User:GenderStudies/Semiotics of gender

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In the early modern visual period, the semiotics of gender(including sex, race and social class) can be represented through visual imagery and literature. The following are a few examples of the juxtaposition of the unnatural construction of gender and that, which is natural.

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In the story of Genesis, Adam and Eve harmoniously coexist in the Garden of Eden with a blissful naivety of the unnatural constructions that now inflict all subsequent societies. Before ‘the fall’, they were totally uninhibited, unmasked, and unashamed. Their pure oneness with nature is the origin to which artists revert, whether directly or indirectly, in depictions that imitate reality through an impression of the ideal. In a semiotic analysis of the visual construction of gender as it is depicted through nature, the Garden of Eden automatically surfaces to mind as the ultimate projection of perfection, in which woman and man embody the unaffected, genderless truth. Through a semiotic analysis of Castiglione’s, The Book of the Courtier, and Leonardo da Vinci’s depictions of the juxtaposition of gender and nature, the relationship between the ideal courtier and painting is explained. The connection this relationship has with nature demonstrates the masks of constructed identity societies have been wearing ever since the fall from paradise.

In Castiglione’s text,The Book of the Courtier, the discussion of the superiority of painting to sculpture initiates an interesting comparison to the ideal courtier. The reasons for praising painting over sculpture typify the qualities of the courtier. Everyone involved in the debate over the qualities this courtier should possess takes all of the previously proposed attributes into consideration and improves upon them just as a painter can do to his or her painting. “Besides, I consider sculpture to be more difficult because, if you happen to make a mistake, you cannot correct it, since marble cannot be patched up again, but you have to execute another figure; which does not happen in painting wherein you can make a thousand changes, adding and taking away, improving it all the while”. Just as the painting can correct the flaws of nature, so should the courtier. “Those who are not so perfectly endowed by nature can, with care and effort, polish and in great part correct their natural defects”.

Another connection between painting and the courtier is their extensive range of desirable qualities. Just as painting has the capability to imitate any aspect of nature, the courtier should be well versed in every facet that is deemed appropriate to his position in society. There should be no limitations to what the art of painting and the courtier are able to perfect. “So let it be enough simply to say that it is fitting for our Courtier to have knowledge of painting also, since it is decorous and useful and was prized in those times when men were of greater worth than now”. It is important to note that painting, as well as the ideal courtier, is merely an impression of what nature should be if it were perfect. The artist and Castiglione’s group of men and women use their imaginations to create what nature has yet to invent. In this way, the courtier, in semiotic terms, is like a portrait of unflawed nature. Just as in the Garden of Eden, he does not project any of the unnatural applications of gender, which deceive societies today. Since this completely natural truth of the courtier is impossible to attain without creating an impression, it represents the paradox of reality as false and imitation as the absolute.

Later scholars have noted effeminate qualities of the Renaissance courtier. This idea seems to relate with Amelia Jones’s discussion about projecting homosexuality or gender identity back on history. It seems as though modern scholars should adopt her method of analyzing history by placing themselves in the position of those up for questioning. Perhaps they would realize that the ‘effeminate’ attributions are constructed by subsequent societies and that a more appropriate label for the courtier, if a label is really necessary, would be ambiguity, a term also associated with many of Leonardo’s portraits such as the ‘Mona Lisa’ and ‘St. John the Baptist’, which will soon be discussed.

Ambiguity is something that society needs to accept in order to rid itself of these labeled genders. “In this semiotics of masculinity, the hypothetical ‘true sign’ consisted of an identity between outward beauty and inward goodness, between material signifier and social signified, between appearance and status”. Sociologically speaking, outer appearance is typically used as a mask to fit into a gender category, but the clothing and presentation of the courtier is argued to reflect his truth, which goes beyond gender. This truth of ambiguous or undefined gender portrayed through his sprezzatura, or naturalness, explains the label of effeminacy that is projected upon the courtier by the people from the 16th century court and also some modern scholars and historians. “To the modern reader, this created appearance of nonchalance seems like deceit, manipulation, and effeminacy: ‘how masked the true self…how like a woman’, as Joan Kelly quipped. It was however, precisely the opposite. To be sure, nonchalance was self-consciously created, but it was a created naturalness with all the instability and ambivalence that this implies”. This impression of naturalness is a reflection of the courtier’s essence just as painting, clearly an imitation of nature, reflects the truth that can be derived from the reality of nature. The paradox that real nature, which is full of deception and boundaries, is less true than the impression, which depicts the truth of this ‘reality’, lies in the idea of sprezzatura as a created naturalness.

Leonardo is the quintessential example of an artist who incorporates this idea of the created naturalness of sprezzatura in his work. Interestingly, his writings on painting as a science and as superior to all other arts correlate almost exactly with those of Castiglione. “This fictionalized account of courtly conduct…repeats several of Leonardo’s arguments on the rivalry of the arts almost verbatim, including his defense of painting...The publication of Castiglione’s book may account for the dissemination of Leonardo’s polemical comparisons of the arts”. Like Castiglione does with the courtier, Leonardo implements sprezzatura in his paintings, bringing into being his self-consciously created essence of nature into a form that surpasses all others. In the ‘Mona Lisa’, he accomplishes this through the close juxtaposition of his subject and the landscape that surrounds her.

Leonardo constructs quite an interesting visual representation of gender in this painting. There is no doubt that the ‘Mona Lisa’ is the object of the viewer’s gaze, but not in the conventionally misogynistic and exploitive fashion. This mysterious figure is rather like that of the Sphinx, a woman for sure, but an invention produced with components from nature that express so much more than the surface qualities of beauty found in the mere world as we see it, masked and jaded by the constructions and constrictions of gender. The enigmatic beauty captured in this painting reflects a truth derived from her ambiguity. “Leonardo, who could depict the fiery ascetic of the desert with a smile and gesture of feminine allurement, was quite capable of transferring the attributes of one sex to another, and of expressing some of his obsession with Salai’s {his speculated male lover} smile in the smile of the ‘Mona Lisa’”. Like the courtier, ‘Mona Lisa’ is so perplexing and fascinating to us because she does not fit any of the gender molds societies have implemented, to which people must conform. “He saw her as being primarily a masterpiece of naturalism…To Leonardo, a landscape, like a human being, was part of a vast machine, to be understood part by part and, if possible, in the whole. Rocks were not simply decorative silhouettes. They were part of the earth’s bones, with an anatomy of their own, caused by some remote seismic upheaval”. This semiotic relationship of woman and nature as one enigmatic being reveals the sublime absoluteness of painting.

Through the similarities between Castiglione and Leonardo, it is viable to say that Leonardo illustrates the same main ideas through his paintings as Castiglione does through his writings. These two artists, independently and together, demonstrate how the relationship between the ideal courtier and paintings such as the ‘Mona Lisa’ communicate the artificiality of gender through the ambiguity in their renderings of sprezzatura and nature. This exhibits the difference from what is natural and what is man/woman made. One more ideal thought: what if this concept would actually penetrate the world of ‘reality’ so all would realize the truth about gender is that it does not really exist.

Further Reading: Margaret Miles, "The Virgin's One Bare Breast: Nudity, Gender, and Religious Meaning in Tuscan Early Renaissance Culture," in the "Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives", ed. s. R. Sueiman, Cambrige (MA): Harvard UP, 1986, 193-208

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