Contradictory Representations: Warrior Women in the Seventeenth-century Painting

Abstract

This article considers seventeenth-century portraits of female warriors in the light of women’s participation in a war. Their contribution was far from insignificant, and the article argues that the number of portraits emphasizing women’s military effort may appear surprisingly limited. Contemporary views on women and warfare probably explain the lack of such portraits, but women’s participation was not universally condemned. By comparing historical accounts, contemporary literature as well as the visual arts, the article shows how attitudes were highly ambivalent; women could be praised as defenders of their homes but rarely as aggressors. Rather predictably, then, the warrior portraits tend to emphasize both so-called masculine and feminine qualities, often drawing on Minerva as a model. It is argued here that women’s bellicosity was sometimes modified by references to hunting, and that this may have been a reflection of changing attitudes to was as well as to female combatants in the seventeenth century.