Picturing a Woman’s Mission: Service to Humanity
Ideas about women, health care, and healing in Western cultures have religious and cultural origins reaching back to ancient times. Later, with the coming of Christianity, the care of the sick is largely undertaken by religious nursing orders, such as the Sisters of Charity.
Images of nurses in the European art traditions of the 19th and early 20th centuries are often based on ancient Classical and Christian feminine archetypes such as healer, handmaiden, mother, angel, and guardian or warrior.