Accessibility and Familiarity of the Renaissance Female

There are some things that are famous for being famous but these things are not lasting, whereas I feel the recognisable quality of these Renaissance works appear infinite. The faces I select from familiar female portraits are meant not only as an homage to the original but also, when combined with my digital patterns and blatant nude forms, to reinforce a sense of the contemporary ‘Madonna’, with an affirmation to the famous and recognisable imagery of the past. It is a way for me to make my own female portrait, which is accessible to the modern eye.

Examples of my silkscreen and digital print images above the original Renaissance paintings

One gets a sense of something beyond pigment, beyond likeness and beyond the human face in the original oil paintings. In my opinion, the women in these portraits appear physically as modern women; some stare at you directly, look ahead with defiance or passivity, gaze submissively from under hooded eyelids – each different facial evocation promoting the ambiguity of this visual tease which Renaissance artists appeared to cultivate. For me, the apparent vulnerability and acquiescence of these women belies their strength. The totally uncanny living female presences evoked within the paintings are reasons why I admire and choose to depict fragments of them as subjects for my own work. 

There is more going on than meets the eye. I think the question of what makes a human being live and breathe and what governs the forces that make us human are questions the Renaissance artists (in particular) may be attempting to answer.  However, the ironic ambiguity within the representation of these familiar female forms is that they were all painted by men.