Vetula, Vecchia, Prophetess, Saint: the Old Woman in the Florentine Trecento

Abstract

This chapter examines the representation of the old woman in Florentine art. It will look at figures coded as elderly such as St Elizabeth, St Anne, and Anna the Prophetess and place them within their devotional context. It also analyzes the ambivalence represented by the aging woman, displaced from the reproductive activity and object of the male gaze and put into yet another alterity, that of the miraculously conceiving saint, the prophetess or the vetula. It suggests that the perception of woman as close to nature, and thus close to death kept the aged woman as type in ambivalence and alterity.