The Dogaressa of Venice, 1200–1500: Wife and Icon (review)

Most readers of this journal would probably be hard put to come up with more than one or two names of wives of Venetian doges during the High Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Ducal consorts have generally remained unknown to students of Venetian history. Holly Hurlburt's book aims to examine "the development of the office of the dogaressa, its public functions, and restrictions in the period from 1200 to 1500" (8). Her work makes use of government documents, chronicles, and printed sources. By casting her net widely she has retrieved the wives of doges from near oblivion and offered her readers a wealth of references, ample informative notes, and a useful bibliography.

The opening chapter, based on the written oath of office (promissione ducale) taken by each doge after his election, discusses his wife's legal position. She, too, was required to take a pledge before government officials but could do so in the privacy of the home. The author argues that this made her a political figure by changing her from just a wife and mother to a state symbol. Together with the doge she now had a crucial role in "creating, performing, and perpetuating the triumphal image of Venice" (34). However, unlike the princesses of other Italian states, she neither had a court nor could become a leading figure of her society. Venetian legislation consistently prevented the transformation of ducal families into princely dynasties by limiting their sphere of action and denying them special social status. For example, three days after a doge died, the dogaressa had to leave the official residence and became merely another widow.

The most public and best-known ceremony of the dogaressa's life was her entrance into the ducal palace, where she would reside with her family. We have descriptions of her progress across the city and the accompanying festivities that, interestingly enough, included the guilds (scuole) of Venice. As Edward Muir has shown, the dogaressa's entrata formed a significant part of Venetian civic ritual. In the second chapter the author describes these ceremonies in some detail and stresses that like all others, they were intended to show the glory and power of Venice. Here the dogaressa appeared in her official function.

The third chapter deals with the dogaressa's office and is most interesting on account of its often ingenious suggestions of what that might have included. Hurlburt would like to present the dogaressa as an important player in Venetian culture and society but can offer evidence of her participation in politics, patronage, art, or literature mostly by inference. Because "no systematic description of their [the dogaresse's] office exists" (119), the author has recourse to wills, medals, paintings, mention of the dogaressa as guide for visiting female dignitaries, even her dress, to argue for her thesis. But to what extent can one agree with her that "it is conceivable that the dogaressa symbolized a civic male-female partnership as much as or in addition to male dominance of females" (121) or that "the dogaressa may have appeared at many of the state's crucial religious festivals, in her role as observer and legitimator" (89)? In what sense could the dogaressa have been a legitimator?

In the last section of the book the possible artistic patronage of a few dogaresse in connection with the commissioning of ducal tombs is discussed. Wives were not often buried with husbands, and even the one dogaressa who planned her own tomb, Agnese Da Mosto Venier, died before she could see its completion. Dogaresse were remembered primarily in the works of later writers who drew on legends that had grown especially around two disgraced doges, Marino Falier (1354–55) and Francesco Foscari (1423–55). Their wives acquired a romantic identity that the author discusses well.

Although this book could have profited by better editing, proofreading, and more accurate translations...