Donne attempate: Women of a certain age in sixteenth-century Venetian art

This dissertation looks at representations of old women, donne attempate, in sixteenth century Venetian art. The first chapter places old women in Venetian society and introduces a concept called the iconography of age. Its fundamental tenet is that in a gerontocracy like Venice, where men of advanced age wielded the most power, the image of an old man had strong positive connotations. However, old age might also be a time of hardship, and when a Venetian artist wanted to remind his viewer of its dual nature, he turned to representations of old women. This idea is further developed in Chapter Two, which explores just how age-sensitive a society Venice was.; The balance of the dissertation consists of case studies of a variety of images of old women. The first study shows how mirrors measured age, and then considers the implications of growing old for a woman at the apex of her beauty. The next chapter turns to Agnesina Badoer Giustinian, a wealthy noble woman who is portrayed in one of the first known portrait busts in the Venetian milieu. The unflinching realism of her portrait, made at the end of her life, suggests that age combined with wealth brought her the same kind of incremental power that it did to men.; We move next to the world of servants, where loyalty was often rewarded and commemorated by their being made a part of their master's families, including incorporation in family portraits. Other old servant women provide paradigms for both the benefits of the wisdom of age and the shortcomings of its narrow-mindedness. The next study takes us into the Ospedale dei Crociferi, a painted world filled with the elderly, where old women in the care of old men established a symbiotic relationship of generosity and gratitude.; Giorgione's haunting old woman, La Vecchia, who has long perplexed scholars and laymen alike is the subject of the final study, which suggests that the scroll bearing the words Col Tempo is a later addition, because for a sixteenth century viewer it would have been redundant: the old woman's face would have conveyed the same message to a sixteenth century viewer. Like all of the donne attempate, she reflects the passage of human time, that most ephemeral event, which fascinated Venetian artists, and which they found a way to make visible in its many dimensions in the faces studied here.