ABSTRACT
Ancient writers described artworks in gender terms: Vitruvius called the Doric order appropriate to honor the “virile strength” of male gods and assigned the ornamented Corinthian to female deities. But such terminology acquired a new, systematic character with the beginning of aesthetics as philosophy of art in the eighteenth century. Texts of this period, for example, categorize forms of painting as “virile” or “effeminate,” and celebrate poetry as a peculiarly masculine art. What-and how much-is to be made of such expressions? Does the metaphorical application of gender stereotypes to the domain of art simply reflect the mentalité of a sexist society? To look at it this way is to ignore the complexity of metaphor, the extension of a system of concepts from one kind of object to another. Metaphor changes not only the way we think about the new range of objects a concept is applied to, but the meanings of the concept itself.
