The Museum is open 11:00 – 19:00
Cinema is closed now
The Museum is open 11:00 – 19:00
Cinema is closed now
Lecture
(In)visible Women in the Medieval Art World. A Lecture by Agnieszka Patała
An event accompanying The Woman Question 1550-2025 exhibition
LOCATION
Auditorium
LANGUAGE
Polish
ADMISSION
Free thanks to the cooperation with Audi Polska
excerpt Antependium with the Tribute of Continents and Imperial Countries to the Holy Family (1710–1730) by Marie Tekla Bittnerová of Glückstein; photo licensed under CC4.0, by Dobroš
Before modern feminism emerged, there was what was known as the woman's question. And what came before that? On whose shoulders did the early modern thinkers and artists stand as they articulated their opposition to women’s subjugation? Art historian Agnieszka Patała will discuss medieval women, their invisible labor, and their extraordinarily rich—though largely overlooked—creative output.
The Middle Ages are commonly perceived as a time when women operated on the fringes of the art world and only occasionally engaged in any creative processes. This widespread view is, unfortunately, both misleading and difficult to unequivocally refute. This paradox is determined by two interrelated factors. On the one hand, there are the legal, social, and religious norms governing women’s lives in the premodern era. On the other hand, women’s invisibility was influenced by the prejudiced practices and attitudes of 19th- and 20th-century historians and art historians, who for a long time did not make room for women in their studies.
Fortunately, in recent decades, art history has made significant progress in revealing the contributions of female artists to the development of medieval visual culture. Research projects with solid methodological foundations—led by the work of Therese Martin, who introduced the concept of makers of art and expanded the understanding of authorship for the premodern era—have opened up new possibilities for interpreting the creative process and the previously invisible work of women.
This lecture aims to highlight two key spaces in which women of the medieval era remained active agents and fully engaged in the creation of art:
1. The Convent
Medieval women’s monasteries, as closed communities accessible primarily to women from the upper social classes, constituted safe spaces of relative freedom, conducive to women’s intellectual development and creativity. This section of the lecture will discuss both works by artists known by name and the activities of lesser-known figures, including Guda and Claricia, as well as the work of anonymous nuns whose output remains undocumented.
2. The City
The second part of the lecture will be devoted to the presence of women in the guild structures of artistic production in the cities of Central Europe (including Kraków and Prague), southern Germany (e.g., Nuremberg), and the Netherlands (including Bruges and Antwerp). A comparison of various organizational models will allow us to outline not only the issue of women’s direct participation in the functioning of these communities, but also many not necessarily obvious manifestations of their involvement in the creation of paintings and sculptures. It will also be an excellent opportunity to outline the socio-cultural frameworks shaping their (in)visibility in art history research.