Abstract
Reviewed by: Jennifer Griffiths, University of Georgia at Cortona, USA
In uncertain times women’s lives, bodies, and images become the focal point of social and political scrutiny. This book reiterates a common historical thread that can be traced from the ancient Rome of Augustus to our own contemporary moment, yet it looks from an uncommon vantage point. Wives and mothers are almost always the primary subjects of legislative debate and the hyper-visibility or objectification of nubile young women is much discussed by historians of visual culture. Yet on the other end of the spectrum the opposing hyper-invisibility of old women is rarely examined. Given the rigid structures and hierarchies that governed Renaissance societies, what was expected of those women who lived beyond their child-bearing years? Campbell rightly points out that unless we examine all aspects of women’s representation in the history of art, “we risk making the study of women synonymous with the study of young, beautiful women” (p. 2). She builds on the scholarship of Patricia Simons, Adrian Randolph, and Elizabeth Cropper, among others, to offer a deeply contextual analysis of portraits of mature women in Renaissance Bologna. In a well-articulated introduction, she lays out her sources and methodological approach stipulating the interdisciplinary nature of her project, which approaches these portraits “not so much as works of art, but as cultural performances …” (p. 4).
The first chapter, “Portraits of old women and the domestic meshwork”, reconstructs the architecture, furnishings, and ornamentation of the Bolognese home to situate the portraits in question as “domestic artifacts of old age” in their original habitat (p. 9). Examining the specific nature of architecture and lived space in Bologna, this book convincingly argues that pictures of old women shared a “language of sobriety and restraint” with their surroundings that spoke to a metaphorical connection made between disciplined female bodies and the orderly Christian home.
Two subsequent chapters on “Prophets and Saints” and “Matriarchs” examine the likely moral and spiritual function of portraits of old women by introducing relevant conduct literature of the period by Juan Luis Vives, Lodovico Dolce, Agostino Valier, and Giulio Cesare Cabei. These authors advise that in old age women should set aside the cares of the world in order to devote themselves to God. In this context the prophetess Anna, renown for her chastity, modesty, and shame, is made a clear role model of female aging. The same conduct literature emphasizes the important role that older women must play as the connective tissue in family networks and here the role model became St. Anne, mother of the Virgin, who represented the idea of generational continuity. Portraits of old women by Bartolomeo Passerotti, Giovanni Battista Moroni, Leandro Bassano, Lavinia Fontana, and others are thus explained as having operated in the home as “prescriptive images, pedagogical aids, and mediating objects to smooth the entry of women into old age” (p. 50). Alongside these regulatory functions, however, Campbell recognizes that some of the Bolognese images operate as “matriarchal symbols allowing individuals to negotiate the tensions arising from pressures on familiar roles at all levels, during a critical period in Bologna’s history” (p. 79). Thus these images are seen as unstable signifiers because while they indicate the “symbolic power of old women as moral exemplars” they simultaneously point to the fact that women were once again being compelled to obey an uncompromising code of conduct (p. 83).
Chapter four is entitled “Old Women in Frames” and here the author argues for reading the highly realistic depiction of age and the subjects’ lack of adornment as potent signifiers of personal and familial piety. Examining the cultural meanings tied to makeup, skin, clothing, fashion, and jewelry, the author points out the meaningful absence of idealization or embellishment. “[B]y performing the rejection of female adornments” she explains, “portraits of old women provided not only pious self-definition, but also redemption for the entire family as ritual reenactments of anti-materialism” (p. 122). Not by accident do such images of renunciation appear during the reformation period.
The final chapter of the book brings together themes of the previous chapter to determine that portraits of old women can be read as “sacred pain performances” (p. 143). During the Catholic Reformation the sufferings and pains of the aging body were strongly linked to penitence and salvation, especially in the case of women, whose embodiment was linked to sin and materiality. Here the author demonstrates the significance of writings by Catholic reformer and archbishop of Bologna, Gabriele Paleotti, who elaborated on the redemptive purpose of suffering in old age in his Book of the Good of Old Age (Libro del bene della vecchiezza) published in 1597.
Cultural histories of Renaissance Italy largely focus on Florence, Rome, and Venice so this study on Bologna is a significant contribution to a more complex understanding of Renaissance society. Yet it also unwittingly illustrates the shortcomings of the term Italian, a blanket nomenclature that can obscure the real incongruities of the peninsula’s cultural landscape prior to unification. Adding to art historical research by Babette Bohn or Caroline Murphy, Campbell’s study once again points to the city of Bologna as a unique site of female power and presence between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. It had an early and significant tradition of women scholars and produced an unusually large number of women artists, the best known of whom was Lavinia Fontana.
Only three of the works in this study are by Fontana, but the artist is known to have had strong ties of patronage to the city’s noblewomen. Campbell emphasizes that there is little empirical evidence about the portraits discussed here and thus she aims to move “beyond biography or patronage,” (p. 5), but the unique history of women in Bologna begs some degree of speculation about the possible intensions of a male or female patron. At the end of chapter three it is suggested that it could be argued that these portraits reveal how female aging was threatening and therefore in need of regulation (p. 83). The author does not choose to elaborate on this point, but again one ponders its significance for questions of patronage. We know that widows and older women acquired greater freedom as they moved away from the normative structures of marriage and birth. Did the patron of such a work seek to impose new order on the subject or quell the anxieties of the viewer? Campbell explicitly states that her focus is on an audience-based reading and she points out that a modern sense of individualism is anachronistic to understanding these highly realistic visages, nevertheless the modernist will be struck by the unique features and dignified expressions of the sitters in sixteen beautiful color plates. This modernist longs to read next about their rescue from obscurity and invisibility by a future scholar who will return to them a sense of personhood beyond the label of “Gentlewoman,” “Widow” or “Old Woman.”