Women as readers

I don't know much about the symbols/typology that inhere in Renaissance painting on Christian themes.

Yet, the 17th century painting of the Virgin Mary ("The Annunciation and Two Saints" by Simone Martini), distracted from her reading by the entry of the angel Gabriel into her room, tells me something--not about religion, but about women, knowledge and power in the Renaissance--because it is so intelligently put in context by Joan Acocella in her review of The Woman Reader by Belinda Jack.

I had never thought of Mary as a reader, or as a woman who had any role outside of her role as a bearer/vessel of the son of God. But this painting, interpreted differently, grants Mary an intellectual life.

The painting has a remarkable detail: Mary keeps her thumb in her book, as though Gabriel's presence is an intrusion on her private time which is devoted to the reading of a book. She will revert to the book once Gabriel is gone. God's words are secondary compared to the pleasures of a book.

If Mary weren't required to listen to Gabriel's spiel, she wouldn't. But reading is volitional on the part of Mary.

A traditional painting can become provocative, even subversive, if seen through the lens of a detail that isn't accentuated.