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Making The Invisible Visible: The Presence Of Older Women Artists In Early Modern Artistic Biography, Julia K. Dabbs

Art History Publications

One intention of this chapter is to reverse the current misapprehension of the longevity of early modern women artists, and render these “invisible” elder women creators more visible. Yet in addition, I will consider how the woman artist was characterized by her biographer in old age, and provide some comparison with literary tropes associated with elder male artists of the period, to see to what extent gender may have factored into cultural perceptions and attitudes towards old age.