How have attitudes to women been characterized during different epochs? Were women honored or despised? And how have various religions altered the image of woman? To answer these questions, the State Museum of the History of Religion has organized an exhibition with the intriguing title “And God Created Woman.”
More than 100 exhibits from the museum’s collection are on display, including sculptures, paintings, graphic works, examples of decorative and applied arts, jewelry, orthodox icons and Buddhist thangkas that reveal different perceptions of women in world religions.“The aim of our exhibition is to create a retrospective, to review the development of the female image throughout the centuries,” said Marina Ptichenko, curator of the exhibition. “The role of women is changing in modern society. So we wanted to show how different religions through different ages perceived women, and what female deities they worshipped,” she added.
The exhibition starts with high quality copies of famous Paleolithic figurines of Venus dating back to the 24th to 22nd centuries B.C. These prehistoric statuettes of women with crude female shapes and the absence of a face or legs are believed to be the first images of female goddesses. A mother-goddess was a central image in archaic beliefs.
“It is difficult to say what exactly these statuettes symbolized and how they were used,” said Ptichenko. “Perhaps they embodied the female keepers of a family’s hearth or somehow personified fertility. Different interpretations exist.”
With the passing of time, the image of a mother-goddess transformed into a patron-goddess like the Greek goddess Demeter, Phrygian goddess Kibela or Taoist immortal woman He Xiangu.
The exhibition does not avoid the biblical story of the Fall. The sin committed by Eve overthrew the image of a mother-goddess, and a new interpretation of the female image is represented by the icons “The expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise” and “Six days,” and by other exhibits, including the engraving “The expulsion from Eden.”
“When we consider the female image, an important issue arises — that of the family and marriage,” said Ptichenko. “This is in fact a topic that is intrinsically associated with women, so we devoted one section of the exhibition to the role of woman as a mother and a wife.”
The exhibits in this section include various engravings, lithographs, icons, jewelry, paintings and statuettes of family patron spirits from the Priamurye region and Western Siberia, as well as colorful Russian folk lubok prints.
The central female image in Christianity, the image of the Virgin Mary, is illustrated through paintings, icons and sculptures. “An interesting sculpture — a bust of the Madonna — is being exhibited for the first time in our museum,” said Ptichenko.Another section of the exhibition is devoted to female patron saints, who play an essential role in most religions of the world. This section illustrates images of Christian, Hindu and Buddhist saints and goddesses, such as Mary Magdalene, Saint Catherine, Saint Lucia, Saint Tatiana, Green Tara and others.
The curator said the organizers had tried to present a selection of interesting objects from every confession, and not only from Christianity. “For instance, there is an interesting Jewish marriage contract, and some amazing Islamic watercolors and lithographs,” said Ptichenko. “There is even an object being exhibited for the first time — an Indian wedding costume that was acquired by the museum recently.”
The curator recommended that visitors pay attention to the silver items on display. “Usually we do not show silver objects at our temporary exhibitions, but this time we made an exception. Silver items feature heavily in this exhibition,” she said.
The mystery of the dual perception of women is the subject of another section of the exhibition titled, “Woman: Virtue and Vice.” What is woman — the devil incarnate or the virtuous lynchpin of the family home? The lubok images depicting Baba Yaga — the witch from Russian fairy tales — along with allegorical prints by Francisco Goya from the Caprichos series (1799), a William Hogarth lithograph titled “Credulity, superstition and fanaticism” (1762) and other exhibits depict the darker side of the female image, while icon images of Mary of Egypt and Saint Mary embody the positive perceptions of female nature.
“I think that after visiting the exhibition, people might see that women, and the image of woman have always been honored,” said Ptichenko. “Indeed, we can see that thousands of years ago, ancient man made statuettes of women, not of men. Archaeologists don’t find male statuettes. Female goddesses were worshipped, but the attitude to real, terrestrial women has always been different.
“A person might worship the Virgin Mary, but have completely the opposite attitude to ordinary women, considering them to be the embodiment of all human vices,” concluded Ptichenko.
The State Museum of the History of Religion has also organized a series of lectures to discuss and explore the role of women in world religions. The next lectures will be devoted to female Slavic deities (April 29), the role of women in Islam (May 13), witchcraft in history (May 20), and female images in Hinduism (May 27).
“And God Created Woman” runs through June 26 at the State Museum of the History of Religion, Pochtamtskaya Ulitsa 14/5. Tel: 315 3080. M: Sadovaya/Sennaya Ploshchad.
Source: The St Petersburg Times [April 23, 2010]