Preface & Introductions to Saints, Sinners, and Sisters: Gender and Northern Art in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Preface In the fall of 1993 a group of feminist scholars gathered in Boston for a workshop while attending a meeting of the Historians of Netherlandish Art. About 15 art historians, all female and all under 45 years old, began to discuss how to incorporate the extensive and exciting gender-based research in their field into courses which of necessity relied upon tradition-laden textbooks. A secondary problem was finding that scholarship, as it often appeared in newer journals of comparative studies, frequently not purchased by undergraduate institutions. By the end of the workshop the cry had gone up for a collection of essays that would show-case the diverse questions being asked by gender scholars dealing with Nether-landish and German art from the Medieval and Early Modern periods. The need for this volume was doubly acute as the two extensive anthologies by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, Feminism and Art History (1982) and Expanding the Discourse (1992), 1 had given little space to that geographical area before the twentieth century. With the goals of redressing the balance and highlighting the possibilities of new directions in our field, we began to gather a list of contributors during the following spring. Our goal was to create an anthology that could be used as a supplemental reader by undergraduates and graduate students when studying Northern Eu-ropean art before the eighteenth century. We agreed with our cohort group that there was a need to excite students with the new questions being asked in traditional fields of study. The secondary purpose was to allow colleagues to assess the state of gender-driven scholarship in the art history of Medieval and Early Modern Northern Europe. As it progressed, however, this project became in our minds a celebration of the multiplicity and exuberance of the new production in our area despite institutional structures. Saints, Sinners, and Sisters presents original essays addressing gender and art in pre-eighteenth-century Northern Europe. Familiar works or artists, such as Al-brecht Dürer or Jan Steen, are the focus of several articles and these writings easily can be incorporated into introductory syllabi. Familiar topics, like the theme of domesticity in Dutch art, also can be found here, but the approaches taken tend to question traditional interpretations of such popular topics as the ill woman or the cook. In addition, it was our hope that the less familiar works included here could be integrated into classrooms to …