Dangerous Women

The Old and New Testaments are full of compelling female characters: good wives and bad, courageous heroines and deceptive – sometimes deadly – femmes fatales. Dangerous Women presents works from the rich holdings of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art that explore different artists’ responses to the women of the Bible. Paintings by Pietro da Cortona, Francesco Cairo, and Fede Galizia and others stand as a reminder of how dangerous biblical women have continued to loom large in the modern imagination. These stories in this volume show how narratives of power are constructed, interpreted, and continue to evolve over the course of time. While some women saved their people, were paragons of virtue, or repented, others were purveyors of sin, harlots, and seductresses. Even if it was through their misbehavior, all of these women – from Mary Magdalene, to Judith and Esther, to Salome and Potiphar’s Wife – shaped biblical history.