The Dogaressa’s Office

Abstract

In the above quotation, typical of prescriptive literature of late medieval Italy, Francesco Barbaro linked female authority and influence with the confined space of the home, urging wives to aspire to political greatness within their limited sphere. Yet with his simile Barbaro joined, as had many before him, the fields of family and state, recognizing from his own membership in the Venetian governing elite that family dynamics shaped politics even as governmental influence increasingly made itself felt in the home. The family as a metaphor for government was a common medieval construction used by humanists such as Barbaro and Caldiera to bolster notions of patriarchy and was repeated multiple times in Barbaro’s treatise. Even though he generally pointed towards the home as the correct domain for women, Barbaro recognized female influence there, and used the overtly political metaphor of government to characterize woman’s place within it.¹ This overlap and interaction of private and public was evident in the lives of many Venetian women, elite and common, and was thus doubly true for the unique circumstances of the office of dogaressa. Even as her gender and the additional restrictions of the oath of office marginalized her, her very residence in a space that was both family compound and state house placed her center stage. This chapter will investigate the dogaressa’s tenure at the hub of the Venetian state, illustrating yet further that the office of dogaressa placed the women who held it beyond the restrictions dictated to their gender even as they sought to conform to the familial ideal prescribed for them.

Wives ought not to lack praise if they merely organize, as is their duty, the wealth that has collected in the home. They ought to attend, therefore, to governing their households just as Pericles daily attended to the affairs of Athens.

Francesco Barbaro