Introduction
Hidden in plain sight
Venice and the construction of liminal identities
Material culture and interpretive complexity
Chapter overview and methodological approach
1. Gender, Fashion, and Material Culture
Setting the stage
Women’s roles in early modern Venice
Marriage and motherhood
Gendered spaces
Domestic objects
Costume books
2. Women in Narrative Painting
The eyewitness style
Carpaccio’s Saint Ursula Cycle
Muslim women in the Scuola Grande di San Marco
Women in windows
Caterina Cornaro: the complexities of female authority
Artistic strategies and social negotiations
3. Enigmatic Women
Portrait or not?
Women as objects and agents
Venice and the harem
Bordone’s “courtesans”
4. Representing Desire
Sex and love in Cinquecento Venice
Venus asleep and awake
Titian’s versions of Danaë
Bathing women
Lucretia and the problem of desire
Conclusion
Biography
Sabrina DeTurk is Lecturer at the University of Maine, USA
