This essay is a study of a suite of six small-scale equestrian portraits in the Skokloster Castle Collection. The suite represents aristocratic women at the court of Louis XIV. In the portraits, the equestriennes and their horses perform advanced dressage movements. In the 17th Century the advanced dressage riding, performed in l'art du manège, was a masculine sphere. The equestrian portraits in the Skokloster suite therefore evoke questions regarding early modern female horse- and riding culture. How do we read these equestrian portraits today? In the analysis I focus on what the horses and riders do. I discuss the portraits in the light of la Querelle des femmes and how early modern French elite women would search for a new female role. Horseriding would open up for a possibility for women to expand their physical movements outdoors. In the 1630s a new category of female equestrian portraits surface where the equestriennes and their horses perform movements like carrière, terre-à-terre, courbette etc - movements which had earlier been performed in male equestrian portraits. The equestrian portraits in the Skokloster suite may be categorized to this new type of female equestrian portraits. The equestrian portraits in the Skokloster suite "descript" the "social manuscript" of the genre. Earlier, female riders had beed depicted on walking or trotting horses, or rarely, on horses performing passage. For a multifaceted reading I present a historic background and context to early modern riding culture as well as equestrian portraits as an art historical genre. In the essay I discuss attribution, possible commissioner and possible intended viewers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-446945 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Williams, Annika |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Konstvetenskapliga institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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