Female Faces in the Fraternity. Printed Portraits Galleries and the Construction and Circulation of Images of Learned Women in the Republic of Letters

Abstract

How women tried to secure a place in the early modern male-dominated intellectual field has been the subject of numerous studies over the last decade. The most visible sign of their growing presence in the intellectual field—their printed portraits—has, however, received surprisingly little critical attention. This chapter discusses printed portraits of learned women as vehicles of public image in the male-dominated Republic of Letters. It unravels how the inclusion of the likenesses of four prominent contemporary learned women—Luise Gottsched, Emilie Du Châtelet, Laura Bassi and Magdalena Sibylla Rieger—in one of the most ambitious printed portrait galleries of the eighteenth century, the Bilder-Sal, contributed to their representation as intellectual authority in the Republic of Letters. Especially due to their visual nature their portraits proved ideal vehicles to readily disseminated representations of female intellectual authority across regional, national and linguistic borders, finding their ways to the study rooms of prominent scholars. As such, they contributed to a more inclusive image of the intellectual across Europe. It remained, however, a fine line between embodying intellectual authority and maintaining female modesty. Besides reflections on their intellectual capacities, these women’s portraits continued to spark discussions on their physical—and evidently female—appearances.