Festivals, Spaces, and Gender Roles. Women behind the scenes of power in Early Modern Venice

Festive events provide a privileged lens through which to observe the often behind-the-scenes roles of councillors’, senators’, procurators’ and doges’ wives in republican Venice. What do celebrations, banquets and entertainments — in the city or at the Palazzo Ducale — reveal about patrician women’s participation? At which events were they present, and how were they included or excluded? Case studies from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries both confirm established gender norms and highlight meaningful departures from them, revealing moments of female protagonism. Ludic occasions thus illuminate spaces of influence and negotiation, where women navigated republican power to advance familial and public interests.