Delilah was a snake. Judith was a seductress, and Eve caused the fall of man. Are there any problems that are not, at there roots, the result of a woman’s conniving?
Throughout the course of history women have been portrayed in a number of unflattering ways, the main being the above mentioned deviant, tempting, seductresses that are the object of all men’s desires. Women have been portrayed in this light in various different arenas, one of the most notable being the art world. In paintings women have so often been put on display. Many of the most famous pieces of art are ones that objectify a woman while telling a story of how she schemes and by using her sexuality gets what she wants from some poor unsuspecting man. If ,by chance, a woman is alone in a painting, more often than not, she is either partially or completely nude, positioned in a provocative way, while staring enticingly out of the canvas at the viewer, who is presumably a male. Although most paintings from the years 1400-1850 share this same portrayal of women, there have been some female artists from that same period that cast women in a different, more flattering, light. Painters such as Artemisia Gentileschi were made famous by their more accurate and appealing depictions of women. However, flattering paintings were the exception and not the rule when it came to women in painting.


During the Middle Ages the majority of paintings with women as the subject were of a religious variety. They depicted The Virgin Mary and other thing of that ilk. Other subjects were few and far between. It wasn’t until the Renaissance that we began to see women depicted as anything other than deities. During the Renaissance women began to emerge in paintings in an ethereal light, as timeless beauties. A good example of this is Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. She is the perfect female form, presented in a way that is pleasing to the eye…the male eye. Although the painting is a lovely one, it was painted as to appeal to a male audience. The female body is one that is flawed and in this particular painting Venus is flawless, without body fat or body hair. In a work by Berger, he states that men paint women that then become a fantasy. The objective of a painting such as this one is to entice and enthrall the viewer with the incomparable beauty of Venus, however unrealistic it may be. The presence of Venus is one of purity (after just being born) and modesty (as parts of her body are strategically covered), while at the same time exuding a sensuous beauty that is very attractive to men. In creating works that display this kind of flawlessness it became preferable that real women try to emulate such images, thereby creating a standard for what beauty is supposed to be. As Berger states, “ She [woman] has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of critical importance for what is normally thought of as success of her life.”

Women were depicted as wide-eyed, angelic, and “perfect” in most paintings during this period, with the exception of some notable female painters. Most notably Artemisia Gentileschi. She created works that were almost direct contradictions of the way women were being portrayed in most other paintings. In her renditions of Susanna and the Elders, she portrays Susana fighting the Elders as opposed to the original painting that shows Susanna seemingly unaware of or indifferent to their presence.

Many of her paintings re-told stories that had been painted before, but instead of painting women as villains, which was so often the case. She painted female heroines and women of strength and power.

In later years, during the Baroque Era, women began to emerge in paintings as more devious creatures with a much darker side. We began to see depictions of murder and deceit. For example, there were many renditions of scenes from the story of Judith and Holofernes, and her decapitation of him. Although the story itself is one that exemplifies Judith’s act of bravery in seducing and killing Holofernes in order to save her people, the paintings depict Judith as an indifferent seductress who overtook and unsuspecting man.

Another change we began to see is centerfold-type paintings of women in various states of nakedness. Women had been painted nude before, but the context in which they were being painted changed. It was less for the sake of beauty and more for the sake of visual enjoyment of men. The facial expressions of the women began to shift from looks of innocence to expressions of intent. The provocative postures and facial expressions seemed deliberate on the part of the women being painted. They seemed to want to entice and/or seduce.

Although the portrayals of women are no longer as overtly negative, the after affects of these unflattering depictions are still prevalent. Women still strive for perfection based on the concept that women’s sole mission in life is to be visually pleasing to a man. We as women have succumbed to the expectation of the flawlessness on every level. We do not speak on certain subject matters because it is considered on many levels of society to be distasteful. We cannot take part in certain activities because it is said to goes against our very nature. The role of women is a very challenging one. All of our actions have such violent repercussions, not only on the views of others towards us, but also our surroundings and those around us. It seems that by our actions we can affect the very outcome of humanity.

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