Female patronage in the arts : select case studies from Italy (1500-1700)

Abstract

The original horizon of inquiry was framed by Catherine King’s observation, quoted and expanded by Paola TInagli:

The role of women as patrons has only recently begun to attract the attention of scholars, and much work is still needed.... Women, excluded from the political and economic life of the society in which they lived, usually commissioned religious works not only for private use, but also for public functions and locations...Catherine King identifies three groups of women who, because of their relative financial independence, could dispose of their money through art patronage and could enter into contractual agreements with artists. These were: widows of merchants, bankers and minor rulers; daughters of wealthy families who lived in monasteries as nuns; and wives of powerful rulers.

This implied that women of the European Mediterranean were primarily circumscribed by tradition, culture and spiritual constraints into narrowly defined roles as artistic patrons and cultural benefactors. Initial research indicated that disposal of wealth into such socially acceptable ventures enabled women to exert power directly, to secure influence and social networks, and achieve contemporary recognition and respect, that was otherwise unattainable. The observation also suggested that the academic spotlight had not yet alighted on patronage and benevolence by powerful women, so that further research would be innovative.

Written in 1998, Catherine King’s work was ground-breaking in focusing and distinguishing the significance of female, as opposed to male, patrons. King applied art criticism, biographical detail, cultural context and political analysis to specific case studies and identified artworks. Her work demonstrated the need to understand context, the contemporary social milieux in which women patrons operated, when interpreting the art, artefacts and memorials they commissioned. She argued that the period context constrained not only their freedom to commission artworks but also the type and subject matter of the works themselves. By closely analysing background context, King also teased out the significance of political geography in Renaissance Italy, which placed varying constraints on women according to their city state.

Catherine King’s work rapidly became foundational and prompted much subsequent academic inquiry. The scholarly meta-narrative of the 1990s and earlier (Paola Tinagli, and others) suggested that women’s options were circumscribed into a limited range of socially acceptable personal expression. These scholars observed that Renaissance patrician women were conditioned to accept, or were directed into, narrow, privately defined roles, although access to independent wealth enabled individual women to exercise patronage and benevolence beyond the domestic or religious sphere. Even with the leeway conferred by wealth, scholars such as King and Tinagli identified that societal constraints circumscribed female activity into forms of ‘feminised’ cultural expression, especially artistic patronage, religiously-directed aesthetic enterprise, and social benevolence. Tinagli noted the influence of conduct manuals written to codify genteel behaviour and to set social expectations.

The scale of later research investigating this meta-narrative, and the flood of academic literature it generated, became very clear as the dissertation progressed. [..]