Rape of women and girls remains a widespread form of aggression against a civilian population during war and often the belief is that the universal condemnation and prosecution of these crimes is a relatively recent phenomenon.
However, critical representations of sexual violence were already created during the Italian Renaissance. The civic imagery developed in city-republics gives us a unique insight into the revolutionary understanding of gender-based aggression and a forgotten chapter in rape history.
Giotto’s frescoes in the Arena Chapel stand at the beginning of any history of Renaissance art, and he is often called the ‘father’ of the western tradition of painting. But what happens if we look at the Chapel and its paintings from a different perspective? Who were the women who used this chapel, what did they see, and what did they think?
When History of Art becomes Her-story of Art, the results can be surprising.
