Iconography of female images in the art of decadence

Abstract

In the decadence painting of the second half of the XIX – early XX centuries, there is an entrenched iconography of female images, which combined the work of artists from different countries. It should be notedthat the source of these images was English Pre-Raphaelites art, which had significant impact not only on European art but also on the works of some American artists. The mentioned artists laid the foundation for a new iconographic tradition of depicting female images that the PreRaphaelites began to impart to masculinity to emphasize their power and break the stereotype that existed in Victorian society. It implied the existence of only two types of female hypostasis – the pure and innocent guardian of the hearth or temptress, Femme Fatale, which was the epitome of sin and vice. The article reviews two foundational motives: a female androgyne, embodying the ambivalence of decadence concerning beauty, and the cult of a dead or immersed in a state of an occult trance female body, which was a concentration of eschatological fears of the unknowability of death.