Heroines and Harlots

Heroines and Harlots: Judith, Mary Magdalene, and Prostitution in Counter-Reformation Rome

A murderous woman fighting for the survival of Christianity, Jesus' most loyal female follower, and women who sold their bodies on the street; an unlikely crowd, but in this exhibition they will accompany you as you explore the ways in which connections were drawn in visual media between sacred Biblical female characters, and the profane act of prostitution in Counter-Reformation Rome.

Prostitution was a defining problem of Early Modern Rome. The rampant spread of syphilis, debilitating many thousands in the city, was largely blamed on Rome’s booming prostitution industry. The issue took on a religious dimension when Protestant Reformation critics north of the Alps labelled Rome a ‘Second Babylon’ with the ‘Pope as its pimp’.

Religious and artistic attempts to curtail the industry’s spread included evoking the image of Mary Magdalene in painterly and popular media (such as chapbooks and broadsheets), as a symbol of the repentant prostitute. Drawing on myths that she was a prostitute in her youth prior to her conversion to Christianity, this strategy aimed to discourage women working in prostitution by transforming Mary into a figure of repentance to emulate.

Conversely, in the painting Judith in the Tent of Holofernes by Johann Liss, the artist dressed the Old Testament heroine Judith in clothing recognisable to Early Modern Romans as those of a courtesan, in order to amplify the erotic overtones latent in his work.  

These two paintings, undertaken by Liss during his stay in Rome from 1622-26, express the linkages between Biblical Women and prostitutes in Counter-Reformation Rome in different and surprising ways, and are shown together here for the first time.