Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
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Title:
Lust and Despair
Creator:
Description:
This capital from the nave of the Abbey of Sainte-Marie-la-Madeleine at Vézelay depicts the sin of lust, or luxuria, in the form of a tortured woman. The woman’s elongated body twists in a gesture of pain while her hands tug at her breasts. A serpent wraps around her legs with its head at her genitals. Her unkempt hair surrounds her head in unruly, dramatic waves. Representations of Lust as a woman with snakes or toads biting her breasts and genitals form the iconographic category known as the “femme-aux-serpents,” and appear frequently in Romanesque church decoration in France. The “femme-aux-serpents” on the facade of the Abbey Saint-Pierre at Moissac, for example, is a well-known counterpart to the Vézelay capital. On the Vézelay capital, as on other Romanesque representations of Lust, a demon with wild hair accompanies the writhing woman. This demon, who stabs himself with a sword on the capital, has been identified as Despair. Scholars posit that the pairing of Lust as the “femme-aux-serpents” with Despair finds its origins in the
Confessions
of St. Augustine, in which the saint argues that only despair can follow the sin of corporeal indulgence. More recently, however, Amanda Luyster has suggested the “femme-aux-serpents” signifies a subversion of personifications of Terra, or Earth, from Roman antiquity. Personifications of Terra dating from the Roman period and persisting into the twelfth century in manuscript illuminations show the Earth as a bare-breasted mother nursing frogs and snakes. Personifications of Lust, according to Luyster, invert Terra’s iconography in order to demonstrate that sexual indulgence upends natural order.
Source:
Wikimedia Commons
Rights:
Public Domain
Subject
(See Also)
:
Allegory
Demons
Luxuria (Lust)
Nude
Sexuality
Vices
Geographic Area:
France
Century:
12-13
Date:
After 1120
Related Work:
Detail of the figure of Luxuria: http://www.flickr.com/photos/art_roman_p/. Capitals of Vézelay: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Capitals_of_Vezelay
Current Location:
France, Abbey of la Madaleine, Vézelay
Original Location:
Artistic Type (Category):
Digital Images; Sculptures
Artistic Type (Material/Technique):
Stone (Marble)
Donor:
Male religious (?); Possibly part of a restoration campaign initiated by Abbot Renaud of Semur/ Prior Peter the Venerable
Height/Width/Length(cm):
//
Inscription:
Related Resources:
Ambrose, Kirk. The Nave Sculpture of Vézelay: The Art of Monastic Viewing. Pontifical Insitute of Medieval Studies, 2006. pp. 92-93. Luyster, Amanda.“The Femme-aux-Serpents at Moissac: Luxuria (Lust) or a Bad Mother?” In Between Magic and Religion: Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Mediterranean Religion and Society. S. Asirvatham, C. O. Pache, and J. Watrous, eds. Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. pp. 165-91.