Conflicting desires: Sexuality, chastity, and the representation of Lucretia in sixteenth-century Venetian painting.

摘要

The story of Lucretia, the Roman matron who chose death over dishonor, was a frequent subject of Venetian Renaissance painting, notably in works by Titian and Tintoretto. In the Renaissance, as in antiquity, Lucretia functioned primarily as a symbol of chastity and as an example to women of the importance of that virtue both for themselves and in their roles as daughters, wives, mothers. However, in the Renaissance and also in earlier literary and philosophical sources, there existed a description of Lucretia as a disruptive figure, as a potentially complicit participant in an act of adultery rather than as the unwilling victim of a rape. Moreover, several late sixteenth-century Venetian paintings of Lucretia's rape and suicide portray her in what can be seen as a sensuous and erotic manner. In this dissertation I examine those images of Lucretia, considering particularly their place within the social context of Renaissance Venice, a context which, I will argue, embodies conflicting attitudes towards sexuality. It is my contention that these paintings of Lucretia expressed the contradictory views of female sexuality present in a city which was renowned for its sensuous courtesan culture and also for the almost cloistered existence imposed on its patrician women.;As evidence for my interpretation of the paintings, I survey the situation of women in sixteenth-century Venice; consider the literary accounts of Lucretia in circulation during the Renaissance both in and beyond Venice; and examine the paintings of Lucretia themselves, both what may be called their material aspects and, most particularly, their visual effect on the viewer.