G. B. Tiepolo at Valmarana: Gender Ideology in a Patrician Villa of the Settecento

Abstract

The frescoes by Giambattista Tiepolo for the palazzina of the Villa Valmarana are commonly and benignly described in the art historical literature as taking for their theme “stories of love.” The political dynamics of gender, which inform their subjects, intentions, production, and reception, have never been recognized, let alone contextually probed. I argue here that the program for these frescoes embodied reactionary social norms and a conservative societal backlash in the mid-eighteenth century, engendered by the threat of dramatically changing conditions in the domestic and public lives of both women and men in the Veneto during this era.