Understanding women's roles in romansque art

1. A) Herrad of Landsberg – Women of the Apocalypse. This particular piece de s the woman in the traditionally understood role of lifegiver; however, the majesty and renowned through which this process is reflected is necessarily much higher than it might have been had a male depicted it in his artwork.
B)
Ende – Illuminator. As might be expected, this nun focused her imagrery specifically upon religious themes. However, in illuminating the manuscripts, women attained a more noticeable role by being represented as the purveyors of knowledge and those individuals responsible for initially providing the illumination that such texts held.
2)
Of all of the artwork that was generated within the Middle Ages, perhaps one of the most pervasive themes is the cult of the Virgin Mary. Within this theme an untold litany of different paintings and sculptures were produced and reproduced. One of the interesting aspects of these is the fact that few artists represented the Virgin Mary in the same manner. For instance, the Duccio di Buoninsegna, circa 1300, represents a thoughtful and attentively caring mother fawning over the child she holds in her arms. Such a representation was of course in keeping with a Biblical interpretation of the way in which Christ’s mother interacted with the Messiah as well as reinforcing exiting gender norms of 13th century Europe.
3)
The idealism that such images represent can easily be seen at even a cursory examination. For instance, rather than depicting the Virgin Mary as an aloof and holy creature in and of herself, the devotion and attention the male child in her arms is the seamless thread that connects all of these images/iconographies.
4)
From the representations that have been analyzed, it can be definitivaely stated that not unlike the recent past, the role of the woman in the Middle Ages was concentric upon caring for and tending to the children.