Davis Museum Webinar - RENAISSANCE WOMEN AND THE POWER OF PLANTS with DR. JILL BURKE

Giovanna Garzoni’s extraordinary paintings of animals, flowers and fruits still buzz with life, though 400 years old. The fine stipples of her painstaking brush demonstrate her keenly intelligent observational powers. She was far from the only Renaissance woman deeply knowledgeable about the powers of plants. From medicines to makeup, from perfumes to love potions, women grew and foraged plants and used them to create substances to improve their health and appearance. Over the last few years, research and reconstruction of early modern recipes have revealed the depth of everyday knowledge that many Renaissance women possessed. This talk will describe how Garzoni and other Renaissance women observed nature and used plant ingredients to improve their lives, and will describe how to make some simple plant-based recipes commonly used in Renaissance households.
Jill Burke is a historian and author of How To Be A Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity (US edition Pegasus Books, 2024), which was a New York Times Book Editors’ Pick and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. She is Professor of Renaissance Visual and Material Cultures at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

[@celerywhelan2988]

Great talk until you excused your comment, that it wasn’t ‘intellectually relevant’, basically saying that the Feminine ways of knowing are irrelevant or worse, not intellectual at all. A perfect example of The Problem, no?! Very tired so hopefully my thoughts are coherent enough but still a fascinating talk and I thank you.