Denis Ribouillault // Women, Witches and Enchantresses: The Construction of the Landscape and Garden’s ‚Imaginaire’
The 2024 Panofsky Lecture is part of a new research project on the place of women in the garden (the importance of female garden patronage for the iconography of women in the garden in the visual arts, the social role of the garden in the construction of gender stereotypes, the great female figures of mythology and history associated with the garden, etc.). More specifically, the conference will focus on the part of the project devoted to the figure of the enchantress and the witch in the construction of the landscape and the garden imaginaire in the early modern period. 
The theme is an invitation to explore how female figures are linked to positive or negative forces attributed to nature in mythology, literature, art and gardens. This could lead, for example, to an exploration of the iconography of nymphs, goddesses, magical and hybrid female creatures, witches and enchantresses such as Alcine, Circe, Melissa, Calypso, Morgana and many others, and how they contribute to a specific iconography of the landscape as a place of danger, seduction and metamorphosis. One could also study the role of women in the construction of a botanical knowledge that was considered potentially subversive. From a historiographical point of view, the theme seeks to combine traditional art historical approaches with those of landscape and garden history, historical anthropology, and feminist and gender studies. For the Panofsky Fellowship, proposed topics need not be limited to the early modern period or to Western case studies.
[Caption: Agostino Tassi, Landscape with a Scene of Witchcraft, 63,2 x 74,5 cm, Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum]