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Erotic helplessness : a study of the history of the Damsel in Distress theme in art

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"The Witch on the Pyre*"
This is quite a rare drawing by the famed renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer.
It depicts a girl awaiting her execution by burning,, the sack hanging from her neck being likely filled with gunpowder to shorten her suffering.
There is also text, it is however both fairly small and written in cursivve old german so I was only able to translate a little bit.
She was burned on a Sunday after Johannis (this is most likely the 24th of May) in the year 1508 and she was 16 years old.

*The only source on the Title is an old Facebook post of the Witch museum in Bamberg, so it is possible that this is just what the museum called it.

12274058_shift-1200x0_1rPblQ_SMRHF8.jpg
 
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Smilodontae said:
"The Witch on the Pyre*"
This is quite a rare drawing by the famed renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer.
It depicts a girl awaiting her execution by burning,, the sack hanging from her neck being likely filled with gunpowder to shorten her suffering.
Click to expand...
Probably the most famous victim of being burned with gunpowder around her neck - to shorten the suffering - is probably Anne Askew (1521 - 1546) in England, who was burned alive on July 16, 1541 as an alleged heretic on the orders of Henry VIII. However, to speak of a shortening of the suffering is a malicious irony, because before that she was so horribly tortured that she could not even walk and had to be carried to the stake (see picture).

Anne Askew - burning.jpg
Anne Askew is carried to the stake because she is unable to walk after the endless torture she had to suffer.

In addition to this a glossed over picture where Anne Askew stands upright at the stake at the pyre along with other people being burned for their beliefs: "Martydorm of Anne Askew", "Book of Martyrs", John Foxe (1869)
Anne Askew martydorm.jpg

When will it be understood by all, the dark Ages were not the Middle Ages, it was the early Modern Period from 1500 AD up to the French Revolution...
 
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Rupert_137 said:
When will it be understood by all, the dark Ages were not the Middle Ages, it was the early Modern Period from 1500 AD up to the French Revolution...
Click to expand...
Speaking from a historians point of view, the term "Dark Ages" was never meant as a form of judgement but was rather talking about a lack of information, meaning that it was dark in the sense that one could not "see" anything, as opposed to a illuminated period one has a lot of information about.
 
Smilodontae said:
Speaking from a historians point of view, the term "Dark Ages" was never meant as a form of judgement but was rather talking about a lack of information, meaning that it was dark in the sense that one could not "see" anything, as opposed to a illuminated period one has a lot of information about.
Click to expand...
As in the Greek Dark Age after the collapse of the Late Bronze Age ;) Beautiful drawing of Dürer, btw :)
 
Smilodontae said:
Speaking from a historians point of view, the term "Dark Ages" was never meant as a form of judgement but was rather talking about a lack of information, meaning that it was dark in the sense that one could not "see" anything, as opposed to a illuminated period one has a lot of information about.
Click to expand...
You are absolutely right! This is an important hint, because unfortunately the term 'Dark Ages' is often misunderstood.
I just think of the many stories and pictures that, as a matter of course, are set in the Middle Ages and yet belong to the early modern period in terms of content - or unhesitatingly project borrowings from this period into the Middle Ages (endless witch trials, torture tools that have not yet been invented, etc.)
Who would want to ascribe an evil story to an 'illuminated period' - which, unfortunately, was not so enlightened at all.
 
Rupert_137 said:
You are absolutely right! This is an important hint, because unfortunately the term 'Dark Ages' is often misunderstood.
I just think of the many stories and pictures that, as a matter of course, are set in the Middle Ages and yet belong to the early modern period in terms of content - or unhesitatingly project borrowings from this period into the Middle Ages (endless witch trials, torture tools that have not yet been invented, etc.)
Who would want to ascribe an evil story to an 'illuminated period' - which, unfortunately, was not so enlightened at all.
Click to expand...
Yes, the Enlightenment cast plenty of shadows - the slave trade and plantations, colonies seized with the power of the gun, women and children down the mines or slaving in factories, forcible clearance of people off the land to make way for 'improvements', death penalty for kids stealing handkerchiefs etc. etc. etc.
 
Different images of the martyrdom of Saint Barbara...
 

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