Rape of women and girls remains a widespread form of aggression against a civilian population during war and often the belief is that the universal condemnation and prosecution of these crimes is a relatively recent phenomenon.
However, critical representations of sexual violence were already created during the Italian Renaissance. The civic imagery developed in city-republics gives us a unique insight into the revolutionary understanding of gender-based aggression and a forgotten chapter in rape history.
Giotto’s frescoes in the Arena Chapel stand at the beginning of any history of Renaissance art, and he is often called the ‘father’ of the western tradition of painting. But what happens if we look at the Chapel and its paintings from a different perspective? Who were the women who used this chapel, what did they see, and what did they think?
When History of Art becomes Her-story of Art, the results can be surprising.
Tuesday 28 February, 19:00 Theatre 2, Roland Levinksy Building, Plymouth University £6/£4.20/Friends free Discounts available via the Artory App and free to Plymouth University students via SPiA
Dr Warwick, Reader in History of Art for Edinburgh College of Art at the University of Edinburgh, explores the key pictorial development of Renaissance art as an understanding of painting as a mirror reflection of the visible world. The motif of the mirror within the painting would become a visual metaphor of the art and skill of painting, from Van Eyck’s Arnolfini portrait to Velazquez’s...
