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| Portrait of a woman attributed to Ghirlandaio. |
In case you’re thinking that Florence sounds like a good
first stop when you build that time machine, consider that it was
strictly a man’s world during the early Renaissance. Florentine women were not afforded
anything like the freedoms that men enjoyed. As evidenced in the tightly framed
and compact portraits of buttoned and bodiced women of the time (above),
they suffered under the yoke of the ‘fallen Eve’ archetype. Considered
untrustworthy creatures, they were deemed better off indoors. In 1610 a French
traveler commented after a visit to Florence that "women are more enclosed
[here] than in any other part of Italy; they see the world only from the small
openings in their windows." You'd never accuse Ghirlandaio's woman of looking happy.
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| Gherardo di Giovanni del Fora, "Chaste Women in a Landscape," 1480s |
These "chaste" women do look a little surprised to find themselves wandering about outside. No wonder they're in battle formation. One of the most highly regarded humanist
scholars of the age, Marsilio Ficino, uttered the shocking revelation that,
"women should be used like chamber pots: hidden away once a man has pissed
in them." The exchange of women was a conversation between men. As
Florence prospered, a bride offered in matrimony had to convey increasingly
exorbitant sums as a dowry upon the groom: everybody knew that men, as the true
source of value, were worth more. In exchange, grooms would offer their new
bride some jewelry or fancy clothing (preferably something with lots of buttons
to assuage their untrustworthiness), or perhaps a pin with his family crest so
that everyone would know that she literally belonged to him now. Trussed up in
corsets to temper their “irritating volubility,” they were nevertheless prized
in the way of a peacock.
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Lorenzo Lotto (b. Venice, ca. 1480-d. Loreto, 1556), Venus and Cupid, late 1520s
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"The male gaze" anyone? The great painter Taddeo Gaddi, oblivious to his own
idiocy, paid dubious compliment when he said: “I do not think Giotto or any
other painter could color better than [Florentine women] do; even a face which
is out of proportion and has goggle eyes, they will correct with eye’s like to
a falcon’s. If they have jaws like a donkey, they will correct them.” [“The
Living Age,” Volume
197, Eliakim and Robert S. Littell, Littell & Co. (1893) page 265]
“Those
poor Florentine mothers had to be contented with such humble activity as the
tyranny of their husbands permitted to them, and to live, or rather drag out,
their lives in those gloomy squalid houses, taking care of the children.” [“Private
Life of Renaissance Florentines,” Dr. Guido Biagi, R. Bemporad & Sons (1895)]
If it seems as though not much has changed between then and
now, at least consider infant mortality: 75% of children did not live to see their
sixteenth birthday, and if your dad died you were as likely as not shipped off
to your paternal grandparents, watching as your mother was sent packing back to
hers, never to be seen again. To have twenty or more children was quite normal.
Female children who lost their mothers might receive a knitting needle or doll
of hers to remember her by, but everything of monetary value went straight to
the men.
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| Portrait of an African Slave Woman is attributed to Annibale Carracci, circa 1580s |
Not to mention that the slave trade between East and West
was already a thriving business by the fourteenth century in Florence. A
little-spoken-of stain on the proud name of the morally haughty Florentines,
there is ample evidence of its existence. The distinguished Florentine painter,
Alessio Baldovinetti, who belonged to a wealthy family of good standing in the
community (and was said to have been a pupil of Paolo Uccello), kept a memorandum
containing entries for three slave girls that he bought including one,
‘“Veronica, sixteen years old, whom [he] bought almost naked from Bonaroti
[sic], son of Simon de Bonaroti.” That is to say, an ancestor of Michelangelo
himself.” [Quoted in “Blackwood’s Magazine,” Volume 153, page 333 (1893)]
