Dangerous Women: Selections from the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art

The books of the Bible are full of fascinating female characters - good and bad wives, courageous heroines, and deceptive, and sometimes even deadly, femmes fatales. While some women saved their people, were paragons of wifely virtue, or repented their sins to pursue lives of virtue and sacrifice, others were purveyors of sin, harlots or deadly temptresses and seductresses. These women—from Judith and Esther to Salome and Mary Magdalene and from Bathsheba to Potiphar's Wife, to name but a few— shaped biblical history. 

Women of the Bible were often depicted by Renaissance and Baroque artists simply as an excuse for presenting sensuous female nudes. Other times, however, they were portrayed for the drama or moral messages conveyed by their stories. Dangerous Women presents more than twenty works from the rich holdings of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art which explore different artists' responses to the women of the Bible. 

Paintings by artists such as Pietro da Cortona, Fede Galizia, Pordenone, Giovanni Andrea Sirani, and Francesco del Cairo will be accompanied by Old Master prints and drawings, including Jan Saenredam's series entitled Famous Women of the New Testament, and the exhibition will conclude with a modern coda: Robert Henri's sumptuous, sensuous Salome, a reminder of the tenacity of the appeal of dangerous biblical women.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website 

Image: FRANCESCO CAIRO (Italian, Milanese, 1607–1665). Judith with the Head of Holofernes, ca. 1633–37. Oil on canvas, 119.1 × 94.3 cm. Museum Purchase, 1966, SN 798

Whether you go or not, the exhibition catalogue, Dangerous Women, presents works from the rich holdings of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art that explore different artists' responses to the women of the Bible. Paintings by Pietro da Cortona, Francesco Cairo, and Fede Galizia and others stand as a reminder of how dangerous biblical women have continued to loom large in the modern imagination. 

The stories in this volume show how narratives of power are constructed, interpreted, and continue to evolve over the course of time. While some women saved their people, were paragons of virtue, or repented, others were purveyors of sin, harlots, and seductresses. Even if it was through their misbehavior, all of these women - from Mary Magdalene, to Judith and Esther, to Salome and Potiphar's Wife - shaped biblical history. Celebrating the strength of women and their ability to take back power in adverse circumstances, the book features contributions from leading scholars of feminist and Renaissance art.

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