Birth of the Virgin. Domenico Ghirlandaio (1479-85). Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout
The majority of figures in paintings, especially those created before the 20th century, are male. The paintings show men heroically fighting or representing religious or mythological figures, men hunting, or men suffering the toil of existence. Women appear mostly as Madonnas or saints, sometimes as mythological figures, in formal portraits for sitters’ salons, or as nudes for private viewing. However, this is a series on women doing something else—what the majority of them were doing all these centuries: working.
