More than a century ago, nature and society deemed women as housewives, home keepers, and ethical keepers for their homes and society. In the community, everything was entirely under the control of men. Women would be controlled by their brothers and fathers while they were young and in marriage, their husbands would take over. Women were not permitted to venture into any activities that men did not ascent. Therefore, in marriage, any property owned by a woman was shifted to the husband. Besides, divorce was highly punishable as women were expected to live with their husbands despite the marriage being miserable. This did not only obliterate their opportunities to having freedom of any kind but also undermined their physical requirements. The women’s voice of influence was subdued, thus, limiting their hope of achieving social recognition. However, times have changed throughout history; the same can be said of women. As eons changed, so did the opportunities and demands of women. Women’s adoption of these changes was remarkable since they were able to influence and shape these periods and benefit from them. The society was inclined to thinking that women’s feminism and liberation is a phenomenon of the twentieth century, yet even in the ancient world, some prominent women carved out significant roles for themselves and pioneered considerable variation in the status of women from one civilization to another.
Although the portraits of women represented otherness from what were formerly considered superior norms, such as imagery of elite men in the ancient world, they were also subject to novel emerging ideas surrounding gender.[1] Rather than approaching sexuality in their images from an angle of nearly showing a figure as a female with implicit association, imperial women viewed it on the grounds of a mechanism of visual meaning. They focused on what these imaes could relay to the viewer.[2] Portrait statutes were erected for numerous reasons. According to Elizabeth Long, although the earliest imagery were set up as demos primarily for public commissions, aesthetic quality was essential as they functioned as objects of political, religious, or social significance.[3] Additionally, not only did the portraits stand as paradigms of models to edify the population, but they also denoted the highest honor bestowed to an individual by a city. Women’s portraits served a comparable purpose despite being subject to different modes of conduct that affected their representation in imagery. Nevertheless, although contemporary attitudes towards their gender dictated that women were required to project more abstract values on domesticity and beauty, they stood as examples of good behavior and moral virtue. In distinction from the statutes of men, women portraits reflected honor to their male relations and families, especially during the Hellenistic and Classical periods.
The Old Market woman
The classical female had to defer in behavior with those of men. Denoting the very opposite of the ancient era of idealism, Hellenistic sculptures were no longer engrossed in the thoughts of capturing ideal beauty but moved towards a more realistic and emotional art. The imagery of an old market woman is typical of this trend.[4] In the history of statutes of old women and men from the lowest rungs of social order, such as drunken beggars, shepherds and fishermen, the enactment of the old market woman was found worthy of monumental statuary.[5] As quoted by Fred Kleiner, the statute depicts a mired and haggard old woman carrying chicken and a basket of vegetables and fruits that she was going to sell in the market. Further, he continues to describe how her body bent with age, how lifetime poverty broke her spirit, and lastly, how her face was wrinkled.[6] The social roles of a woman that envisages from the old market woman are domestic responsibilities of a woman to ensure that there is food on the table as evidenced by her carrying fruits, chicken, and vegetables.
Source: Gardner and Kleiner,152.
However, other writers argue that she was a votive statute to the god Dionysus and was probably a participant at a Dionysaic festival making an offering at an altar.[7] Dionysus was a favored Hellenistic deity believed to respond to the supplications of many levels of society. Thus, the old market woman brings to light the role of women in religion and how they made sacrifices on behalf of their families despite their age. Idealism began to fade in favor of realism, which directed its attention to varied attributes, experiences, and individuals. Therefore, rather than bringing out similarity of women, it brought out their uniqueness.
However, Kleiner notes that the old market woman is poor and she does not derive any pleasure from living but carries on because she must.[8] As such, this explains how women had despair since they were not allowed to venture any activities apart from cooking for their husbands and families, childbearing, and other activities, such as farming and making houses, that society regarded as responsibilities of the weaker sex. Otherwise, the baggy eyes, wrinkled features, hunched back, and the sagging breasts was an attempt to avert the intercession of idealism and perfection, and reflect on the experience of the human and natural world. To the vain Greek obsessed with youth, old generations and wrinkles were in no way deemed beautiful, and they displayed blatant disrespect to old age. Therefore, the old market woman statute was relevant to demonstrate how women at the old age were overlooked in the society. Ridgeway notes that the old market woman was a shining example of what is misunderstood in the art in that, she represents an evolution in Greek art towards realism in the Hellenistic era, where an old fearful body is crafted in place of ideal Aphrodite.[9]
Queen Hatshepsut
In the ancient Egyptian community, motherhood was considered a pinnacle of a woman’s achievement. Women, typically royal women and those of the upper-class, though in a limited extent, were allowed to be educated, owned businesses and property, obtained a job, and were involved in military leadership.[10] Apart from a few instances when women became pharaoh, where queens would take over command on behalf of their young sons till they were old enough, women of royal birth were not considered future kings of Egypt. The imagery of stone represented immortality and permanence of kings in Egyptian kingdoms.
Source: Gardner and Kleiner, 68.
In ancient Egypt, kings were portrayed as fathers, gods, and protectors of their land. Accordingly, pharaoh had particular hierarchy, accouterments and iconography to validate their role. According to Kleiner, years after the death of Pharaoh Thutmose II, Hatshepsut who was named regent for the boy-king, proclaimed her-self pharaoh as a chosen successor by her father.[11] As opposed to the dominant male gender in the Egyptian Kingdom, delineating the fact that she was female, Hatshepsut became a female king who ruled the new Egypt. She legitimized her claim for kingship by rewriting history whereby she invented her Co-regency between herself and her father. By doing this, Hatshepsut disrupted the gender norms by becoming the first ever recorded female monarch. As queen, she boasted of having Egypt (two lands) labor for her with bowed back, making her empire the most powerful, peaceful, wealthy, and prosperous in the world.[12]
Moreover, the place of women of their time was remarkable since they enjoyed numerous privileges compared to women in other societies. Disregarding the norms of gender and how women were viewed in the community, Hatshepsut’s imagery was one of a kind. In every community, women’s dressing is coded. However Hatshepsut in her surviving images, uniformly clothes herself in male pharaohs costume with kilt and royal headers and even a false ceremonial beard on several occasions.[13] In her reign, Hatshepsut expanded routes of trade in ancient Egypt. Through an expedition to the land of a punt, she became a significant trade partner who supplied Egypt with wood, gold, ivory, wild animals, and resin. She also sent punt alongside massive ships to open trade, and on their return, they came filled with frankincense and 30 live myrrh trees. Additionally, she oversaw an immense period of building projects, such as statutes and hundreds of grand buildings, along with her architect and portraits of other female pharaohs displayed in those complexes. In spite of her scores of accomplishments, after her death, King Thutmose III, for reasons which remain unclear, ordered Hatshepsut’s portraits destroyed.[14] The act depicts how women were disregarded in the society despite countless achievements since it does show disrespect and emanates the weakness of the female gender.
The Empress in the Mosaic of ST. Vitale
According to Hillaire, female portraiture needed to reflect the varied roles occupied by women in the society, as well as retain respectability and modesty of women in ways that were irrelevant to men who held public office and lived contrastingly public lives.[15] The female imagery, unlike those of their sons, husbands, and fathers, was expected to portray abstracts of typical values of feminine beauty. Formerly, female images were required to shower honor and dignity onto their male relations as opposed to those of men that disregarded their rights without references from their family and relationship. The sitter portraits’ meaning was not contained in its facial similarity, but rather, on how it corresponded to the body and in the sense that it conveyed.[16] The imagery of all ages from the Flavian era survived; contrary to the republic when only elders were considered worthy of depiction. The Flavian woman portrait bust was intended to project idealized beauty rather than republican virtues through contemporary fashion, instead of references to images of Greek goddesses.[17]
SOURCE: Gardner and Kleiner, 26
The sculpture of the Flavian woman depicts women as images of delicacy and elegance and for the virtuoso way, the imagery rendered differing textures of flesh and hair. Thus, this meant that women were expected to be neat, clean, and beautiful. They were also supposed to be trendy to keep up with the faces of fashion. These trends included corkscrew curls of the Flavian woman punched out of her face using a drill in place of a chisel, creating a dense mass of shadow and light that boldly shed out from the highly polished and softly molded skin of the swan-like neck and face. This insinuates that physique, personal hygiene, face, and skin care was, and still is, paramount to a woman, leaving no room to tolerate carelessness in these areas.
Conclusion
In summary, the female portraits in art history have shown that women liberation and feminism has not been a twenty-first-century affair but rather, commenced decades ago. Women from the Roman, Egyptian and Chinese era fought their way through recognition. They resisted the term “weaker gender” and went ahead to challenge the status quo that coded women as housewives, farmers and child bearers. Queen Hatshepsut’s portrait is significant in this change since it demonstrates how leadership should not be confined to gender critics as evidenced by Egypt’s prosperity in her error. The sculpture of the old market woman illustrates the struggles of women to old age and their religious responsibilities in the society. Finally, as demonstrated by the Flavian woman, women were vessels of beauty and they were expected to shower respect and honor to their male relations and the society they represent.
Bibliography
Duiker, William J, and Jackson J. Spielvogel. World History: Volume 1: to 1800. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2010.
Gardner, Helen, and Fred S. Kleiner. Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2017.
Hilliard, Mariee Kristina. “Images of Gendered Kingship Visual Representations of Hatshepsut and Her Influence of Images of Nefertiti.” Masters Thesis, University of North Texas, 2006.
Long, Tracey Elizabeth. “Great Grandmothers: The Female Portrait Sculpture of Aphrodisias: Origins and Meaning.” PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 2014.
Ridgway, Brunilde S. Hellenistic Sculpture I: The Styles of Ca. 331-200 B.c. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1990.
[1] Elizabeth Tracey Long, “Great Grandmothers: The Female Portrait Sculpture of Aphrodisias: Origins and Meaning,” (PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 2014), 12.
[2] Long, “Great Grandmothers,” 12.
[3] Ibid, 27.
[4] William J. Duiker and Jackson J. Spielvogel, World History: Volume 1: to 1800. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2010). 118.
[5] Helen Gardner and Fred S. Kleiner, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective, (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2017), 152.
[6] Gardner and Kleiner, Gardner’s Art Through Ages, 152.
[7] Brunilde S. Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture I: The Styles of Ca. 331-200 B.c, (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1990). 333.
[8] Gardner and Kleiner, Gardner’s Art Through Ages, 152.
[9] Ridgway, Hellenistic sculpture, 333
[10] Mariee Kristina Hilliard, “Images of Gendered Kingship Visual Representations of Hatshepsut and Her Influence of Images of Nefertiti,” (Masters Thesis, University of North Texas, 2006), 115.
[11] Gardner and Kleiner, Gardner’s Art Through Ages, 152.
[12] Ibid, 68.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Gardner and Kleiner, Gardner’s Art Through Ages, 68.
[15] Hilliard, “Images of Gendered Kingship Visual Representations,” 31.
[16] Mariee Kristina Hilliard “Images of Gendered Kingship Visual Representations of Hatshepsut and Her Influence of Images of Nefertiti,” (Masters Theis, University of North Texas, 2006), 31.
[17] Gardner and Kleiner, Gardner’s Art Through Ages, 261.
