Journal of Art Historiography Number 23 December 2020 The origin (and decline) of painting: Iaia, Butades and the concept of ‘Women’s Art’ in the 19th Century Anna Frasca-Rath Anecdotes about ancient artists found in the writings of Pliny and Plutarch have played a central part in the literature of art since the Renaissance. 1 Modern scholarship has devoted great attention to the historiographical importance of these anecdotes and, in various case studies, has analysed the numerous re-readings, transformations and tropes. Little is to be found, however, about art- historiography's reception of ancient anecdotes on women artists, apart from the many essays on Pliny’s account of the daughter of Butades (also known as Dibutades or Dibutadis). 2 This anecdote is perhaps one of the most cited and discussed passages in art history and also one of the most frequently depicted in painting. Found in the Natural History, it accounts for the uncertain origin of painting, invented by the daughter of Butades who traced the shadow of a man on a wall. Even though it consists of only a few lines, it raises issues such as absence and presence, light and shadow, male and female that have been discussed by artists, critics and historians ever since. Not only did it serve as a key argument for the importance of disegno as the father of all arts and for love as the origin of all inventive power, it also ascribed the invention of art to a woman. As Mark Ledbury 1 ‘From the very origins of art-historical accounts, from the fragmentary (but vastly influential) writings of Pliny on ancient artists about whom we know almost nothing else, through Vasari and all Vasari’s imitators, histories of artists are saturated with anecdote.‘ Mark Ledbury, ‘Anecdotes and the Life of Art History’, in ibid., ed., Fictions of Art History, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013, 173–86, 174. 2 For discussions of the topic see Robert Rosenblum, ‘The Origin of Painting: A Problem of Iconography of Romantic Classicism’, The Art Bulletin, 39, 1957, 279–90; George Levitine, ‘Addenda to Robert Rosenblum’s “The Origin of Painting: A Problem in the Iconography of Romantic Classicism“‘, Art Bulletin, 40, 1958, 329–31; Frances Muecke, ‘”Taught by Love“: The Origin of Painting Again‘, Art Bulletin, 81, 1999, 297–302; Hans Wille, ‘Die Erfindung der Zeichenkunst‘, Ernst Guldan, ed., Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte. Festschrift für H. R. Rosemann zum 9. Oktober, Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1960, 279–300; Petra Kuhlmann-Hodick, Das Kunstgeschichtsbild. Zur Darstellung von Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttheorie in der deutschen Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1993, vol. 1, 159–180.Viktoria Schmidt- Linsenhoff, ‘Im Namen des Vaters. Die Allegorisierung der Künstlertochter in der Bildnismalerei des 18. Jahrhunderts‘, in Sigrid Schade and Monika Wagner, eds, Allegorie und Geschlechterdifferenz, Cologne: Böhlau, 1994, 73–91; Id., ‘Dibutadis. Die weibliche Kindheit der Zeichenkunst‘, in Kritische Berichte, 24, 1996, 7–20; Ann Bermingham,’The Origin of Painting and the End of Art: Wright of Derby’s Corinthian Maid’, John Barell, ed., Painting and the Politics of Culture. New Essays on British Art 1700–1850, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, S. 135–165; Monika Wagner, ‘Ein materialistischer Butades. Berliner Plädoyer für Kunst und Gewerbe‘, Kritische Berichte, 3, 2011, 29–39.