Hans Baldung Grien, the most famous apprentice and close friend of German artist Albrecht Dürer, was known for his unique and highly eroticised images of witches. In paintings and woodcut prints, he gave powerful visual expression to late medieval tropes and stereotypes, such as the poison maiden, venomous virgin, the Fall of Man, ‘death and the maiden’ and other motifs and eschatological themes, which mingled abject and erotic qualities in the female body.
Yvonne Owens reads these images against the humanist intellectual milieu of Renaissance Germany, showing how classical and medieval medicine and natural philosophy interpreted female anatomy as toxic, defective and dangerously beguiling. She reveals how Hans Baldung exploited this radical polarity to create moralising and titillating portrayals of how monstrous female sexuality victimised men and brought them low. Furthermore, these images issued from—and contributed to—the contemporary understanding of witchcraft as a heresy that stemmed from natural ‘feminine defect,’ a concept derived from Aristotle. Offering new and provocative interpretations of Hans Baldung’s iconic witchcraft imagery, this book is essential reading for historians of art, culture and gender relations in the late medieval and early modern periods.
By:
Yvonne Owens (Victoria College of Art Canada)
Foreword by:
Joseph Leo Koerner
Imprint: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781350283503
ISBN 10: 1350283509
Pages: 312
Publication Date: 28 July 2022
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Illustrations Foreword by Joseph Leo Koerner Introduction: Baldung’s Polluted Witches, Poison Maids, Basilisks and Crones 1. The Abject Erotic Feminine in Baldung 2. The World of Baldung’s 1510 Witches’ Sabbath 3. Baldung’s ‘Jewish’ Witches 4. Baldung and the Witch Doctors 5. Blood, Visions, Witch Women and Saints 6. Baldung and the Morality of Vision 7. Classical Reception, Toxic Femininity and Hippomanes 8. Humanist Humour in Baldung 9. Erudite Obscenities and Pious Pornography Conclusion Acknowledgments Endnotes Index
"Yvonne Owens writes art history, emotional histories, philosophy of art, and creative critical studies. Her publications to date have mainly focused on representations of women and the gendering of evil ""defect"" in classical humanist discourses, cross-referencing these figures to historical art, theology, literature, and the sciences. She also writes cultural criticism, exploring contemporary post-humanist discourses in art, literature and new media. She is currently exploring the intersections among science, the sacred and the arts."
Reviews for Abject Eroticism in Northern Renaissance Art: The Witches and Femmes Fatales of Hans Baldung Grien
This is an exceptional study. In the crowded field of witch research it stands out for many reasons; the breadth of material employed, the deep knowledge of primary and secondary sources, and the arrangement of an amazing wealth of scholarship around one artist, Hans Baldung Grien. * Gerhild Scholz Williams, Washington University in St. Louis, USA * The images alone would be enough to recommend Yvonne Owens's study of Hans Baldung Grien, famous for his fleshly images of witches ... Yet Owens's patient feminist analysis also shows how Grien exploited medical and philosophical notions of female anatomy as toxic and dangerously beguiling ... his woodcuts and paintings depicted how a monstrous female sexuality victimized men and brought them low. -- Merve Emre * The Syllabus *
