Devoted, Pious, Frivolous and Irreverent Women: The Representation of Female Religiosity in Spanish Painting, 1868–1917

Abstract

AbstractThe aim of this article is to show how Spanish painting of the nineteenth century helped to construct the narrative of a female religiosity based on sentiment, which was specific to women. This narrative was not free from misogyny because women's piety was often diluted, converted into something superficial. It was brimming with exaggerated sentimentalism, the product of superstition and lacking in careful reflection, without an intellectual religious discourse – which women, by their nature, could never reach. Women's involvement in religion and catholic movements was not as insubstantial, sentimental or naïve as it has been presented or made out to be; but this reality was not reflected in painting.