Flesh and the feminine: Early-renaissance images of the Madonna with Eve at her feet

Abstract

In a number of recent writings on gender in late-medieval and early-modern art history, it has been argued the opposition of the Virgin Mary and Eve was fundamental to pre-modern thinking about women. Images pairing the two are assumed to have been prescriptive, with the essential difference between them represented in their painted flesh. This article explores a particular imagery in which Mary is shown with Eve lying at her feet. There are eighteen surviving paintings juxtaposing Mary and Eve in this way, all created in Central Italy between about 1335 and 1445. Rather than constructing gender through binary oppositions, as is often assumed, it is suggested here that such images also stres..