The Depictions of Women Through Painting

     As the curator for this exhibition I decided that for my theme I was going to concentrate on the different types of roles women play. I decided to go with this path because many times women from many different paintings are depicted as very beautiful and fragil individuals. Their delicacy can be felt just by looking at the painting. They are portryaed as very innocent souls and hardworking women. Although these women are very hardworking, sweet and beautiful I feel that people are just stuck in observing the exterior beauty. Their roles however have changed through the years making them more independent and probably at the same time less likely to see them in the kitchen cooking.
     I was very intrigued by how the roles have changed so dramatically and how happy them seem to be now. I feel that before they were forced into leading the roles of a housewife. Their main job was caring for the childrena and being the understanding mother. The always sweet woman who when talked to by her husband should never speak up and take whatever she was told.
Women are beautiful individuals who have also been portrayed wearing nice and beautiful big dresses. Their hair picked up in an elegant and sophisticated way. 
     I expect my viewer to see how women have changed not only phyiscally but emotionally too. For example the painting "The Lamentation" by Ambrosius Benson, portrays jesus collapsed and to his aid three women by his side. To me everyone expects the woman to do the love aiding and the comfort. Everyone just views the woman and expects that woman to play that role.  Now a different sight of a woman is depicted on "The angry wife" by Jean- Baptiste Greuze. Here this woman is shown with messy hair and in an envirnment of chaos as she carries some sort of weapon that she intends to use on the man two other woman are protecting. This shows another side of women when they feel they have been betrayed.
     Woman have also been belittled for a long time. A perfect example of this is the sculptor made from the egyptians known as "Nikare with is Wife and Daughter" this depicts the man being the most powerful in the family. Nowadays you would probably see a painting with both the wife and husband being the same size. But the daughter and wife are belittled to make the man appear powerful and in control.
     Before women were seen to be very submissive and expected to fullfill things such as piety, purity and domesticity.Now they have become devinant, defiant and independent. And it has brought them consequences and hardship they we have been able to overcome.

 Francois Boucher "Virgin and Child with the young Sain John the Baptist and Angels" 1765 European Paintings

Fra Bartolomeo "Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist" 1473 European Paintings

Marie-Guillelmine Benoist "Madame Phelippe Desbassaynas de Riechmont" 1802 European Paintings

Ambrosius Benson "The Lamentation" 1520 European Paintings

"The Victory Of Eros" 1750 American painting and sculptors

Loius Comfort Tiffany "Th Bathers" 1914 American paintings and sculpture

Louis Comfort Tiffany "Design for a Tapestry of medieval ladies and lords" American painting and sculptures

Anonymous "study of a classical female figure (night)" 19th C Drawings and Prints

Leon Bakst "Two Female Haute Couture Figures" 1910 Drawings and Prints

Jean - Baptiste Greuze "The Angry Wife" Drawings and prints

"Nikare with his Wife and Daughter" Egyptian Art

Lucas Cranach the Elder "Judith with the head of Holofernes" ca. 1530 European Paintings

Pierre Auguste Cot 'The Storm" 1880 European Paintings

  Lucas Cranach the Elder "The Martydrom of Saint Barbara" ca. 1510 European Paintings