Feeling Rubenesque in the New Year? Pieter-Paul Rubens’ The Little Fur, 1638

Posted on January 5, 2018 by Marsely Kehoe, PhD |

Pieter-Paul Rubens is known for filling his Biblical and mythological paintings with half-clad round fleshy women, many of who are modelled after the woman shown here. She’s Rubens’ second wife, Helena Fourment, and he was really proud of her beauty, youth, and, indeed, her fleshiness.   Helena was the niece of his first wife, and she was very young when they married, only 16, when Rubens was 53. Even contemporaries were shocked by the age difference. Yet Rubens appeared to…

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“We Can Do It!” – World War II poster

Posted on August 17, 2017 by Marsely Kehoe, PhD |

This poster has inspired women in the United States since the 1980s, with its message of strength and its suggestion that women can succeed in a man’s world. Rolling up the sleeve of a men’s type workshirt to flex her bicep, her hair tied out of the way in the iconic red-and-white polka-dot kerchief, glaring at us through long lashes, she is both beautiful and fierce. The poster was originally commissioned by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, from graphic designer J….

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Can an Empress be the Equal of her Emperor Husband? Empress Theodora and Attendants, 547

Posted on July 27, 2017 by Marsely Kehoe, PhD |

Empress Theodora (c. 500-548), the woman in dark purple, was an important historical leader in the Byzantine Empire, yet history has not been kind to her. Her origins are unknown (she was not born a royal, so no one recorded her early life), and her critics have confused the issue. Perhaps the worst, and also most famous, assertion was that she was a circus performer and a whore. Even though her beginnings are unknown and the worst parts may just…

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