Why is it men who paint all the images of Goddesses?

As i've reached further into my project, I've realised that all of the classic paintings that I have been using as references for the Goddesses I choose to personify, are painted by men. As a female artist choosing to depict such Goddesses in the 21st century, I feel that it's important to understand why it was always men who seemed to paint my subjects. Because of this I am essentially recreating or repurposing a man's vision of these Goddesses, my self-portraits are influenced by the male gaze, and to know why is important to how I go about the project, and most importantly, how I view the paintings that are such a big influence on the photographs I am taking.

Reason One: Artist as Man

     The idea of man as artist was strengthened by Battista Alberti, who within his treatise On Painting (1435), claimed that the artist as a smart, educated man. He was gifted with talent, and spent adequete time to refind his skill. Time that a woman who was expected to be a mother could not dedicate. As this idea of artist as man grew stronger, women were mostly excluded from the western art world unless they demonstrated signs of acceptable femininity within their work (Chadwick, 2001, pg. 10). Femininity was defined by a woman’s passive behaviour and their duties (often as a mother and housekeeper), ideologies that ran throughout marriage, property laws, religion, philosophy and other areas of life (Borzello, 2016, pg. 31). Therefore, women were not seen as appropriate to be an artist, as they held other, now traditional, values and responsibilities.

Reason Two: Institutional Patriarchy  


     Men were the professors, the establishment owners and the artists. Institutions that made men’s artistic lives easier, were run by men for men (Borzello, 2016, pg. 31). Women were restricted from entering the art schools that made these male artists so renowned, leaving women who aspired for the same at a great disadvantage. It's been suggested that men were fearful of women and their potential as artists, and so they made a great effort to exclude them from an artistic education.

Reason Three: Genius as Man

    As the Romantic era began in the late 18th century, there was a rise in the ancient Greek ideology that the term ‘genius’ is synonymous with ‘creative’, and despite women being stereotyped as emotional and in touch with their feelings, this didn't help the women in artistic positions (Battersby, 1989, pg. 3). The term 'genius' excluded women, people believed that men who showed creativity and expressed heavy emotion through art were transcending their gender - women on the other hand were expected to show emotion and be imaginative; “a woman who created was faced with a double blind: either to surrender her sexuality (becoming not masculine but a surrogate male) or to be feminine and female, and hence fail to count as a genius.” (Battersby, 1989, pg. 5). This means that there was no way for a woman to be defined as genius, she was either a genius, or woman. Women still created of course, but the Romantic era used ‘genius’ to differentiate between ‘Art’ and works that would be seen and consumed by the masses. ‘Art’, on the other hand, would be consumed by only the most elite of people. Therefore, a woman’s incapability to be a genius meant that she was also not applicable for the fame and respect of male ‘genius’ artists (Battersby, 1989, pg. 8). This is likely to be a large reason of why the paintings i've been looking at have not been by women, because if they did create they were just dismissed anyway.