Symbols as Strategy

When women in the pre-modern world couldn't speak freely, they embedded messages in the art they commissioned, wore, or created. Heraldic imagery on embroidered textiles, carefully chosen saints in devotional paintings, and symbolic flowers in portraits all carried coded statements about power, virtue, and ambition.

Queen Elizabeth I mastered this game. Her portraits are packed with symbols: the ermine for purity, the sieve for virginity (referencing the Roman Vestal Tuccia), pearls for chastity. She didn't just sit for portraits — she art-directed them as political propaganda.