Volume 38, Number 21 · December 19, 1991
Women in Retreat
By Benedetta Craveri, Translated from the Italian by Joan Sax
Storia delle donne in Occidente: Dal Rinascimento all'età moderna (A History of Women in the West: From the Renaissance to the Modern Era)
edited by Arlette Farge, edited by Natalie Zemon Davis
Plon (To be published by Harvard University Press in 1993), 567 pp., fr 270
Letteratura per il popolo in Francia (1600–1750) (Literature for the French People, 1600–1750)
by Giovanni Dotoli
Schena Editore, 405 pp., 40,000 lire (paper)
Women of the Renaissance
by Margaret L. King
University of Chicago Press, 333 pp., $16.95 (paper)
Ange ou diablesse: La représentation de la femme au XVIe siècle (Angel or Devil: The Representation of Women in the Sixteenth Century)
by Sara F. Matthews Grieco
Flammarion, 495 pp., fr 170 (paper)
Le travail des apparences: Le corps féminin, XVIIIe–XIXe siècle (The Work of Appearances: The Female Body in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries)
by Philippe Perot
Editions du Seuil, 280 pp., fr 43 (paper)
The first known female nude painting of the Renaissance, a work of 1540 by Jean Cousin, confronts visitors to the Louvre with supreme indifference. Seenin profile, like an ancient cameo, with her gaze fixed on some object invisibleto us, the beautiful young woman lounging on her right side with her body slightly elevated as if on an antique bed seems remote and inaccessible. Her pure white nudity appears to be protected by a veil of mystery. She could be taken forVenus were it not fora scroll hanging in the grotto in the background, on which is written in bold letters, 'Eve the first Pandora.' Indeed, if one looks closely, there are no winged putti or bows or quivers of arrows or anything else to associate this splendid body with the fancies of love. The objects around the woman are very disturbing. The twig from an apple tree that she holds inher right hand could appear innocent, but the elbow supporting her raised body rests on a skull and the left arm is encircled by a serpent. Two elegant engraved urns, funeral in appearance, are the sole furnishings of the grotto.
Review, 4925 words
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