Re-Gendering the Eden Serpent

Location

King Building 341

Document Type

Presentation

Start Date

4-29-2016 2:45 PM

End Date

4-29-2016 3:45 PM

Abstract

This project seeks to provide a theological and aesthetic analysis of an unusual fresco depicting Adam and Eve in the church S. Maria della Pace in Rome. Artists frequently chose to depict Adam and Eve in fresco church decoration during the Italian Renaissance, and it served to communicate and reflect conceptions of gender norms. In these compositions the Eden serpent, the tempter in the garden, is normally represented naturalistically or as a feminized serpent. In the S. Maria della Pace, this iconography is reversed: the serpent is gendered as masculine. Using this fresco, church doctrine, research of the congregation, artist biography, and the greater culture of Rome in the late-16th century, I seek to explain how this unusual iconography would be particularly suited to its specific circumstances.

Notes

Session II, Panel 11 - Remake, Remodel: New Takes on Classic Representations
Moderator: Drew Wilburn, Associate Professor of Classics

Major

Art History

Advisor(s)

Christina Neilson, Art History

Project Mentor(s)

Christina Neilson, Art History

April 2016

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Apr 29th, 2:45 PM Apr 29th, 3:45 PM

Re-Gendering the Eden Serpent

King Building 341

This project seeks to provide a theological and aesthetic analysis of an unusual fresco depicting Adam and Eve in the church S. Maria della Pace in Rome. Artists frequently chose to depict Adam and Eve in fresco church decoration during the Italian Renaissance, and it served to communicate and reflect conceptions of gender norms. In these compositions the Eden serpent, the tempter in the garden, is normally represented naturalistically or as a feminized serpent. In the S. Maria della Pace, this iconography is reversed: the serpent is gendered as masculine. Using this fresco, church doctrine, research of the congregation, artist biography, and the greater culture of Rome in the late-16th century, I seek to explain how this unusual iconography would be particularly suited to its specific circumstances.