Women as Artists in the Middle Ages

This essay surveys the evidence of women as artists in the Western Middle Ages in the centuries between about 600 and 1400 (for Byzantium, see the complete Dictionary of Women Artists). Dorothy Miner’s Anastaise and Her Sisters (1974) laid the foundation for current inquiry into medieval women’s art.¹ Much of the data that she – and indeed that we today – rely upon was noted already in 19th-and early 20th-century sources.² Our task has been its assembly and, more importantly, its interpretation. Composing a fabric within which to understand the widely scattered women whom we discover challenges many of our preconceptions about the production, the consumption and indeed the very definition of art in the Middle Ages. The job of interpreting women as artists has been enriched by recent insights into women’s prominent role as cultural patrons in the Middle Ages.³ The work of women as creators of rich and significant artefacts takes its place within this broader rediscovery of women as arbiters of medieval culture.