The construction of female identities in the artistic representation of women in the History of Madrid

Abstract

This paper use the art as a source of social analysis. The case study made consists in a construction of the different feminines identities in the artistic representation in Madrid history. It has been done an analysis from different women: María Guerrero, Manuela Malasaña; Isabel II, Santa María de la Cabeza, Catalina de Aragón, Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor, María Isidra de Guzmán y de la Cerda, Clara Campoamor, Juanita Cruz and Cibeles. Representative
plastic representations of each of them have been chosen for further analysis. The selected techniques are drawing, painting and sculpture. The artistic genre chosen is the portrait. The methodology used for the analysis of the images comes from the History of Art using an iconographic-iconological methodology in which the three levels are applied: pre-iconographic description, the level of iconographic analysis and the level of iconological analysis. In
a second phase of the case study, the intervention of art in the social is presented through its images, which become icons. This paper presents the conclusions of the research that shows how these icons are related to each other, generating a collective identity, not only as part of the individual biographies of the selected women.