Gabriel P. Weisberg

Laurinda S. Dixon

Visions in Art History

The Documented Image

Antje Bultmann Lemke

Laurinda A. Dixon

Presents an interdisciplinary and inclusive view of nineteenth-century art, observed from the vantage point of the twenty-first century. This book covers topics, which span the historical gamut from eighteenth-century influences to the roots of twentieth-century modernism, considering along the way such themes as the depiction of women.

Essays in Honor of Gabriel P. Weisberg

Twenty-first-century Perspectives on Nineteenth-century Art

"The nine essays and more than ninety illustrations that comprise this volume reveal how visual imagery has played a significant role throughout history in reinforcing and establishing definitions of sickness and standards for physical well-being. Each author demonstrates how works of art and the imagery of popular culture both reflect and reinforce the power of medical beliefs to define and to limit human behavior, and how art and medicine work together to communicate social directives in support of a perceived common good. The essays range in topic from the seventeenth century to the present day, utilizing an interdisciplinary, contextual methodology that reconstructs the issues of an era and examines works of art against historical events and ideas."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Disease as Metaphor in Art and Popular Wisdom

In Sickness and in Health

Bearing such titles as The Doctor's Visit or The Lovesick Maiden, certain seventeenth-century Dutch paintings are familiar to museum browsers: an attractive young woman—well dressed, but pale and listless—reclines in a chair, languishes in bed, or falls to the floor in a faint. Weathered crones or impish boys leer suggestively in the background. These paintings traditionally have been viewed as commentary on quack doctors or unmarried pregnant women. The first book to examine images of women and illness in the light of medical history, Perilous Chastity reveals a surprising new interpretation. In an engaging analysis enhanced by abundant illustrations-including eight pages of color plates—Laurinda S. Dixon shows how paintings reflect changing medical theories concerning women. While she illuminates a tradition stretching from antiquity to the present, she concentrates on art from the thirteenth through the eighteenth centuries, and particularly on paintings from seventeenth-century Leiden. Dixon suggests how the assumptions of a predominantly male medical establishment have influenced prevailing notions of women's social place. She traces the evolution of the belief that women's illnesses were caused by "hysteria," so named in ancient Greece after the notion that the uterus had a tendency to wander in the body. All women were considered prone to hysteria-strong emotions, idleness, intellectual activity, or unladylike pursuits could cause it—but it was most commonly diagnosed among celibates. Analyzing paintings of women's sickrooms by Jan Steen, Dirck Hals, Gabriel Metsu, Jacob Ochtervelt, Godfried Schalcken, Samuel van Hoogstraten, and Franz van Mieris, Dixon perceives metaphoric identifications of the womb as the source of illness. She also documents changing fashions in cures for hysteria and discusses allusions to the debilitating effects of women's passions not only in paintings, but also in madrigals by John Dowland and Henry Purcell. In conclusion, Dixon argues that her study has strong ramifications of attitudes towards women and illness today. She takes up images in twentieth-century culture as well and calls attention to a resurgence of female "hysteria" after World War II.

Women and Illness in Pre-Enlightenment Art and Medicine

Perilous Chastity

Reviews : "Dixon presents her arguments clearly and forcefully, and her volume is well written, as well as a feast for the eyes. . . . Dixon's study is an important one for scholars in medical history, art history, and women's studies because of its ambitious attempts to mold medical theory about female bodies and artists' representations of women and girls into a comprehensive picture of women's lives." -- Ann Ellis Hanson, review "This impeccably researched work traces 'hysteria' . . . into the modern period. . . . Dixon's work will be of great interest to scholars in the fields of medical history, art history, and women's studies." -- Katherine Dauge-Roth, review"-- from amazon.com.

Laurinda S. Dixon

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