CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-Spanish National Research Council)

Faculty Member, CCHS-Instituto de Historia

Científica Titular

About

My current research, under the title “Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture,” has received four years of funding (1.2 million euros) as a European Research Council Starting Grant.

This project is a response to silence and absence. The silence is that of medieval women in the history of art, for despite the advances of recent decades, the field continues to be overwhelmingly a history of men. There is an unspoken underlying assumption that works of art and architecture in the Middle Ages were made by and for men, save for the rare cases where it can be demonstrated otherwise. That is, medieval art is not approached from a position of neutrality but rather presumed to be masculine in origin and intent. Scholars routinely christen anonymous artists with the title “Master of...” followed by some outstanding characteristic by which we recognize “his” work. By contrast, artists and patrons are identified as women only when their names are recorded on a work of art or in documentation. These noteworthy cases have been fruitfully studied, yet always within a framework of the exception that proves the rule. But how many so-called exceptions must there be before we decide that a new rule is in order? At what point to do these perceived aberrations from the norm become rather a new pattern waiting to be recognized? I believe that we have arrived at that point, as I aim to demonstrate with this project. This is not to say, of course, that all works of medieval art had a woman as patron or artist, but rather to recognize that one of the problems to be overcome is the culturally conditioned assumption that the protagonist was male simply because medieval women in general held an inferior position.

My project addresses, therefore, the question of medieval women’s participation in the production and consumption of art and architecture. As patrons and facilitators, producers and artists, owners and recipients, women's overall involvement in the process is investigated within specific social and political contexts, examining interactions and collaborations (or confrontations) with men.

A new point of departure for this cross-cultural, transregional study of the impact women had on medieval art and architecture, centering on the Iberian Peninsula, will be to refocus on the terminology used in the Middle Ages, particularly the verb 'to make'. For artist and patron is a false dichotomy, or, at the least, a modern one. The verb employed most often in medieval inscriptions—from paintings to embroideries to buildings—is 'made' (fecit). This word denotes at times the individual whose hands produced the work, but it can equally refer to the person whose donation made the undertaking possible. Whereas today's eye separates patron from artist, the medieval view recognized both as makers. One of the most challenging aspects of this project comes from its transverse nature as a study of Christian, Islamic, Jewish and secular works. Just as these cultures were interrelated in the Middle Ages, to understand them today they must be examined as part of an overall milieu. What I propose is a new way of thinking about the history of art and architecture from the Middle Ages, one that does not automatically assume it to be made by men but recognizes the contributions of women while situating them firmly within their historical contexts.

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