Women Patrons And Collectors

In looking at the history of collecting, one may be excused for regarding it as an activity in which, traditionally, women have shown little interest or in which they have not been involved. As the present volume shows, women—particularly aristocratic women—not only resisted this discrimination through the ages, but also built important collections and used them to their own advantage, in order to make statements about their lineage, power, cultural heritage or religious preferences. That is not to say that there was not an increasing number of middle-class women who became draughtswomen, painters and natural scientists and who found it equally beneficial for their chosen profession to collect. In every case, the female collector chose to collect and what to collect; she chose how and where to present the collection and she also decided when to dispose of objects, thereby occasionally taking on a curatorial role. Women have been seen as gatherers of furnishings, jewellery, dress and objects of domestic life. This third volume in the Collecting & Display series of conference proceedings challenges such perceptions through the detailed analysis of different types of collecting by women from the early modern period onwards; it thus seeks to give a voice to a group of important female collectors from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century whose importance for the history of collecting has not yet, or not sufficiently, been acknowledged.

This anthology reflects a larger impulse to recover women's involvement in the creation of an aesthetic culture from the late medieval through the early modern periods. By asking how the perspectives and experiences of female patrons contributed to the invention of particular styles or iconographies, or how they shaped taste, or how they influenced demand, these twelve original essays introduce significant new information about specific women patrons while raising theoretical issues for patronage studies more generally. While most of the projects discussed are consistent with the period's male-sanctioned concept of female patronage as an expression of conjugal devotion or dynastic promotion, at the same time the women involved devised strategies that circumvented these rules, allowing them to explore the potential or art as a means of proclaiming their own identity and taste.

This anthology reflects a larger impulse to recover women's involvement in the creation of an aesthetic culture from the late medieval through the early modern periods. By asking how the perspectives and experiences of female patrons contributed to the invention of particular styles or iconographies, or how they shaped taste, or how they influenced demand, these twelve original essays introduce significant new information about specific women patrons while raising theoretical issues for patronage studies more generally. While most of the projects discussed are consistent with the period's male-sanctioned concept of female patronage as an expression of conjugal devotion or dynastic promotion, at the same time the women involved devised strategies that circumvented these rules, allowing them to explore the potential or art as a means of proclaiming their own identity and taste.

Catherine the Great of Russia acquired art voraciously. Cosmetics magnate Helena Rubinstein collected African and Victorian glass. Couturier Coco Chanel amassed an enormous hoard of French eighteenth-century furniture. This fascinating book offers the first-ever look at these enterprising women -- along with Madame de Pompadour, Empress Josephine, Marjorie Merriweather Post, Gertrude Stein, Mary Cassatt and Peggy Guggenheim, among others -- and tells how they assembled significant and valuable collections of art, silver, jewelry, textiles, ceramics, photography, fossils and much more.

To demonstrate that Isabella d'Este, marchioness of Mantua (1474-1539) was not the only woman patron of art during the period, and to balance the recent focus on religious women's patronage, US art historians and medievalists consider women patron's relationships with other women and men, including kinsmen and the artists and architects whose work they commissioned; what social classes they belong to; how they were able to finance the undertakings they sponsored; and other matters. The many photographs and reproductions are in black and white. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

This essay collection features innovative scholarship on women artists and patrons in the Netherlands 1500-1700. Covering painting, printmaking, and patronage, authors highlight the contributions of women art makers in the Netherlands, showing that women were prominent as creators in their own time and deserve to be recognized as such today.