Self Portrait as a Young Man
c. 1628
22.5 x 18.6 cm.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Some extracts of articles on Rembrandt's self portraits:

..." It wasn't until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when scholars studied Rembrandt's oeuvre as a whole, that it was discovered how very many times the artist had portrayed himself. The number is still a matter of contention, but it seems he depicted himself in approximately forty to fifty extant paintings, about thirty-two etchings, and seven drawings. It is an output unique in history; most artists produce only a handful of self-portraits, if that. And why Rembrandt did this is one of the great mysteries of art history.
Most scholars up till about twenty years ago interpreted Rembrandt's remarkable series of self-portraits as a sort of visual diary, a forty-year exercise in self-examination. In a 1961 book, art historian Manuel Gasser wrote, "Over the years, Rembrandt's self-portraits increasingly became a means for gaining self-knowledge, and in the end took the form of an interior dialogue: a lonely old man communicating with himself while he painted."

Many of these traditional studies focused particularly on Rembrandt's late self-portraits, as they reveal this rigorous self-reflection most profoundly. In an influential 1948 monograph on the artist, Jacob Rosenberg wrote of the ceaseless and unsparing observation which [Rembrandt's self-portraits] reflect, showing a gradual change from outward description and characterisation to the most penetrating self-analysis and self-contemplation. ... Rembrandt seems to have felt that he had to know himself if he wished to penetrate the problem of man's inner life.

More recent scholarship has shed additional light on Rembrandt's early self-portrayals. Quite a few, it is argued, were tronies--head-and-shoulder studies in which the model plays a role or expresses a particular emotion. In the seventeenth century there was an avid market for such studies, which were considered a separate genre (although for an artist they also served as a storehouse of facial types and expressions for figures in history paintings). Thus, for example, we have four tiny etchings from 1630 that show Rembrandt, in turn, caught in fearful surprise, glowering with anger, smiling gamefully, and appearing to snarl--each expressed in lines that themselves embody the distinct emotions. Rembrandt may have used his own face because the model was cheap, but perhaps he was killing two birds with one stone. The art-buying public--which now included people from many walks of life, not only aristocratic or clerical patrons, as in the past--went for etchings of famous people, including artists. By using himself as the model for these and other studies, Rembrandt was making himself into a recognizable celebrity at the same time that he gave the public strikingly original and expressive tronies. The wide dissemination of these and other prints was important in establishing Rembrandt's reputation as an artist.

Meeting Market Demand?

... art historian Ernst van de Wetering sets forth a view that has gained a number of adherents over the past few decades. The "self-portraits" (there was no such term in the seventeenth century) could not have been made for the purpose of self-analysis, he claims, because the idea of self as "an independent I who lives and creates solely from within" is one that arose only in the Romantic era, after 1800. In the literature of Rembrandt's day, he contends, personality was seen primarily as being bound to certain immutable types discussed in classical sources. He cites Hans-Joachim Raupp, an early exponent of this demythologizing view: When an artist of Rembrandt's day painted a self-portrait, he "did not step into the mirror with questions and doubts, but with a carefully planned programme."

Van de Wetering takes pages to build up his argument, but basically he sees that Rembrandt's "programme" in these self-portraits was to make paintings for which there was a ready market. (He points out that a detailed inventory of Rembrandt's possessions made in 1656, when he faced bankruptcy, included no portrayals of the artist by himself.) In self-portraits, artists in Rembrandt's day and previous eras sometimes included a painting in the genre for which they were best known, as an example of their style. In the case of Rembrandt, he was most noted for his eccentricity of technique and for his tronies and depictions of one or a few figures. So, in making his self-portraits, which van de Wetering contends were probably all seen as tronies in their day, Rembrandt was making the kind of images art buyers expected of him, which had the added attraction of being depictions of their maker and exemplars of his unusual technique...."

T H E A R T S
January, 2000

for more info visit: http://www.rembrandtpainting.net/rembrandt_self_portraits.htm

Self Portrait
1669
63.5 x 57.8 cm.
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Extract from: the Art Bulletin
by Stephanie S. Dickey

...."Van de Wetering's essay ("The Multiple Functions of Rembrandt's Self-Portraits," pp. 10-37) begins with an analysis of Rembrandt's use of mirrors in the production of painted and etched self-portraits. Obviously, an artist can hardly paint himself without looking into a mirror, a fact whose implications may enrich the content of such works for a thoughtful viewer. Van de Wetering, however, focuses on the practical function of mirrors in the studio, avoiding altogether their complex metaphorical tradition (especially popular among painters in Rembrandt's hometown of Leiden) as signifiers of vanitas, vision, self-knowledge, and pictorial artifice. Following a careful description of Rembrandt's features (which ultimately fails to answer the question of whether the paintings were accurate likenesses), van de Wetering then launches his critique of previous scholarship. In his view, the notion of "self-portraiture" as we know it today is bound up with a conception of individual identity that did not exist until th e 19th century (p. 17). Passing reference is made to Renaissance humanism, but van de Wetering prefers to blame the Romantic age for what he perceives as a misguided view, still prevalent today, of Rembrandt's self-portraits as documents of a subjective quest for self-knowledge. Chapman's monograph is singled out as "anachronistic" in its assertion that Rembrandt's self-portraits signal a modern form of self-exploration (p. 19). Van de Wetering evidendy takes the English use of the term "modern" too literally, failing to observe that Chapman specifically locates Rembrandt within a conception of individual identity developed in the 17th century (not the 19th), which was demonstrated not only in painters' self-portraits but also in contemporaneous trends such as Cartesian philosophy and the rise of literary autobiography. Numerous recent publications in the field of cultural history have explored this aspect of early modern culture; among the most extensive is Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), which devotes a whole section to manifestations of "inwardness." Van de Wetering borrows from Joanna WoodsMarsden's Renaissance Self-Portraiture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) but fails to reference other important recent studies of Renaissance identity construction, notably Joseph Leo Koerner's Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Cited several times, however, is Hans-Joachim Raupp, Untersuchungen za K[ddot{u}]nstlerbildnis und K[ddot{u}]nstlerdarstellung in den Niederlanden im 17. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1984); van de Wetering prefers his description of identity formation in Rembrandt's time as grounded in typological convention (Christian, humanist, astrological, social, and pictorial) rather than individual subjectivity.

Remarkably, van de Wetering here brings in Michel de Montaigne, only to dismiss his autobiography as driven by classical influences and a search for "what unites him with the rest of mankind [rather] than what sets him apart" (p. 19). No reference is made to the rich literature on Montaigne's attempts to "paint himself' with words, a subgenre of the growing scholarly interest in links between visual and verbal self-fashioning. Association of Rembrandt with Montaigne, as well as authors closer to his own experience (such as John Donne and Constantijn Huygens), goes at least as far back as Werner Weisbach (Rembrandt [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1926], 79-90); more recently, Andrew Small's direct comparison (Essays in Self-Portraiture: A Comparison of Technique in the Self-Portraits of Montaigne and Rembrandt [New York: Peter Lang, 1996]) finds in both writer and artist the emulation of previous masters and a quest for fidelity to the essential nature of the model (the self) that reaches beneath mutable surface appearance.

vidently, in van de Wetering's view, self-awareness that is supported by or figured as typological convention cannot be introspective. One wonders what Rembrandt's fellow Amsterdammer, Ren[acute{e}] Descartes, would have made of this assumption, not to mention the numerous theorists (Karel van Mander, Franciscus Junius, John Bulwer, Charles Le Brun, Samuel van Hoogstraten) who advocated the study and depiction of physiognomy as an essential key to character. The difficulty here, in my view, is that individual self-scrutiny and objective categorization of human personality are not mutually exclusive. Both proceed from the same impulse: the wish to comprehend and control the workings of the human mind and heart. In the early modern period, the classification of bodily humors, facial features, emotional expression, and the like provided a typological framework within which to make sense of the bewildering variety of human behavior, much as Freudian and other psychological theories do today. Furthermore, literar y forms such as autobiography, poetry, diaries, and confessions test that Rembrandt's contemporaries were interested in applying this new knowledge to the understanding of their individual selves. One such document, the unpublished autobiography of Constantijn Huygens, contains a passage well known to Rembrandt specialists. Responding to criticism that Jan Lievens portrayed him with a "contemplative rendering of the face" that "detracts from the vivacity of [his] mind," Huygens justifies his sober countenance not by artistic convention but by personal emotive experience: "During this period I was involved in a serious family affair of some importance and, as is only to be expected, the cares which I endeavoured to keep to myself were clearly reflected in the expression of my face and eyes." [1]

Does all this prove that Rembrandt made self-portraits in order to understand himself better? In the sense that a man of the 1990s would do so, probably not. But that he might seek to understand himself as a microcosm of human subjectivity is another matter: the ample evidence for his contemporaries' fascination with external clues to interiority must at least make it possible that this was an interest he shared. After all, his was not a face to contemplate for its beauty. Van de Wetering, even while quoting van Mander's interpretation of the forehead as "the reflection of the thoughts, aye the book of the heart," concludes that Rembrandt habitually depicted himself with a frown simply because "he really must have had one" (p. 16). Yet if we agree that Rembrandt's somber expression is not a "'pasted-on' attribute," all the more reason to read it as a mark of inner character. Features like frowns become emblematic of states of mind for the good reason that they frequently accompany them in real life. And faces , as Joseph Leo Koerner has observed, "preserve the history of an individual's passions in the residual lines and creases that expression leaves behind." [2] In rigorously exploring the topography of what Filippo Baldinucci called "the ugly and plebeian face by which he was ill-favored," [3] Rembrandt inescapably investigates his own subjectivity. And in contemplating his works, we do the same.

Van de Wetering posits a strong market for Rembrandt's self-portraits among 17th-century art lovers ("liefhebbers van de kunst"), educated connoisseurs for whom the subject matter of a painting could be less important than aesthetic refinement and artistic skill, and the famous name attached to a work more conducive to purchase than the intrinsic properties of the object itself. In proposing that "Rembrandt's fame ... must have been an important motive for his large output of self-portraits" (p. 28), he seems to be suggesting that Rembrandt produced these works to supply a market for celebrity likenesses, despite the acknowledged facts that artists who were more famous, such as Peter Paul Rubens, painted far fewer self-portraits, and that documents for the collecting of Rembrandt self-portraits are scarce. Furthermore, collections honoring artists as uomini illustri (discussed also by Manuth, pp. 46-56), were not, as far as we know, numerous enough to create a market all by themselves. While van de Wetering i s right to suggest that self-portraits could be an effective tool for self-promotion, it seems likely that Rembrandt's self-portraits, notably his etchings, were circulated to build his reputation as much as to capitalize on it. In some cases, they may have served as gifts of friendship, a practice also supported by humanist tradition. Perhaps Rembrandt's self-portraits are so rarely documented as objects of economic value because, at least in some cases, they were treasured, instead, as personal tokens.

Van de Wetering concludes with an observation that he considers "the central hypothesis" of his argument: that artists' portraits "provided the purchaser with both the portrait of a celebrated artist and a display of the mastery that had made him famous in the first place" (p. 30). Here, pragmatic observation has brought him round to the familiar philosophical notion that "every painter paints himself" and, ironically, to Svetlana Alpers's theoretical conception of Rembrandt as a pictor economicus whose "works are commodities distinguished from others by being identified as his ... in making them, he in turn commodifies himself." [4] As demonstrations of his technique, Rembrandt's frequent self-portraits do make intriguing signposts along the dramatic trajectory of his stylistic evolution. Yet their subject matter, with its own ingenious progress, demands equal attention.

Van de Wetering ultimately concedes that factors such as costume, pose, and attributes can make statements, if not about individual identity, at least about the nature and practice of art. The pictorial traditions and sartorial means by which these statements are constructed form the subjects of the second and third essays. Like the catalogue entries, they are linked to van de Wetering's essay by cross-references, some overlap in content, and a consistently antitheoretical approach...."

June, 2000

1632
Oil on canvas, 169,5 x 216,5 cm
Mauritshuis, The Hague

extract from an article by A.C. MASQUELET :
..."In the 17th century, Amsterdam and the United Provinces were among Europe’s foremost scientific centres. The quest for knowledge, and for anatomical knowledge in particular, was not seen to be in conflict with religion. At the same time, in Italy, Galileo was standing trial for his views.

So, are we actually looking at an anatomy lesson? Is Tulp showing something new to his amazed audience?

Is the painting simply about Tulp “exposing with his forceps the object of his demonstration, viz. the muscles of the fingers and their blood supply, emphasizing the point that he is making with the movement of his left hand”2?

Allow me to suggest how I read Rembrandt’s painting. My analysis is based upon several clues:

(1) This is not an anatomy lesson in the 17th-century sense of the term: the body has not been “cut up” (which is the actual meaning of “anatomy” - from Greek ana- meaning up and temnein, to cut).

Anatomy lessons always started with a study of the abdominal viscera, followed by that of the chest contents. This was done for a practical reason, since the viscera were the most perishable parts of the body. Rembrandt, incidentally, painted another anatomy lesson, commissioned by Tulp’s successor at the Guild of Surgeons; in this painting, the anatomist is shown examining the brain of a cadaver that has been eviscerated. In the Anatomy Lesson of Professor Tulp, however, the body is intact. Only the left forearm has been cut open. Thus, Tulp wanted to show a phenomenon of particular interest to him, without going through all the usual stages of a teaching dissection.

(2) In his right hand, Professor Tulp is holding a forceps lifting up a muscle belly; from its superficial position, its division into several tendons, and its insertion on the middle phalanges of the fingers, the muscle is readily identifiable as the flexor digitorum superficialis. Normally, an anatomist trying to demonstrate an anatomical structure to his students would use a pointer (the instrument used by Dr. Egbertsz in de Keyzer’s painting). The way the muscle has been picked up with forceps suggests that Tulp is not merely showing a structure.

(3) Tulp is holding his left hand in an odd way. Some commentators have thought that he is emphasizing a point. However, on closer scrutiny, the movement is quite complex: the wrist is in extension, the metacarpophalangeal joints are straight, while the proximal interphalangeal joints are flexed. The result is an unnatural position of the hand and the fingers. I think that Tulp’s left hand holds the key to the meaning of the anatomy lesson: Tulp is deliberately holding his hand like this, in order to show that pulling on the muscle that he is holding with the forceps will cause the same movement of flexion in the proximal interphalangeal joints of the cadaver. In other words, Tulp is demonstrating the action of the flexor digitorum superficialis muscle by combining a voluntary movement of his hand and a demonstration of the muscle action in the cadaver. However, it may be objected, if that is so, why did Rembrandt not show the cadaver’s fingers flexed?

This obviously would have made the lesson clearer. However, it would also have deprived the painting of that mark of Rembrandt’s genius, the suggestion of movement.

Having both actions occurring at the same time would have spoilt the dynamics of the scene. As the picture stands, one can imagine that Tulp is showing the phenomenon of interphalangeal joint flexion with his left hand, while preparing to pull on the muscle in the cadaver to explain how the voluntary movement is caused. There are other clues to support this hypothesis. Let us look at the two characters in the front row, the ones that seem to take the greatest interest in Professor Tulp’s lesson, and who may well be the two physicians known to have been in the audience. The one on the left, whose face is shown almost in profile, is looking intently at the forearm of the cadaver; the one on the right is gazing straight at Tulp’s left hand. The way these two observers are looking at two different objects signals what is going to happen just after the moment that has been caught, and fixed in time, by Rembrandt’s painting: the cadaver’s fingers are going to move as the muscle is being pulled by the forceps. Thus, by making two people look in different directions, Rembrandt suggests something that is not just a point in time, but which occupies a certain period of time. As a final clue, the man looking at Tulp is clutching his chest with his fingers flexed, as if mirroring the gesture of Tulp’s left hand. With this reading, the picture assumes a different dimension: this is not a static, descriptive anatomy lesson, but a lesson in physiology and functional anatomy. It also displays one of the essential qualities of Rembrandt’s genius: the depiction of movement.

The movement of the group, strongly suggested by the composition of the painting and the arrangement of the sitters, could be summed up as one of wonder at what is being demonstrated by the anatomist - the action of the flexor digitorum superficialis muscle on the proximal interphalangeal joints.

The message should be clear:

Far from not understanding the point of Professor Tulp’s anatomy lesson, Rembrandt has grasped its very essence. His painting, produced at a time of great historical, artistic, sociological, and epistemological developments, epitomizes the spirit of 17th-century Holland. Indeed, the artist’s concern with movement makes this painting the epitome of 17th-century European thinking: movement was central to the ideas of Descartes, Gassendi, Galileo, Leibniz, Newton - and Rembrandt.

In 1632, Rembrandt was only 26 years old. He may not even have known just what a masterpiece he was creating.

But is it not the hallmark of genius that the artist should be creating works of genius without being aware of it?"

1 P Descargues. Rembrandt. J.C. lattès 1990. p 71.

2 ibid. p 71.

read the whole story on the internet:
http://www.maitrise-orthop.com/corpusmaitri/orthopaedic/86_masquelet/masqueletus.shtml

Ganymede riding the Eagle (1540–1550)
Bronze by Niccolo Tribolo (1500-1550)
Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.

In 17th Century England, men who buggered Ganymedes were not stigmatized as effeminate, but an adultman who played the Ganymede was despised as weak and womanly, even in the most libertine society.
In France, "pederast" replaced the words Ganymede and sodomite during the 18th Century, while in England the word fell into disuse when all sex between males came to signify whorish effeminacy, no matter who was on top.

Signed and dated: J. Jngres 1856 / AET LXXVI. Inscribed: Me, INÈS MOITESSIER / NÉE DE FOUCAULD

When first asked by Moitessier in 1844 to paint his wife, Ingres refused. On meeting her he was struck by her beauty and agreed. The picture was left unfinished and after seven years the sitter complained. In 1851, Ingres painted a standing portrait (National Gallery of Art, Washington) before returning to the seated portrait which he finally completed in 1856. The original intention had been to include the sitter's daughter Catherine, but she had grown up by the time Ingres came to complete the portrait.

BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder - The Beggars (1568)
Oil on wood, 18 x 21 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

MURILLO, Bartolome Esteban
The Young Beggar
Oil on canvas
c. 1650
53 x 39 1/4 in. (134 x 100 cm)
Musee du Louvre, Paris

Pierrot (also known as Gilles) by Watteau, Antoine (1684-1721)
c. 1718-19; Oil on canvas; 184 x 149 cm; Musée du Louvre, Paris

After Commedia dell'Arte had become established in France at courts, fairs and in the streets, Pedrolino changed into a pitiable fool, who might be called either Pierrot or Gilles, This character represented the rejected lover, who was always sad. He was characterised by a distinctive white, wide-sleeved costume, a white mask and a wide white beret.

Watteau may have painted it as a sign for the café run by the former actor, Belloni, who made his name as a Pierrot. The model, a friend or another actor, is unknown. Standing with his arms dangling at his sides, with a dreamy, naive look on his face, the moonstruck Pierrot stands out monumentally against a leafy Italianate background. At the foot of the mound, are four half-hidden figures--the Doctor on his donkey, Léandre, Isabelle and the Capitaine--

The Hero with a Thousand Faces
by Joseph Campbell

Classic Superman

the Astronomer by J. Vermeer 1668
oil on canvas, 50 x 45 cm. The Louvre, Paris, France

The book lying in front of the astronomer has been identified as the 1621 second edition of a work by Adriaen Metius, On the Investigation or Observation of the Stars, published in Amsterdam in 1621. It is open at the beginning of Book III, where not only knowledge of geometry and the aid of mechanical instruments are recommended for this research but also 'inspiration from God'. The painting that hangs on the wall behind the astronomer has for its subject the Finding of Moses.

The celestial globe, which sits on a four-legged grand, was first published by Jodocus Hondius in Amsterdam in 1600. In Vermeer's painting the constellations on the upper half of the globe which face the viewer include the Great Bear on the left, the Dragon and Hercules in the centre, and Lyra on the right. Below the globe lies a brass astrolabe, an instrument used in navigation and for measuring the position of celestial bodies, similar to that shown in the illustration on the left-hand page of the open book.

The astronomer is seemingly associated to another picture by Vermeer with a scientific theme: the Geographer as it is now called.



These were Vermeer's only two paintings -at least the only two to survive - with solitary male figures as their protagonists.The model in both pictures appears to be the same man. He has a large, long, straight nose and full lips. Moreover, although there are differences in detail between the rooms the two scientists inhabit -a section of stained-glass window in one and not in the other; the table carpets; a curtain moved from one side of the casement to the other - the actual room seems to be the same, with the same corner cupboard.

Jean Fouquet - Madonna and Child (ca. 1450) Tempera on wood, 93 x 85 cm, right panel of the diptych of Melun, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, Belgium

Estienne Chevalier, who came from Melun, was French Ambassador to England in 1445 and six years later became Treasurer to Charles VII of France. He presented the diptych to his native town; on the left panel he had himself painted next to his patron saint, Stephen.

According to a description of the paintings by Denis Godefroy in 1661, the original frames were covered in blue velvet. Round each picture were strands of gold and silver thread, in which the donor's initials were woven in pearls. There were also gilded medallions on which stories of the saints were represented.

Tradition has it - and there is considerable supporting evidence - that the Madonna's features are those of Agnes Sorel, the beautiful and influential mistress of Charles VII.

Known portraits of her certainly do not conflict with this hypothesis. Her relationship with Estienne Chevalier was not entirely political, and an eighteenth-century inscription on the back of the Antwerp panel tells us that the diptych of Melun was endowed by Estienne following a vow he made on her death in 1450. The diptych stayed in the chancel of the Church of Notre-Dame at Melun, south of Paris, from 1461 until about 1775, when the two halves became separated. The two parts, having been separated, were never reunited except for a short time at Paris during the Exposition of the French "Primitives" in 1904.

"In the name of the Very holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
To-day, the 25th day of December, 1792, I, Louis XVI King of France, being for more than four months imprisoned with my family in the tower of the Temple at Paris, by those who were my subjects, and deprived of all communication

LOUIS

Portrait de Louis XVI en costume de sacre by Antoine-François Callet (1741-1823)
oil on canvas 273 cm x 198 cm, Chateau Versailles, France

Mother
The concept of an Earth Mother or Mother Goddess or Great Goddess derives primarily from the Greeks. In the Theogony, written in the early 7th century BCE, the poet Hesiod named the "deep-breasted" Earth Gaea, "a firm seat of all things for ever," who, after emerging out of Chaos, brought forth "starry Ouranus" (the sky), Mountains, the sea, and, after having lain with Ouranus, a number of non-cosmological Titans.

It was against this background of ideas that archaeologists working at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century saw the newly discovered Paleolithic "Venus" figurines, and which permitted an interpretation of them as representations of the Mother Goddess.
Despite the lack of evidence, beyond the appearance of the figurines themselves, ancient Greek cosmogonies, and the spurious connection with much later tribal practices, numerous scholars have nonetheless felt free to extend the idea of an Earth Goddess or Mother Goddess into the prehistoric past and to claim that Stone-Age peoples had believed in her as a universal deity.
Other scholars, however, have rejected these ideas as a basis for interpretation and have pointed out, for example, the lack of obvious signs of divinity in the figurines. But, again, lacking written documentation these claims either way are difficult to support or refute.

Although the paradigm of the "Venus" of Willendorf as Mother Goddess persists, in recent years the figurine has also been interpreted as possibly functioning in a more gynaecological context, perhaps serving as a charm or amulet of some kind for women in connection with fertility
.

Venus of Willendorf
c. 24,000-22,000 BCE
Oolitic limestone
43/8 inches (11.1 cm) high
(Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna)

The sculpture shows a woman with a large stomach that overhangs but does not hide her pubic area. A roll of fat extends around her middle, joining with large but rather flat buttocks. A characteristic of all the Paleolithic "Venus" figurines exhibited by the Willendorf statuette is the lack of a face, which for some, arguing that the face is a key feature in human identity, means that she is to be regarded as an anonymous sexual object rather than a person; it is her physical body and what it represents that is important.

Images of women, mostly figurines of the same type as the "Venus" of Willendorf, all dating to the Paleolithic period, far outnumber images of men.Some have argued that these female figures denote the existence during this period of a prominent female deity identified usually as the Earth Mother or the Mother Goddess. On the basis of this assumption, it has been suggested that, unlike today, women played a considerably more important, if not dominant, role in Paleolithic society; that possibly a matriarchy existed and women ruled.
The "Venus" of Willendorf may be a representation at once of the Mother Goddess and a special living woman; one represented in the form or guise of the other, although which came first is impossible to know. Lacking written documentation, such claims are difficult to support or refute.

Queen Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette and her children (at Versailles) - 1787 by Vigée Le Brun
Oil on canvas, 104" x 82", Versailles, France

Self Portrait-1790 by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842)
oil on canvas, 100 cm x 81 cm, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy
The painting on the easel is of Marie Antoinette done from memory.

Archduchess Antonia grew up in the highly moral environment of her mother's court. Maria Theresa was a strong leader, beloved by her people. The busy empress supervised her children's upbringing as closely as she could, but Antonia's education was left largely in the hands of a governess who was happy to spoil the pretty, high-spirited little girl. Antonia spent more time playing than studying, although she enjoyed her music lessons and became an excellent harpist and dancer.

Unlike so many royal couples, her parents had married for love and truly enjoyed family life. Although the court was a place of great formality on important occasions, in private the royal family was rather casual. Antonia regarded her mother with awe but was close to her good-natured father. A shadow fell over Antonia's sunny life in 1765, when her father died of a stroke at the age of 56.

A few years later, Antonia's childhood came to an end. Her mother had arranged Antonia's marriage to the dauphin (crown prince) of France to cement an alliance between Austria and France. In 1770, at age 14, Marie Antoinette left her homeland and travelled to the French palace of Versailles to be married.
Her 15-year-old groom, Louis, was fat, awkward, and shy. He neglected his royal duties in favor of hunting and working in his locksmith shop. He also suffered from a medical condition known as phimosis which prevented him from fathering children for the first seven years of his marriage. The public, knowing nothing of this, blamed Marie Antoinette for her failure to bear heirs to the throne -- as she would so often be blamed for things beyond her control.

The court of Versailles was more rigid than Maria Theresa's court, and Marie Antoinette yawned and giggled openly during royal ceremonies. As time went on she became increasingly rebellious. She insisted on going out alone or with a few companions, instead of surrounded by attendants. She picked her own friends and even her own clothes, refusing to wear corsets and stays. When her brother visited the court he commented disapprovingly that she had bad manners and was not doing her job.

Many French people hated the queen for her Austrian blood and her formerly frivolous ways. She was rumored to have had numerous affairs. The most persistent rumor centered on Count Hans Axel Fersen, a Swedish diplomat. He was definitely one of the queen's favorites, but it is doubtful that they were lovers. Yet Marie Antoinette was reviled in pornographic songs, pictures and pamphlets. Someone even published a fake autobiography in which the queen supposedly confessed her sins, calling herself a prostitute.

Marie Antoinette was also called Madame Deficit and blamed for the country's financial problems. It is true that she enjoyed a lavish lifestyle; her mother wrote to warn her that "a queen can only degrade herself by this sort of heedless extravagance in difficult times." But Marie Antoinette was not quite as foolish and spoiled as the public believed. It certainly is not true that she said "Let them eat cake" when told that people were starving. As a woman and a foreigner she made a convenient scapegoat for the nation's problems, and it seemed that no slander against her was too wild to be widely believed.

As she matured Marie Antoinette became less extravagant. She tried to change her image by wearing simple gowns and posing for portraits with her children, but her efforts had little effect on the unforgiving public. The greatest damage to her reputation was created by a scandal in which she played no part at all: the Diamond Necklace Affair.

In 1789 the French Revolution erupted. Its causes were many, but much of the revolutionaries' fury focused on Marie Antoinette. On October 5 a mob of Parisian women marched on Versailles, shouting for the queen's blood. Some members of the mob were actually men in dresses, under the theory that royal troops were less likely to fire upon women.

When Marie Antoinette heard about the approaching mob she remained calm. "I know they have come from Paris to demand my head, but I learned from my mother not to fear death and I shall await it with firmness," she said. When the mob appeared outside the palace, Lafayette advised her to show herself on the balcony. Bravely she stepped out and faced them alone. As voices shouted, "Shoot! Shoot!" the queen bowed her head and curtsied. Then Lafayette joined her, bowed to her, and kissed her hand. He was considered a great hero, and his action impressed the crowd. "Vive la reine," they shouted ("Long live the queen!")

Because the king was apathetic, it fell to Marie Antoinette to negotiate with revolutionaries on the royal family's behalf. She also secretly urged Austria to intercede in France. When France went to war with Austria, Louis and Marie Antoinette were charged with treason. In 1792, the year the institution of royalty was officially abolished in France, the royal family was moved to the Temple Prison. They were treated fairly well and were permitted to live together. In December of that year Louis's trial began. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, and on January 21, 1793 he went bravely to the guillotine.

In October Marie Antoinette, now called "the Widow Capet," was tried and, like her husband, convicted of treason and sentenced to be guillotined. On October 16, 1793 she was taken through the streets of Paris in an open cart. She maintained her dignity to the end. On the scaffold she accidentally stepped on the executioner's foot, and her last words were, "Monsieur, I ask your pardon. I did not do it on purpose."