(Credits: Far Out / Museo Fundación Duque de Lerma)
When we think of 17th-century art, it’s usually chubby cherubs smothered in gold leaf, dramatic biblical scenes and heroic history paintings that display bloody battles that might come to mind. Not a man-looking woman breastfeeding her child.
Indeed, during the 17th century, the concept of gender fluidity, or any notion that gender was on a spectrum, was totally inconceivable. Gender was comfortably and solidly placed within the boundaries of binarism, and the opposing forces of the male and female figures had never been questioned.
That was until Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera executed his Magdalena Ventura with Her Husband and Son, which sent shock waves, quite literally, across Europe. This oil on canvas, made in 1631, features ‘La Mujer Barbuda’ (the bearded woman), actually called Magdalena Ventura, breastfeeding her son. You can now visit it at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid.
This rather insulting nickname quickly stuck because Ventura bestowed every characteristic associated with both male and female anatomy. At the time, the term ‘hermaphrodite’ was as alien as a UFO. Hermaphrodites only entered the scene in 1660, when English naturalist John Ray discovered hermaphroditism in snails. So Ventura was deemed a fascinating human experiment at first. Was she a monster or a mythical creature?
Ventura’s gender-bending identity became a specimen that even monarchs of the time marvelled at, to the point that the painting was commissioned by the Viceroy of Naples while Ribera was a court painter in his kingdom. However, not everyone appreciated this rare extraterrestrial creature. The painting had been placed in an orphanage for girls in Toledo after the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939. But, it was quickly hidden behind a closed door so as not to upset the young, already traumatised children, who experienced panic attacks just from briefly looking at this jarring figure.
In Caravaggesque fashion, a clear inspiration for Ribera, the painting is shockingly life-like and real. Ventura is at the centre of the image, solemnly breastfeeding a baby, and behind, lurking in the shadows, is her husband, who almost looks just like her. In fact, one would probably think these were two men if it weren’t for the bulging breast that pushes out of Ventura’s shirt.
The ‘chiaroscuro’ technique, adopted by Baroque painters to emphasise tenebrism, makes Ventura’s wrinkles look like deep black cracks on her face, emphasising her mature masculinity. Her beard, which is harrowingly longer than her husband’s well-kept one, cascades onto the protruding breast, augmenting the contrast between male and female anatomical parts.
One can’t ignore the positioning of the breast, which is far too high and central on Ventura’s chest; it anatomically doesn’t make sense. This made me think that Ribera really wanted to make a point in showing it and, thus, putting Ventura’s intersexual nature centre stage through the use of artistic license.
On the right side of the painting, two stone steles tactically tell the story of how Ventura became this “great wonder of nature”. It says that after having given birth to three offspring, a beard started sprouting from her chin in her late 30s. This abnormal event became the object of research for centuries. Just last year, the Rhode Island Medical Journal published a medical study attempting to diagnose Ventura’s “brief clinical history”.
Ribera made sure to include tiny hints of Ventura’s femininity, further amplifying our confusion about her gender. Notice the spindle and shell placed on the stele and the pearly glimmer of a tear in her eye, a classic example of her female fragility.
My takeaway is that Ribera wants to push the idea that by creating these awkward juxtapositions of gender within such a realistic setting, he tried to normalise the concept that male and female anatomical parts can coexist and that, ultimately, Ventura is just a human being. Perhaps he was encouraging the 17th-century viewer to look beyond her confusing gender presentation, beyond stereotypes, and value the art for what it is.
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