Some Lesser-Known Ladies of Public Art: On Women and Lions

Summary

For Feiga

Images of female violence, like those of female valor, are extremely rare in early renaissance Italian culture. Virtually no trecento or quattrocento portrayals of women can compare with those featuring Greco-Roman youths who either fatally wound wild beasts or decimate monstrous creatures. Nor are there representations of Christian maidens who are shown mercilessly subduing dragons, as those depicting the triumphs of Saints George (figs. 1– 2) and Michael, respectively. In a culture abounding with statues, paintings, statuettes, and prints of mythological heroes, protagonists who perform courageous but injurious acts are presented primarily as male. These protagonists occasionally appear as coming to the aid of various biblical and Homeric “damsels in distress,” perceived as incapable of fending for themselves (fig. 2). To be sure, in the fifteenth century the notion that a female protagonist could play the role not of passive victim but of active combatant in any given battle was inconceivable. Likewise, the idea that heroines were capable of fearlessly confronting and physically triumphing over a dangerous adversary was not only preposterous but also thought repugnant. Leon Battista Alberti's statement in Libri della famiglia (1441) that “it [does] not befit a woman … to carry a sword” is a revealing reflection of these gender-biased sentiments; so is the comment by Francesco di Lorenzo Filarete, who, in criticizing Donatello's Judith and Holofernes (1457–57, Piazza della Signoria, Florence) in 1504, avers that “it [is] not befitting that a woman should kill a man.”

Among the surviving exceptions to this phenomenon of gender-biased attitudes are a few allegorical statues and paintings of Fortitude, who is personified, at times, as a ferocious armed maiden. The least mentioned but perhaps most interesting variations on the theme—two quasi-mirror images outside and inside the cathedral of San Marco in Venice—date from circa 1230 and are, thus, late-medieval. They feature the Christian virtue under discussion as a young woman who is not only fighting a lion without any assistance (or any kind of protective gear), but who is also prying open its jaws with her own bare hands. As anomalous as both representations are, they are designated for public display: one forms part of the central inner portal of the west facade (fig. 3) and one—apparently the earliest of the two—is a mosaic detail on the interior of the central dome (in one of the sixteen spaces between the windows of the drum—fig. 4).