This site gathers artistic representations of death, dead bodies, relics, anatomical specimens and burial instructions to analyze how death altered the category of gender in the early modern period. These are testimonies of real and symbolic interventions counteracting or re-signifying the loss of sexual markers and gendered behaviours in remains that had been part of gendered human beings.With their interventions, producers and consumers of human remains (embalmers, artists, the faithful, anatomists) reinstated, effaced, or transcended the remains’ previous gender identity and the category of gender itself.
This site is useful for the study of gender in the early modern period, as well as for those studying funerary rituals, the treatment of human remains and other aspects related to death in the period as well as for art historians interested in the representation of death. Collaborations welcome.