Women, Artist, Middle Ages, Feminity, Culture, Spirituality

It is only in recent decades that the topic of medieval art and its relationship to women artists has been systematically addressed in art history. As we already know, women worked in the art workshops found in towns, where they, for example, worked in the family businesses operated by their fathers or husbands (such as Jeanne and Richard Montbaston, the painter Konrad Witz’s daughter Katharina Witz, and the Murano glassmaker Marieta Barovier). They were also particularly active in convents and other religious communities, where they had access to libraries and a more in-depth education, and were more often able to live their faith openly, all of which were factors that greatly influenced their artistic output. Written records, chiefly convent chronicles, various obituaries, and colophons, show that women in medieval religious communities, like their male counterparts, produced richly decorated manuscripts, and that their convents had libraries and scriptoria. There they transcribed, wrote, and illuminated liturgical books for their religious community, as well as small devotional images and other similar items for the private use of the individual nuns. Unfortunately, most of these female scribes and illuminators are destined to forever remain anonymous in the context of medieval scriptoria, although we do know the names of some of them. They include outstanding and acknowledged master artists, such as Sibylla von Bondorf, the nun Guda, Gisela von Kerssenbrock, and Loppa de Speculo, as well as women without any artistic training, who in fact make up the majority.

It is only in recent decades that the topic of medieval art and its relationship to women artists has been systematically addressed in art history. As we already know, women worked in the art workshops found in towns, where they, for example, worked in the family businesses operated by their fathers or husbands (such as Jeanne and Richard Montbaston, the painter Konrad Witz’s daughter Katharina Witz, and the Murano glassmaker Marieta Barovier). They were also particularly active in convents and other religious communities, where they had access to libraries and a more in-depth education, and were more often able to live their faith openly, all of which were factors that greatly influenced their artistic output. Written records, chiefly convent chronicles, various obituaries, and colophons, show that women in medieval religious communities, like their male counterparts, produced richly decorated manuscripts, and that their convents had libraries and scriptoria. There they transcribed, wrote, and illuminated liturgical books for their religious community, as well as small devotional images and other similar items for the private use of the individual nuns. Unfortunately, most of these female scribes and illuminators are destined to forever remain anonymous in the context of medieval scriptoria, although we do know the names of some of them. They include outstanding and acknowledged master artists, such as Sibylla von Bondorf, the nun Guda, Gisela von Kerssenbrock, and Loppa de Speculo, as well as women without any artistic training, who in fact make up the majority.