Date of Award
2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Fine and Decorative Art and Design
Abstract
This thesis examines the representation of female imagery in Renaissance Italy (c.1500–1620) and Ming China (c.1480–1644), asking why two contemporaneous cultures diverged so sharply in their visual constructions of femininity. In Italy, artists such as Titian, Moroni, and Lavinia Fontana depicted women as embodiments of dynastic virtue, sensuality, and intellectual agency. In contrast, Ming female images—ranging from ancestor portraits and court beauties to works by Tang Yin, Qiu Ying, Cui Zizhong, and Ma Shouzhen—were framed by Confucian morality and literati aesthetics, privileging symbolic virtue over individuality.
The study employs Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, Barthes’s semiotics of myth, and Mulvey’s concept of the gaze to analyze how female figures operated as visual currency within patriarchal economies. Importantly, it also highlights how women artists such as Sofonisba Anguissola, Fontana, and Ma Shouzhen, reclaimed authorship and negotiated visual agency.
By situating these traditions in comparative dialogue, the thesis challenges Eurocentric art history, reveals how femininity functioned as a site of ideological labor, and underscores the role of female imagery in shaping early modern discourses on virtue, desire, and power.
Recommended Citation
He, Yitong, "Representation of Beauty- The Evolution of Female Imagery in Renaissance Italy and Ming Dynasty of China" (2026). MA in Fine and Decorative Art and Design Dissertations. 1.
https://digitalcommons.sia.edu/ma_fine_ad/1