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Allegory of Vanity (Death Surprising a Woman), by an Italian artist (1550, c.)
This engraving represents a naked young woman looking at herself in a mirror. On the background, death represented by a male skeleton with an hourglass looks at her.Gender perspective: This engraving is a curious deviation of the tradition of seeing…
Back to back with Death, by several authors (1500, c.)
Images 1-6 show two sculptures, the first one carved in wood, the second one in ivory. They both represent sensual female figures that are attached to skeletons as their doppelgangers. Notice the absence of any remains of the breasts in the…
Death stealing Cupid's arrows, by Richer (1584)
In the first illustration, a woman appears lying with her hand over her stomach, as if she was dying. Death, represented by a skeleton with a robe and hair is trying to steal Cupid's arrows, represented by a winged cherub with a bow. In the second…
Heart (feminized?) as a generic symbol of the human soul
Against the Catholic tradition of differentiating the hearts of Jesus and Maria with different attributes (crowns vs. swords), there is a clear tendency to present a neutral or even feminized (very rounded) hearts to represent the human soul as…
Gender of symbolic hands
Hands to suggest action are common in emblems and other symbolic images. Unless they are specifically attributed to God, they are hands of ungendered agents. It is difficult to interpret hands as not masculine given the idea of action they…
Death of the Magdalene
These images represent the death of Mary Magdalen. The first image represents Magdalen lying down semi-covered by a cloth and holding a cross over her chest. A group of angels sing and play instruments over her, and a skull without any specific…
The saved separated by gender in heaven but men and women punished together in hell
These images represent the day of the final judgment (in the third image The Last Judgment is depicted in the circle in the top right corner). Jesus appears either at the center or at the top of the image surrounded by those individuals who are in…
Sexually undifferentiated holy hearts of males and females
These images represent a tradition that depicted Jesus and other religious individuals as hearts. These hearts tend to ne anatomically identical, although Virgin Mary's tend to be represented with daggers, whereas Jesus' is represented with thorns.…
Death of Mary of Burgundy, by Anonymous (1483, c.)
The image shows death portrayed as a royal skeleton with a crown and on a golden throne with a retinue approaching. The image is probably a commentry of the following passage from the manuscript:"O vous qui ce livre lisezPensez bien a ceste…
Dance of Death, the Abbess, by Hollar (1651) and Schlotthauer (1832)
The image represents a skeleton dragging a woman (abbess) out of a house whereas a younger woman raises her arms. The feathers on the skeleton's head and what appears as a phallus in between its legs are intentionally confusing for the viewer but…