seems of how very ambiguous views about the significance of a bare female breast. 373 00:36:08,230 --> 00:36:12,190 So the bare grass was clearly depicted as a palls about tribute in images of the Virgin. 374 00:36:12,190 --> 00:36:18,660 Such as Rubins painting on the left of the Madonna and Child. Madonna's breasts exposed there. 375 00:36:18,660 --> 00:36:23,590 But other text and images stressed the dangers of the exposed female breasts, 376 00:36:23,590 --> 00:36:29,920 evil women such as the Old Testament figure of Delilah seen here, and another painting by Rubens now in the National Gallery in London. 377 00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:33,670 We're often depicted using their bare breasts to seduce unwary men. 378 00:36:33,670 --> 00:36:40,600 In this case, the hero assassin. So I'm going to give you a sense of the law where he gets his hair cut off. 379 00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:46,710 He could lose his powers. And very often she's seen his use of. 380 00:36:46,710 --> 00:36:51,800 Capturing see, the servants just set him off his hair. 381 00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:58,860 But how is she managed to lure this great hero in the streets of Israel, a hero? 382 00:36:58,860 --> 00:37:01,280 You know, they're out there. And that's obviously did the trick. 383 00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:11,730 So, you know, this is a more worrying view of what the dangerous powers of the bare female Ruff's. 384 00:37:11,730 --> 00:37:20,480 By choosing to pair Maria, the symbolically bedrest with attributes normally associated with male power in several paintings in the cycle, 385 00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:24,120 Rubins could thus inadvertently have reminded viewers of the well-known theme of the 386 00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:29,010 dangerous power of women in the portrait of Maria Domenici as queen triumphant. 387 00:37:29,010 --> 00:37:34,440 What you see here, for example, Maria's exposed breasts is juxtaposed with attributes such as helmets, 388 00:37:34,440 --> 00:37:40,260 farmer and Cannon's attributes usually associated with powerful male warriors and rulers. 389 00:37:40,260 --> 00:37:48,510 Although Rubens is painted clearly, wanted such images to act as positive evidence of Maria's ability to govern France and command its troops. 390 00:37:48,510 --> 00:37:53,280 Contemporary fears about women using sexuality to gain power over men meant that these 391 00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:59,610 images could also evoked very negative interpretations of the Queen's real intentions. 392 00:37:59,610 --> 00:38:06,420 Interestingly enough, while Maria's abilities as ruler were alluded to favourably in many texts published during her regency, 393 00:38:06,420 --> 00:38:09,480 she began to be described in increasingly unfavourable terms. 394 00:38:09,480 --> 00:38:16,770 After the first falling out with her son, now, the Queen Mother was called, quote, deceitful, perfidious and evil. 395 00:38:16,770 --> 00:38:20,370 And those are just some of the nicer things that were said about her. 396 00:38:20,370 --> 00:38:26,190 Although Rubins Maria presumably intended the cycle's paintings to put a positive spin on her public image, 397 00:38:26,190 --> 00:38:32,070 the inability to control contemporary viewers actual responses meant that male viewers in particular 398 00:38:32,070 --> 00:38:37,230 particular could have easily misinterpreted some of these images in very negative terms. 399 00:38:37,230 --> 00:38:41,160 Thus, despite her best intentions, Maria manages paintings of these paintings, 400 00:38:41,160 --> 00:38:46,710 highlights how difficult it was to depict a woman as powerful without being threatening. 401 00:38:46,710 --> 00:38:49,080 In the early modern period for problem, 402 00:38:49,080 --> 00:39:01,990 the furrier's male contemporaries would never have faced when they commissioned portraits or allegorical works who affirm their own power and status. 403 00:39:01,990 --> 00:39:08,890 The final woman patron will consider today was equally preoccupied with carefully controlling her image by visual means, 404 00:39:08,890 --> 00:39:15,850 unlike Isabella, that stay and marry Domenici. However, Queen Elizabeth, the first of England, was neither a wife nor a widow, 405 00:39:15,850 --> 00:39:22,720 but rather that most exceptional thing of all, a single woman who is rich and powerful on her own. 406 00:39:22,720 --> 00:39:29,830 But she, too, like Murray, demented. She was worried about confirming her legitimacy in her case as the rightful and in her case again, 407 00:39:29,830 --> 00:39:33,460 crucially promised an heir of her father had mediate, 408 00:39:33,460 --> 00:39:40,810 as well as about striking the right balance between assert asserting her power and avoiding any of the negative gender specific associations. 409 00:39:40,810 --> 00:39:47,430 Early modern culture made about a woman who tried to rule over men. 410 00:39:47,430 --> 00:39:53,640 Not surprisingly, some of the most important images she commissioned in the first part of a reign after succeeding her half sister, 411 00:39:53,640 --> 00:39:58,360 Mary thatching, 58, made very clear references to her father. 412 00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:02,250 For instance, in this painting known as the allegory of the Tudor succession, 413 00:40:02,250 --> 00:40:06,840 Elizabeth is shown being led to the king by goddesses symbolising peace and plenty, 414 00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:15,030 as well as being accompanied by Henries, by then deceased young male heir and with the six best visually confirming Elizabeth as Henry's natural, 415 00:40:15,030 --> 00:40:22,290 legitimate and divinely ordained Hech heir. Significantly, and in contrast, her Catholic half sister, Mary, 416 00:40:22,290 --> 00:40:26,520 is shown on the other side of Henry's throne, a company not only by her Catholic husband, 417 00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:34,380 King Philip of Spain, but also by the dangerous God of war, Mars, rather than by the auspicious goddesses visually linked to Elizabeth. 418 00:40:34,380 --> 00:40:40,290 So it's not a Mars meaning in Mary with. 419 00:40:40,290 --> 00:40:46,650 Of course, this is bring out a whole series of ideas. Well, thank goodness she's not losing. 420 00:40:46,650 --> 00:40:50,770 She's not the queen because she not only ruined some Catholic. You ruined your own right. 421 00:40:50,770 --> 00:40:55,720 She's married. And that's probably problem. The Mary, please and sense. Who is really in charge? 422 00:40:55,720 --> 00:41:00,660 Oh, my goodness. You could be Svay and have this whole world embarking upon. 423 00:41:00,660 --> 00:41:09,050 Whereas here we have good you know, Elizabeth, you know, literally kind of in the right line to the male heir dies, Edward Elizabeth. 424 00:41:09,050 --> 00:41:14,440 And she's coming in with very good lives is not a war, but peace and plenty and so forth. 425 00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:20,250 And of course, as Henry Kissinger is making very visible, there is always the advantages of her not being married, 426 00:41:20,250 --> 00:41:29,730 but certainly, you know, confirming her legitimacy there as the king's Protestant and the better heir. 427 00:41:29,730 --> 00:41:34,480 But, Elizabeth, the imagery changes from the early 15 80s onwards, 428 00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:39,010 when it became clear that the queen by then in her late 40s, would probably never marry. 429 00:41:39,010 --> 00:41:45,790 And more importantly, would probably never produce an heir to the throne where it was at this time that she began to encourage a courtiers to 430 00:41:45,790 --> 00:41:52,570 commission paintings that are portrayed her more and more explicitly as a chaste ever virgin and always youthful queen. 431 00:41:52,570 --> 00:41:59,140 As in this portrait celebrating Elizabeth's almost divine role in the English victory over the Spanish Armada and the JTA. 432 00:41:59,140 --> 00:42:04,190 You see ships going in. And then you. 433 00:42:04,190 --> 00:42:09,500 And there she is right now. All of this happening in her hands. 434 00:42:09,500 --> 00:42:17,520 Nice kind of iconographic images there to show her a role in this. 435 00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:22,590 Like Catholicism's favourite Virgin Saint, the Madonna who's called the provost in Elizabeth. 436 00:42:22,590 --> 00:42:28,650 In some ways tried to replace with her own. The queen is draped in pearls, symbols of chastity. 437 00:42:28,650 --> 00:42:36,330 Likewise, the bow. That remains very firmly tied. Right over her genital area with a large pearl hanging beneath it. 438 00:42:36,330 --> 00:42:41,640 Reminds us of our quasi saintly virtue, an eternal chastity. 439 00:42:41,640 --> 00:42:44,460 But despite such fairly blatant iconography, 440 00:42:44,460 --> 00:42:50,790 the style of this painting is curiously old fashioned and archey ising, especially if one looks at her blank, 441 00:42:50,790 --> 00:42:55,320 expressionless face and the relentless piling up of iconographic attributes 442 00:42:55,320 --> 00:43:05,340 all depicted without any sense of convincing space or three dimensionality. The casing style of Elizabeth's portrait is especially noticeable if one 443 00:43:05,340 --> 00:43:09,750 comparison to those painted of her sister and immediate predecessor on the throne. 444 00:43:09,750 --> 00:43:13,790 The Catholic Queen Mary Mary was the wife of the Spanish king. 445 00:43:13,790 --> 00:43:18,660 And in images like the one on the left uses used a relatively modern and continental, 446 00:43:18,660 --> 00:43:22,740 as well as naturalistic style for her much more three dimensional portraits. 447 00:43:22,740 --> 00:43:29,060 Even allowing a few wrinkles to show on her face. All of you talked about that. 448 00:43:29,060 --> 00:43:34,470 Solemn comparisons of art and Wilson is a solid progression of things. 449 00:43:34,470 --> 00:43:40,350 I don't think you would ever guess that this painting was actually later than Matthew. This was more naturalistic. 450 00:43:40,350 --> 00:43:43,570 It's not as the English artist couldn't paint that well. 451 00:43:43,570 --> 00:43:54,640 It's also partly a very conscious choice of Elizabeth to choose because your whole fashion saw a more non-committal and more English saw. 452 00:43:54,640 --> 00:44:00,930 And you think about the implications of that, why she might want to do that. 453 00:44:00,930 --> 00:44:06,540 Indeed, in contrast, Mary Elizabeth favourite and almost Antine naturalistic in our crazing style. 454 00:44:06,540 --> 00:44:11,070 They were called the iconic portraits painted of her father at the height of his power. 455 00:44:11,070 --> 00:44:19,830 More than half a century earlier, not the more modern and naturalistic style favoured by her half sister and the rival Spanish fort. 456 00:44:19,830 --> 00:44:24,930 Similarly, full length portraits like the one on the right in which Elizabeth literally stands on a map of England. 457 00:44:24,930 --> 00:44:32,610 I think her feet are actually in Oxfordshire. That's serious because that's where the art of the quarter commissioned the painting. 458 00:44:32,610 --> 00:44:35,190 His home is an alternative which stands in Oxfordshire, 459 00:44:35,190 --> 00:44:42,660 so that these kind of porches in which Elizabeth literally stands on the map of England echoing the command, 460 00:44:42,660 --> 00:44:48,080 they echo the commanding presence her father assumed in his own full-length portraits like the one on left. 461 00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:52,500 However, whereas Elizabeth resorts to a voluminous but beautifully decorated dress to 462 00:44:52,500 --> 00:44:56,900 assert her dominance status while at the same time reaffirming her femininity, 463 00:44:56,900 --> 00:45:05,460 her father sports a prominent codpiece and happily shows off his powerful legs, thereby visually confirming his very masculine authority. 464 00:45:05,460 --> 00:45:13,980 Despite such gender based difference, however, the overall aura of iconic power and timeless majesty is remarkably similar. 465 00:45:13,980 --> 00:45:19,440 But as the reign progressed, Elizabeth's portraits appeared to become increasingly frozen in time and in style, 466 00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:27,360 so that when this image was painted in the final years of her rain, she seems to have almost become a two dimensional image in this case. 467 00:45:27,360 --> 00:45:31,350 In this recession, her courtiers, with her spindly and emasculated legs, 468 00:45:31,350 --> 00:45:35,850 seem to be carrying a rectangular painted icon of the queen rather than a real 469 00:45:35,850 --> 00:45:43,890 living being full of his own hearings and picture of her rather than a real figure. 470 00:45:43,890 --> 00:45:47,490 Indeed, if we didn't know that this was an English scene painted by an English painter, 471 00:45:47,490 --> 00:45:55,100 we could almost imagine that what was actually being carried was an iconic painted image of Elizabeth's Catholic opposite number, the Virgin Mary. 472 00:45:55,100 --> 00:45:56,910 And in fact, by the end of her reign, 473 00:45:56,910 --> 00:46:06,260 Elizabeth Enter images had effectively become secular Protestant substitutes for the old Catholic cult of the Madonna. 474 00:46:06,260 --> 00:46:12,800 However, and interestingly, in most cases, the queen herself didn't actually pay for or commissioned such paintings, 475 00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:16,850 instead encouraging her courtiers to sign the cheques, so to speak. 476 00:46:16,850 --> 00:46:22,940 So should we even speak of her as a patron in the first place since she didn't commissioned the paintings that we're talking about? 477 00:46:22,940 --> 00:46:24,140 I would argue yes. 478 00:46:24,140 --> 00:46:32,660 So she was very clearly she very clued the poet a variety of strategies to try to control how she was represented in contemporary imagery. 479 00:46:32,660 --> 00:46:40,630 One method was to it was to approve only a limited number of models that could be used to produce numerous, numerous authorised replicas, 480 00:46:40,630 --> 00:46:46,460 achieved cheap but effective way of having your wealthy subjects project your attendant image at their own expense, 481 00:46:46,460 --> 00:46:49,880 as seen in the various versions that were painted of the so-called Armato Portrait. 482 00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:53,210 And you see here just two of the many examples that survived to this day, 483 00:46:53,210 --> 00:46:59,630 each with minor variations, but all clearly based on a single approved protocol. 484 00:46:59,630 --> 00:47:04,850 Even clear evidence of the queen's control of her own image is seen in the miniature portrait paintings that her subjects 485 00:47:04,850 --> 00:47:12,470 were encouraged to wear around their necks or pin on their clothes like sacred or talismanic charms as seen in this example. 486 00:47:12,470 --> 00:47:21,620 With still in its original case, we know from documents that Elizabeth controlled such images by pre approving only certain portrait designs, 487 00:47:21,620 --> 00:47:26,270 designs that inevitably showed her as eternally young and divinely beautiful. 488 00:47:26,270 --> 00:47:33,090 Indeed, contemporaries referred to this look as Elizabeth's mask of youth. 489 00:47:33,090 --> 00:47:37,740 Just how artificial and carefully controlled Elizabeth's official public image had become. 490 00:47:37,740 --> 00:47:44,580 By the last decade of a reign suggested by the unusually candid drawing on the left of the queen, aged 60. 491 00:47:44,580 --> 00:47:52,940 That is about five or 10 years younger than she was by the time of the officially approved portrait on the right was actually produced. 492 00:47:52,940 --> 00:47:57,440 So this seems to be a kind of sketch from life. It's very broadly drawn. 493 00:47:57,440 --> 00:48:01,560 It's not a finished miniature. And the artist says, we're in Hirsch. 494 00:48:01,560 --> 00:48:06,650 My take the city ever to have more of this into the mind of eternal mask of youth with us, 495 00:48:06,650 --> 00:48:11,750 that that painting is actually done differently after this one. I would say she looks much younger. 496 00:48:11,750 --> 00:48:18,290 That's the point, is that you can authorise things not to rise or fall in love, isn't it, Walthall? 497 00:48:18,290 --> 00:48:24,120 Those kinds of images. This cult of youth and eternal beauty, eternal chastity continues. 498 00:48:24,120 --> 00:48:26,900 Of course, the importance of her internal life, in a sense, 499 00:48:26,900 --> 00:48:32,200 is that there is a don't worry about the fact that there's no air and there's really a lot of problems that. 500 00:48:32,200 --> 00:48:39,390 You know, she's going to live forever. She's the chaste virgin queen. 501 00:48:39,390 --> 00:48:47,250 So even well into his 60s, Elizabeth continued to maintain the fiction that she was still young, beautiful and implicitly fertile, 502 00:48:47,250 --> 00:48:52,410 thereby trying to reassure subjects visually that they shouldn't worry about who would succeed her. 503 00:48:52,410 --> 00:48:56,790 Of course, the fiction of eternal youth and beauty is something that we've already seen as Isabella does. 504 00:48:56,790 --> 00:49:03,750 This portrait also aged 60, but still looking as fresh and young as Elizabeth was in miniatures like the one on the right. 505 00:49:03,750 --> 00:49:04,380 Those once again, 506 00:49:04,380 --> 00:49:14,080 we see how women paceman shared at least some gender specific concerns regarding age and beauty in the kinds of images they commissioned or approved. 507 00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:20,830 However, as I suggested at the start of this lecture, exploring how gender may have affected the words commissioned by women patrons also 508 00:49:20,830 --> 00:49:26,050 forces us to take another look at the art commissioned by men so we can now look 509 00:49:26,050 --> 00:49:29,470 at work such as these two portraits of the Hapsburg Emperor Charles the Fifth by 510 00:49:29,470 --> 00:49:34,300 Titian in terms of how questions of gender may have affected the final result. 511 00:49:34,300 --> 00:49:39,200 For instance, by considering the very prominent symbols of masculinity in the painting on the right, 512 00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:43,270 which is once again a bulging peace and the faithful hunting dog, 513 00:49:43,270 --> 00:49:44,950 or the case of the image on the left, 514 00:49:44,950 --> 00:49:52,750 how earlier male role models such as Roman emperors who were also famously depicted on horseback in equestrian sculptures and also on coins. 515 00:49:52,750 --> 00:50:00,730 How these might influence the composition. And by doing so, we realise that just like work's associated with female patrons, 516 00:50:00,730 --> 00:50:06,100 such paintings can also be fruitfully assessed in terms of the gender of those who commissioned them. 517 00:50:06,100 --> 00:50:12,910 So by exploring apparently marginal topics such as women patrons, marginal, at least in terms of overall numbers, 518 00:50:12,910 --> 00:50:20,350 it's not only interesting in its own right, but also makes us look a new works produced for some of the key male figures of the period as well. 519 00:50:20,350 --> 00:50:29,020 But doing that but looking at that subject would be a topic for another lecture, but one which I'm relieved to say I won't be giving you today. 520 00:50:29,020 --> 00:50:33,001 Thank you very much.