Designing Goddesses: Shakespeare’s "Othello" and Marian Nowiński’s "Otello Desdemona"

Sabina Laskowska-Hinz

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.21.09

Authors

Sabina Laskowska-Hinz University of Warsaw, Poland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.21.09

Keywords:

Desdemona, William Shakespeare, Othello, Marian Nowiński, Shakespeare in visual arts

Abstract

The article discusses the intertextual relationship between the poster by Marian Nowiński, Otello Desdemona, and the content of Shakespeare’s play, while presenting the most important elements of the plot that are decisive for the portrayal of Desdemona. It also discusses the tradition of female nudes in Western art. This allows to usher out these characteristic features of elements of Desdemona that fashion her into Venus Caelestis and Venus Naturalis. The article focuses on the ambivalence of Nowiński’s poster and discusses the significance of the paintings by Titian, Giorgione, and Fuseli in designing the figure of Desdemona as a goddess.

Author Biography

Sabina Laskowska-Hinz, University of Warsaw, Poland

Sabina Laskowska-Hinz is a PhD student at the University of Warsaw. She submitted her MA thesis (“The Critical Reception of William Shakespeare's Plays in the British and Polish Fine Art of the 19th and 20th Century”) in 2014 at Gdańsk University. She is member of the British Shakespeare Association, the European Shakespeare Research Association and the Polish Shakespeare Society. She published an article “Jaques and the Wounded Stag by William Hodges, Sawrey Gilpin and George Romney: (Re)Painting Shakespeare's Melancholic Figure” and a chapter in Professor Marrapodi’s monography Shakespeare and the Visual Arts: The Italian Influence (Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies).

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