I think that Mary D. Garrard was saying that nature is so large and important that it threatened people by them thinking that they were less than nature. By having nature be so large it made the males want to control it since they also wanted to control everything in that point in time. During that time period slogans became popular stating that art was more powerful than nature and common themes like that. Males believed during the time that nature was there for them to use like females were their only to help reproduce and raise the children. They also might have been threatened by nature because it is so unknown and large that they didn’t know what to expect from it. Many artist at the time also considered the owner of the portrait as the …show more content…
They would have the female looking away or down as to show them as the weaker gender that they were considered. Da Vinci showed females as looking towards the viewer and capturing their attention. He also showed them as looking at different parts of the room which would make the viewer wonder where their gaze is. He also chose powerful females during that time to put in his portraits. Such as Ginevra de’ Benci who was considered more powerful than her husband at the time. Perhaps his most famous piece of artwork that he created the Mona Lisa also showed the power in women by being the best piece of art in the world for many generations and the most known piece of art. In the background of the Mona Lisa he painted nature in what looks like mountains and valleys. It also has a bridge and many people have researched the picture to try and determine the location of the background with many now believing it is in Northern Italy. “Carla Glori believes that a three-arched bridge which appears over the left shoulder of the woman with the enigmatic smile is a reference to Bobbio, a village which lies in rugged hill country south of Piacenza, in northern Italy” (Squires). Since this is one of the most known paintings in the world it has been studied