Posts in Reviews

When Contessa Caterina Sanseverino is widowed, her family’s reduced circumstances dictate that she find another husband quickly; preferably wealthy, probably as old as her first. Instead she jumps at the chance to join Bona Sforza’s household as Lady of the Queen’s Chamber when Bona marries King Zygmunt of Poland and Lithuania. Donna Caterina’s primary responsibility is overseeing the queen’s Ladies in Waiting, a task comparable to chaperoning a group of teen-aged girls on a never-ending senior trip. While trying to maintain control of this gaggle of flirtatious girls, Donna Caterina… Read More

If you were a girl of artistic inclinations, born in Renaissance Italy to a progressive Humanist father who believed that you were possessed of a mind as well as a soul and therefore worthy of a tutor to teach you how to paint, you would have been one of a fortunate few. But you still would have had societal obstacles to overcome. The first was modesty. A woman could not properly sign her own paintings, let alone accept payment for them. And she should not expect her work to be… Read More

This novel continues the story of Hildegard, the anchoress to whom we were introduced in The Greenest Branch. In the second part of her story, we find her working to fulfill the promise she made to Juliana, an anchoress she’d known since entering the abbey as a child who, on her deathbed, exhorts Hildegard:             Do not let them stop you! Do not be held back by the petty attacks of those            who have neither the courage nor the imagination… Read More

When we meet Judith Leyster, she is a young woman whose parents have left Haarlem in shame following bankruptcy, leaving Judith to make her own way in the world. She is an apprentice in a painter’s workshop, the first such in Holland. We don’t know how she found her way to this situation, but then, what were her options? For an unmarried woman in 17th century Europe, they were few—even fewer in Protestant countries, where the convent was not an available choice. While widows of merchants could carry on with family… Read More

Those Brontë sisters! We’ve heard so much about these talented siblings. Charlotte, who famously authored Jane Eyre, was the domineering older sister. Emily, who wrote Wuthering Heights, was a tomboy who loved striding across the countryside with tangled hair and wind-burned cheeks. And then there was Anne—serious, sickly, and pious. Her timid nature made her controversial books, Agnes Gray and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, all the more surprising. D. M. Denton’s novel explores the life of the lesser-known Brontë sister. They were such different people, yet these sisters could always come… Read More

You might have heard of Hildegard von Bingen, the medieval abbess who produced theological writings as well as books about herbal medicine, who corresponded with church hierarchy and high-level political leaders. Perhaps you’ve read Mary Sharrott’s book, which focuses on Hildegard’s later life. Maybe you’ve seen the illuminations of her mystical visions, or heard her music, such as O Viridissima Virga or Ordo Virtutum(the first opera written by a woman). If you have encountered Hildegard, did you wonder how a woman who was cloistered from girlhood achieved so much? The… Read More

Author Bridget Quinn begins Broad Strokes with a memory of an encounter with a particular painting by a woman artist. It’s a powerful approach. Over the two decades when I taught courses about women artists, I saw many students experience the jolt of recognition when they saw themselves in art (or the lives of artists) from distant countries and long ago centuries. Artist Judy Chicago has said that, upon seeing Judith Leyster’s self-portrait for the first time, she felt she was seeing her own identity across the centuries. We can… Read More

Georgia focuses on the period in the artist’s life when she was in a relationship with Alfred Stieglitz. When the photographer first encourages Georgia O’Keeffe and begins courting her via letters from New York, she is overwhelmed. She tries to take it in during sojourns through the Texas night: “I lie there in the cold quiet, a small though moving at the edges of my mind-the possibility that he is like that open space, vast like these plains, this night, vast enough it seems sometimes to hold me.”        Georgia… Read More

Camille Claudel was a late-19thc. French sculptor, a woman of a particular time and place and medium. But she had much in common with women artists throughout history. Many women would never have had artistic training without the support of fathers who were proud of their daughters’ seemingly anomalous talent. Artemisia Gentileschi’s father, a Renaissance humanist who believed that women possessed intellect as well as souls, hired a tutor for her. That support for their feisty, income-earning daughters often dissipated when it came time to marry, however. Even the proudest father… Read More