Product Description: Today Renaissance-era prints are typically preserved behind glass or in solander boxes in museums, but these decorative objects were once a central part of everyday life. Altered and Adorned is a delightful, surprising look at how prints were used: affixed on walls; glued into albums, books, and boxes; annotated; hand-colored; or cut apart...read more

In her excellent introduction to this catalogue for an exhibition of old master prints at the National Gallery of Art, Russell writes that these pieces show ``some of the guises, good and bad, in which woman was represented by male artists'' from about 1460 to the late 17th century. Russell, a curator at the National Gallery, touches upon various topics relating to the portrayal of women during this period: chastity as social necessity; the choice between marriage and convent; the inherent (male) power of the visual image. Grouped by subject matter, the prints portray Eve, Venus, and the Virgin and saints. A section on heroines includes the biblical Judith, who decapitated Holofernes. In one print, Judith, fully clothed, is depicted as powerful and virtuous; in another by the same artist, she is eroticized by her nakedness. The chapter on lovers offers a series of ``ill-assorted'' couples--one young woman with an old man is shown with her hand open, ``demanding money before she will grant sexual favors.'' This book provides a thoughtful feminist reading of a genre of art--and a period of art history--unabashedly committed to the subjugation of the female sex.