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Copyright by Kendra Jo Grimmett 2014 The Thesis Committee for Kendra Jo Grimmett Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Woman on Top: Interpreting Barthel Beham’s Judith Seated on the Body of Holofernes APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Jeffrey Chipps Smith Joan A. Holladay Woman on Top: Interpreting Barthel Beham’s Judith Seated on the Body of Holofernes by Kendra Jo Grimmett, B.A. Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin August 2014 ~ Dedication ~ I dedicate this thesis to my mom, my omi, and my sister, the three powerful women who lovingly support me in everything that I do, and to my dad, the extraordinary man who loves and supports us all. ~ Acknowledgements ~ First and foremost, I extend my most sincere and heartfelt thanks to my advisor Jeffrey Chipps Smith for his continued support and enthusiasm for this project. I could not have asked for a more attentive or generous mentor. His insightful and exceptionally prompt feedback on all aspects of my work enriched both this paper and my approach to the field of art history. I am particularly grateful for Professor Smith’s endless patience and encouragement, which allowed me the time and freedom to write the thesis I envisioned from the beginning. I would also like to thank Joan A. Holladay, my invaluable second reader, both for the critical and detailed feedback she provided on this paper and for her guidance throughout my time in Austin. In fact, long before I started this project, Professor Holladay inspired me to work on topics related to women and gender. It was her scholarship on medieval women and their manuscripts that helped shape my methodology and set me on the path to studying objects through a feminist lens. Many people contributed to the success of this project. To my prospectus committee: Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Joan A. Holladay, Louis A. Waldman, John Clarke, and Francesca Consagra, I offer my gratitude for their excellent suggestions on how to improve my thesis. I am also indebted to the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago and its helpful staff who let me study their impression of Judith Seated on the Body of Holofernes and several more sixteenth-century German prints. I extend my special thanks to Stacy Brodie, whose administrative assistance ensured that this thesis was submitted in my absence. For their moral support and editorial feedback, I am thankful for my colleagues and friends, especially Holley Ledbetter. And last, but certainly not least, I thank my family for their love and encouragement. v ~ Abstract ~ Woman on Top: Interpreting Barthel Beham’s Judith Seated on the Body of Holofernes Kendra Jo Grimmett, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Jeffrey Chipps Smith At no point in the apocryphal text does Judith, a wise and beautiful Jewish widow, sit on Holofernes, the Assyrian general laying siege to her city. Yet, in 1525, Barthel Beham, a young artist from Nuremberg, created Judith Seated on the Body of Holofernes, an engraving in which a voluptuous nude Judith sits atop Holofernes’s nude torso. Neither the textual nor the visual traditions explain Beham’s choice to perch the chaste woman on top of her slain enemy, so what sources inspired the printmaker? What is the meaning of Judith’s provocative position? The tiny printed image depicts the relationship between a male figure and a female figure. Thus, in order to appreciate the complexity of that relationship, I begin this thesis by reviewing what it meant to be a man and what it meant to be a woman in early sixteenth-century Germany. Because gender roles and the dynamics between the sexes were so complex, I encourage scholars to reevaluate Weibermacht (Power of Women) imagery. The nudity of Beham’s Judith and her intimate proximity to Holofernes suggest that Judith Seated on the Body of Holofernes is a Weibermacht print. In fact, Judith’s vi pose specifically echoes that of Phyllis riding Aristotle, a popular Weibermacht narrative. The combined eroticism of Judith’s exposed body and her compromising position would have appealed broadly to male viewers, but Beham likely targeted an erudite audience of well-educated, affluent men when he designed the multivalent print. Through close visual analysis and careful consideration of which prints circulated in early sixteenth-century Nuremberg, I argue that Beham’s Judith resembles witches riding backwards on goats, crouching Venuses, and a woman in the “reverse-cowgirl” sex position. Admittedly, it is impossible to know which sources Beham studied in preparation for Judith Seated on the Body of Holofernes, but I am inclined to believe that he wanted each of those jocular references to enrich the meaning of his work, providing a witty commentary on the power of women. But regardless of the artist’s intentionality, I think visually literate viewers would have recognized and enjoyed decoding the layers of meaning in Beham’s odd engraving. vii ~ Table of Contents ~ List of Figures ........................................................................................................x Introduction ...........................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Gender Roles in Early Sixteenth-Century Germany .....................9 Beyond Eden and Athens: the Ancient Origins of Sixteenth-Century Gender Roles ....................................................................................................11 Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver: Ideal Gender Roles in Early Modern Germany ........15 Ideal Masculinity: Hausvater, Citizen, Ruler ......................................17 Ideal Femininity: The Chaste, Silent, and Obedient Wife ..................22 Reality Check: The Other Side of Masculinity and the (Brief) Empowerment of Women.............................................................................................27 Disruptive Masculinity ........................................................................29 Rebellious Women ...............................................................................35 Mocking Men and Women: "Battle of the Sexes" and Weibermacht Imagery ..............................................................................................................42 Images of Marital Misconduct .............................................................42 Jokes and Gender Relations at Carnivals ............................................47 The Charms of Weibermacht Women ..................................................52 Conclusion ....................................................................................................62 Chapter 2: The Three Faces of Judith and their Audience ............................64 The Chaste Widow and the Heathen .............................................................66 The Triumphant Heroine and the Tyrant ......................................................73 The Femme Fatale and the Fool....................................................................77 Judith Riding Holofernes: Barthel Beham's Weibermacht Print ..................86 Not Everyman: The Educated, Affluent, and Visually Literate (Ideal) Male Viewer ..................................................................................................89 Conclusion ....................................................................................................94 viii Chapter 3: The Provocative Position ...............................................................95 The Sixteenth-Century German Art Market and the Little Masters ...........100 Judith the Witch ..........................................................................................106 Judith as Venus ...........................................................................................118 Sex Positions and Censorship .....................................................................126 Conclusion ..................................................................................................139 Conclusion .........................................................................................................141 Figures ................................................................................................................145 Bibliography ......................................................................................................193 Vita . ....................................................................................................................201 ix ~ List of Figures ~ Figure 1: Judith Beheading Holofernes, Latin Bible, Salzburg, c. 1428-1430. Munich, Bayerische Staatbibliothek, Cod. Lat. 15701, fol. 174v. After Artstor .............................................................................................145 Figure 2: Guyart Desmoulins, Judith and her Maid with the Head of Holofernes, Bible Historiale, France, end of 14th century. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodl. 971, fol. 202v. After Artstor ..........................................145 Figure 3: Jacopo de’ Barbari, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Italy, c. 1498. Engraving, 185 x 123 mm. London, British Museum, 1845,0809.1021. After The British Museum Online ..................................................146 Figure 4: Judith, Midas-Objekt, Naples, c. 1350-1360. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, 78 E 3, fol. 183r.