Lucas van Leyden
Dutch, c. 1494-1533
Jael Killing Sisera, 1516-19
Woodcut
Gift of Herschel V. Jones P.10,631

Beware Her Wiles: Woman as Temptress in the Renaissance Tradition

Saturday, August 14, 2010—Sunday, December 12, 2010
Gallery 344
Free Exhibition

Certain pairings from the Bible, antiquity, and history came to represent the Power of Women theme in literature and the visual arts, including: Samson, who loved the Philistine woman Delilah so desperately that he told her the secret of his strength, opening himself to attack; Solomon, who was induced by one of his pagan wives to forsake God and worship false idols; David, so helplessly attracted to Bathsheba that he committed adultery with her and had her husband killed; Salome, who danced so prettily for Herod that he granted her request for the head of St. John the Baptist; and Judith, who secured the trust of the Assyrian general Holofernes, the enemy of her people, then cut off his head in the dead of night.

The works in this exhibition are mostly by northern Renaissance artists such as Lucas van Leyden and Hans Burgkmair, but it also includes more recent examples, among them Alphonse Mucha's Salome from L'Estampe Moderne (1897) and a work in watercolor and acrylic by Tina Blondell (after Gustav Klimt) from 1999, titled I'll Make You Shorter by a Head (Judith I). Most works are drawn from the MIA's permanent collection, along with loans from The Thrivent Financial Collection of Religious Art.