Women during history have always been defined by gender identities, such as

sexuality and motherhood and the Artworks portray these roles over the centuries.
Women artists also chose to depicts this subjects, showing their perspective, most of
the time originally going against stereotypes and exposing cultural expectations about
the gender.

One of the biggest expectations from women is the motherhood role. Even now
in the 21th century, if a woman says they do not want to have children, the sentence is
received with incredulity and criticism from society. From religious beliefs, women
main purpose basically reproduction, in a social aspect, it was their duty to produce a
male heir, later in the 18th century, a new concept of childhood and motherhood
started to be introduced, and artists like Jean-Baptiste Greuze preached, in his painting
The Beloved Mother, the “uttermost bliss” of being a spouse and mother of several
kids.

In the 19th century, French impressionist artists, such as Mary Cassatt and
Berthe Morisot sensibly painted about social costumes, ordinary everyday life and
intimate family scenes, illustrating how was the life of upper-middle-class women.
They both never marriage and have children, but it was definitely part of their life and
art. Berthe Morisot, in the Portrait of the Artist’s Sister and Mother, picture her sister
pregnancy and strong indicate a sense of isolation, as women were confined in the
home until the birth. In her most famous painting, The Cradle, her sister, again her
model, is watching over her sleeping daughter, this time reinforce feeling of intimacy
and protective love from the mother’s gaze, but in my opinion also the great energy
that motherhood requires.
During the 20th century, the Women German Artists like Kathe Kollwitz and Paula
Modersohn-Becker explored the still present dilemma of conciliate their professional identity
to the expected motherhood one. One way they both found to face this challenge of two
contradictory roles, was the maternal nudes. In Paula’s Self-Portrait on Her Sixth Wedding
Anniversary, her pregnancy was a metaphor to her artistic creativity, where the nude
represented her as women (the established “object” of paintings), at the same time, the
pregnant body constituted the artist behind it as the subject and author.

Another issue concerning women identity is their sexuality and how their value is
related to virgity. Artemisia Gentileschi is one of the artists who better exemplify some of this
topic, not only because of her artworks, but because she herself was affected by not only
psychological but social response of being raped. Her reputation was forever “stained”, she
suffered with the exposure of the trial and even today her artworks analysis high focuses in
this episode. In one her paintings, Gentileschi depicts the mythological story of Lucretia, who
was raped and afterwards commit suicide to protect her husband honor. The story clearly
exemplifies the view of the society about women virtue, where death is a better solution in
face of a woman’s “loss of virtue”. Artemisia in her represent highlights the psychological
struggle Lucretia faces from the consequence both the rape and the judgment the protagonist
will suffer if she chooses to live, pointing out the distorted perspective society hold about
chastity women, which have not changed so much, as women are still very much judged by
their sexuality and seen as result of their traumatic experiences.

Motherhood and sexuality are recurrent topics in women life, which have been slowly
developed through the years, but still shapes and controls women identity and choices. From
starting as the duty of childbearing, to the idealization of the desire to be fulfilled as a mother
and contradiction about coexisting professional and motherhood role, women still fight for
their own choices and crating their individual identities. Also the virginity and rape stigmas still
defines how women are seen in society, but hopefully art will continue contributing to women
reclaim of their bodies and autonomy.