Cecilia,
My favorite example is a terra cotta at the Walters Art Gallery here in
Baltimore. The Adam is Michelangelo's David. The Eve is Botticelli's
Venus. The serpent has Eve's head too.
To move from the fall to redemption, does the serpent under foot in
depictions of Mary as the Woman Clothed with the Sun (the Immaculate
Conception motif) also have a woman's head, bringing Fall together with
Redemption in the use of this image?
Tom Izbicki
At 08:56 AM 11/28/2000 -0800, you wrote:
>Please forgive me if this message comes to you twice: I mailed it first to
>the "old address" and do not know whether it will find its way to the new
>address.
>
>For about 18 months, since I began teaching courses on medieval women, I
>have been collecting examples of a fascinating phenomenon in late medieval
>art of giving the serpent in scene's of the fall the head of a woman --
>often with the same face as that of Eve's. I have casually collected about
>a dozen and a half examples, and have been talking about the implications
>and meaning of this alot with my classes. Anyhow, I've recently been
>invited to give a talk on this, and I figured it would behoove me to
>find out what has actually been done on this -- since I can not imagine
>that such an interesting trend would go ignored by the many good people
>who work on gender and representation in the Middle Ages. But I don't knwo
>where to look. Does anybody know? I don't mean all the very good work
>done on heresy or witchcraft and women (btw, the periods coincide). I mean
>specifically, who has worked through this issue of the serpent of the fall
>as a woman? I've done the most obvious bibliographic searches, but don't
>know enough to begin. Any help?
>
>thanks. gratefully in advance - cecilia gaposchkin
>dartmouth/berkeley
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