HISTORY PROJECT

◦NAME – DISHA BANERJEE

◦CLASS – XI
◦SEC – D2
◦ROLL NO. – 03
◦ ADM NO. – 9524H
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I WOULD LIKE TO CONVEY MY HEARTFELT GRATITUDE TO
MY PRINCIPAL, MRS. PAPIYA MUKHERJEE FOR PROVIDING US THE
CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT AMIDST A PANDEMIC AND HELPING US DO OUR
PROJECTS.

MY HISTORY TEACHER, MRS. KASTURI BANERJEE FOR BEING A CONSTANT

SUPPORT AND GUIDE THROUGHOUT THE MAKING OF THE PROJECT.

MY PARENTS FOR ALWAYS SUPPORTING ME AND ASSISTING ME GET THE

NECESSARY TO COMPLETE MY PROJECT.

WITHOUT THE AID AND HELP OF THE ABOVE MENTIONED, THIS PROJECT
WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN A SUCCESS.
PROJECT SYNOPSIS
This project focusses on the position and status of women during the
European Renaissance with the major spotlight on the following areas:-

oGender Roles of Women of each class in the society

oPosition of Women in comparison to Men
oAtrocities against women
oRise of feminism during Renaissance
oRise of Female Humanist Scholars and Their Works and Impact
 ASPIRATIONS OF
WOMEN IN THE
RENAISSANCE PERIOD
 INDEX
1. INTRODUCTION:
A. RENAISSANCE AND WOMEN
B. DID WOMEN REALLY HAVE A RENAISSANCE?
3. POSITION OF WOMEN
A. IN ARISTOCRATIC FAMILIES
B. IN MERCHANT FAMILIES AND PEASANT FAMILIES
4. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS:
A. MARRIAGE
B. DOWRY
C. ADULTERY
D. ABUSE
E. WOMEN IN HIGH CULTURE
F. FEMINISM
4. WOMEN HUMANIST SCHOLARS
A. FRENCH WRITER MARIE DE GOURNAY
B. ITALIAN MANNERIST PAINTER, LAVINIA FONTANA
C. ITALIAN BAROQUE PAINTER ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI
5. CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION
 RENAISSANCE AND WOMEN:
Renaissance:- The renaissance was a period from 14th to 17th century in Europe
which is defined to be the time of the revival of arts.
The renaissance started in Italy which was the hub of this revolution
In this period different art forms, sculptors, paintings, and architecture took a new turn
and defined new concepts in the field of art.

Women:-
These new concepts of wisdom and art were initially directed towards men and women
were excluded from equal involvement in the revolution. Their social and economic status
became a hindrance to their involvement.
Until sixteenth-century women were not an active part of the revolution and their growth in
new forms of art was suppressed by the strong power of male dominant society.
Women’s role in renaissance became the reason of women empowerment. After the
renaissance women stood up against male superiority in the society. They started participating in
society jobs, politics and education. They asked for respectable positions in society and their
efforts were fruitful when the government started giving them job opportunities and places in
politics.
MAP OF
RENAISSANCE
ITALY
Florence was the
centre of Italian
Renaissance. The
other cities that
flourished under
renaissance were
Milan, Rome, Venice
and Naples
DID WOMEN REALLY HAVE A RENAISSANCE?
♣ In the Renaissance, when the political systems changed from the Medieval feudal systems, women of
every social class saw a change in their social and political options that men did not.

♣ Celibacy became the female norm and "the relations of the sexes were reconstructured
to one of female dependency and male domination". Women lived the life of the
underlying sex. Men ruled over everything, even through half a century of Queens.

♣ The role of women was very scarce. Women were supposed to be seen and not heard. Rarely seen
at that. Women were to be prim and proper, the ideal women.

♣ Females were able to speak their minds but their thoughts and ideas were shaped by men. Mostly
everything women did had input given by men. Women were controlled by her parents from the
day she was born until the day she was married, then she would be handed directly to her husband
so he could take over that role.

♣ In the time of the renaissance women were considered to legally belong to their
husbands. Women were supposed to be typical ‘housewives.'

/
 POSITION OF
WOMEN IN SOCIETY
♦ IN ARISTOCRATIC FAMILIES:-
♦ Upper class women may have had servants and workers working for them but their primary role
was to take care of the running of the household: seeing to the purchase, storage, and
replenishment of supplies; entertaining their husbands' visitors; supervising the servants; and nursing
the ill, whether servants or family members.

♦ Women could not work by themselves. Neither could they live alone if they were not married.
If a woman was single, she was made to move in with one of her male relatives or join a convent and
become a nun. There was no other option for women.

♦ Among wealthier patrician and aristocratic families, women performed the textile work that
women everywhere were expected to do, but they generally made luxury items such as gold-
thread embroidery

♦ Elite women in court societies, who could inherit wealth and a measure of power, received classical
educations, contributed to literature and became patrons of the arts. The only women that
were aloud to express themselves were upper class women, but not sufficiently and were influenced by
men. Very rarely would a woman of less than upper class be seen or heard expressing
herself. It was unheard of.
♦ IN MERCHANT AND PEASANT FAMILIES:

♦ Wives of merchants tended shops, helped keep accounts, or managed

other business records. .
♦ Peasant women performed numerous duties, from tending fowl and
sheep and a vegetable garden to brewing beer and assisting with the
harvest.
♦ Artisan wives did skilled craft work alongside their husbands, or did
the work themselves during their husbands' absence. Sometimes
women became members of craft guilds in this way.
♦ Working-class women had greater freedom of movement, but suffered
as sexual servants, despite the development of increasingly efficient
state bureaucracies to regulate health and welfare.
PEASANT WOMEN OF RENAISSANCE
 SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTS
 A woman had virtually no role in choosing her husband. In the propertied classes most
marriages were arranged by a woman's male kin, perhaps in consultation with her
mother. Many women married men they barely knew or had never met.

 Among the upper classes, however, a teenage girl often married an older man (perhaps
in his late twenties or thirties) who was already established in commerce, government, or
aristocratic society. Sometimes a young woman married a man who was even more advanced in
age and who had already been married.

 Many upper-class wives and husbands led separate lives because of the disparity in their ages,
their lack of acquaintance prior to marriage, and their very different daily occupations. For
instance, the husband might be involved in his business or in political activities while the wife's
life was focused on the home.

 Companionship seemed to be more possible in marriages among the lower classes. Often spouses
were engaged in the same kind of occupation—for example, they were both skilled craftspeople,
or they operated a tavern or a shop together.
 In most regions of Europe, when a woman of the propertied classes got married, she was
expected to bring to her new husband's household a portion of her father's
wealth. Called a dowry, that portion usually represented the woman's claim on her
inheritance.
 The function of the dowry was to remove a woman from her father's line so that she had no
further claim on his property. Her share of her inheritance was to be as small as possible, to
minimize the burden on the father's estate.
 At the same time, the dowry had to be large enough to attract—in effect, "purchase"—a
husband with the highest social status.
 A marriage could reflect glory on the bride's kin, win them political allies and
access to power, or increase the family's wealth. If a woman's family could not
afford a high-status husband, she had to be satisfied with a lesser one who could be acquired
with a smaller dowry.
 Even among the poorest ranks of the peasantry, a bride was expected to bring some goods to
a marriage, if only a few pots or stools to furnish her new home.
 Adultery was consistently viewed as a wife's crime—not a husband's—and
a very blasphemous one
 In many locations, a husband was excused for killing his wife if she was caught
committing adultery. In some places, such a murder was not even designated a
crime.
 Among the wives of European royalty, adultery was considered treason (a
crime against the state) and generally punishable by execution.
 Meanwhile, men regularly engaged in adultery, sometimes with
concubines or mistresses who lived in the family home. Wives were expected to
raise children from these illicit relationships. Such arrangements were more
typical of high-status families.
 Among the poorer classes, marital problems were more often expressed through
bigamy or desertion. A man who found marriage unsatisfactory might leave his
parish and marry again in a more remote location. A man left his wife if he
felt burdened by her, in which case the woman had no legal rights and she
was reduced to dire economic conditions.
 Wife-beating was permissible, as was the physical punishment of children
and servants.
 Men might, furthermore, imprison, starve, and degrade their wives and
other family members.
 Acts of cruelty by Jewish men in domestic relations are mentioned in
documents of the period. Among these acts were broken engagements,
abandonment, non-support, physical and verbal abuse, and the refusal to
acknowledge or support a child born out of wedlock. A woman might
threaten to bring the child to the synagogue or to pressure lay leaders to come to
her aid.
 The rabbis of Catholic Europe were much less willing than the rabbis of Islamic
countries to force a man to divorce his wife. This reluctance was a reflection of
the Catholic belief that a marriage could never be dissolved.
 It was also evident that during the Renaissance women had no opportunity
to extricate themselves from bad marriages
DOMESTIC ABUSE IN RENAISSANCE HOUSEHOLDS
 The role of women in "high" culture—the elite world of power, ideas, and artistic creation—was significantly expanded in the
Renaissance era. A few women served as monarchs who were instrumental in shaping not only
political events but also cultural developments.
 Cultivated women of the high middle class or aristocracy headed salons that spread new scientific and
philosophical ideas and set standards of literary taste. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries women
became increasingly active in the humanist movement, which was given impetus by salons.
 The participation of women in intellectual life represented a major advance: for two thousand years they had been excluded
from such pursuits because they were denied access to formal education. The new humanist emphasis on the worth of the
individual began breaking down traditional barriers. As a result, an unparalleled number of women became
writers during the Renaissance era. There were hundreds and perhaps thousands of women authors, mainly in
Italy, France, and England.
 After 1500 they were encouraged by the growth of the printing industry, which permitted women authors to deal
directly with publishers and bypass male-dominated institutions such as universities.
 Women also wrote poetry, romances, stories, novels, and plays, which they translated into other languages.
 Women and their supporters were included in major social and political issues from the outset. Their participation
contributed to changes in ideas about women's moral and intellectual capabilities, laying the
foundation for the modern feminist movement.
 Meanwhile, the rise in women’s literacy is attested by our knowledge of women who formed letter-writing
networks, a newly popular medium for female solidarity. In England, Isabella Whitney became the first
women to support herself by selling her own poetry.
SALONS OF THE RENAISSANCE PERIOD
The activities of Italian women humanists led to the beginning of the modern feminist movement.
An important part of Renaissance feminism was the querelle des femmes.
The phrase means "the woman question" and refers to the literary debate over the nature
and status of women that began around 1500 and continued beyond the end of the
Renaissance.
The German physician and philosopher Heinrich Agrippa of Nettesheim (1486–1535)
brought the woman question to centre stage with Declamatio de nobilitate et praecellentia
foeminei sexus (Declamation on the nobility and pre-eminence of the female sex;
1529).

Arguing that women were better off in the ancient world, he reinterpreted biblical, Greek, and
Roman texts to "prove" women superior to men.
Agrippa reread the Bible to show, among other things, that men and women were created
equal in soul and that the New Testament makes it clear that women not only prophesied
(spoke as if divinely inspired) in public but also served as church leaders.

Perhaps even more controversial was Agrippa's contention that the oppression of women was
based not on their biological nature but instead on social tradition.
 WOMEN
HUMANIST
SCHOLARS
• In Égalité des hommes et des femmes (The equality of men and women; 1622),
Gournay argued for equality of mind between men and women and asserted that if women
were educated as men are, they would excel to the same degree.

• In a later essay, Grief des dames (The ladies' grievance; 1626), she satirized the failure of
men to take women seriously and to consider them as equals in conversation.

Marie de Gournay Writings of Marie de Gournay

She is credited with being the first professional female artist.
She was the first woman artist to paint female nudes, and possibly the
first female to use live nude female models.
In 1584, Lavinia Fontana became the first woman to produce an
altarpiece on commission with her The Assumption of Ponte Santo.
The Dominican order, which had built a new chapel in honor of St. Hyacinth of
Poland (canonized in 1594), commissioned Lavinia to produce the altarpiece.
This was a moment of triumph: Lavinia had broken through the bastions of
Rome’s artistic boys’ club to leave her mark in one of its oldest and venerated
churches.
She painted Minerva Dressing, the first female nude executed by a
woman in Italy.
 The Portrait Of
The Assumption of Antonietta Gonzalez
Portrait Of A Noblewoman
Ponte Santo
• Gentileschi is considered among the most accomplished seventeenth-century artists, initially working
in the style of Caravaggio.
• She was producing professional work by the age of fifteen.
• In an era when women had few opportunities to pursue artistic training or work as professional
artists, Gentileschi was the first woman to become a member of the Academia di Arte del
Disegno in Florence and she had an international clientele.
• Many of Gentileschi's paintings feature women from myths, allegories, and the Bible,
including victims, suicides, and warriors. Some of her best known subjects are Susanna
and the Elders, Judith Slaying Holofernes.
• Gentileschi was known for being able to depict the female figure with
great naturalism and for her skill in handling colour to express dimension and drama.
• The research paper "Gentileschi, padre e figlia" (1916) by Roberto Longhi, an Italian critic, described
Artemisia as "the only woman in Italy who ever knew about painting, colouring,
drawing, and other fundamentals". Longhi also wrote of Judith Slaying Holofernes : "There
are about fifty-seven works by Artemisia Gentileschi and 94% (forty-nine works) feature women
as protagonists or equal to men". These include her works of Jael and Sisera, Judith and her
Maidservant, and Esther. These characters intentionally lacked the stereotypical "feminine" traits—
sensitivity, timidness , and weakness—and were courageous, rebellious, and powerful personalities
Judith Slaying Holofernes Jael and Sisera
CONCLUSION
“DON’T BE BORN A WOMAN IN FLORENCE(during the
Renaissance) IF YOU WANT YOUR OWN WAY.”
Arguably one overarching lesson of history is that the best time to
be born a woman will be tomorrow.
As always and everywhere, women’s experiences in the Renaissance
depended upon the regulation of their sexuality, their economic and
political roles, their education and the expectations of their culture.

The structural and institutional, as well as ideological, developments

during the Renaissance made things not better for women, but
worse
BIBLIOGRAPHY:-
ALL THE INFORMATION FOR THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN DERIVED FROM THE
FOLLOWING SOURCES:-

BOOKS:
• THEMES IN WORLD HISTORY (TEXTBOK IN HISTORY FOR CLASS XI)
BY NCERT PUBLICATION

WEBSITES:-
• http://www2.cedarcrest.edu/academic/eng/lfletcher/shrew/acloud.htm
• https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/women-renaissance-
and-reformation
• alphahistory.com
• upload.wikimedia.org
• images.squarespace-cdn.com
• americainclass.org
• https://artsandculture.google.com/story/artemisia-39-s-magdalene-in-ecstasy-the-national-gallery-
london/9QWRm22VDbb1v...
• Introducing Twelve Great Women Artists from Early Modernity