Abstract
Isabella d’Este’s studiolo reveal’s her attitude towards the Renaissance revival of the classical goddess of love, Venus. Her series of paintings exhibit iconography that clearly rewards restraint against vice and corruption, in contrast to the iconography of the Medici commission for Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Vernon Lee’s repudiation of a sexualized Venus within the context of Italian Renaissance art criticism is also carried out through her short stories, “Amore Dure,” “Dionea” and “Oke of Okehurst.” The female protagonists in these short stories from her collection, Hauntings, demonstrate the power of the female archetype to overcome a male dominated patriarchy through arcane and supernatural means. They also demonstrate the manipulation of the male psyche through female guises. At a time when the collections of Isabella Stewart Gardner were being filled with the greatest Old Masters under the advice of Bernard Berenson, Lee responds with her own imaginary studiolo in which characters are brought to life to interface with their present-day would-be collectors and scholars. Combining the contemporary trend in spiritualism with new evolving modes of epistemology, Lee conjures up the most famous artists of the Renaissance and places them in a new modern perception of lines and shapes that determine aesthetic value. The reader of Lee’s short stories could hardly come away believing in the social structure of the Renaissance which produced the artworks and revived classical antiquity. Research that placed works of art on pedestals according to their patrons is overturned in favor of a new modern social order.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Isabella d'Este, Renaisssance, Venus, Vernon Lee, Aesthetics, Gender
