In autumn 2014 the Pinacoteca Züst will open the exhibition “Doni d'amore. Women and rituals in the Renaissance”, presenting to the public a selection of precious objects that were offered to women between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries to celebrate engagement, marriage and the birth of an heir.
On these occasions the culture of the time gave the female figure, usually relegated to the domestic sphere, a fundamental role that wealthy families celebrated with sumptuous ceremonies and by commissioning precious artifacts to offer them as gifts.
The exhibition – divided into three sections each dedicated to one of the happy events – will offer the public, on the basis of what is noted in the documents and memory books, gifts intended for the female figure: from the casket containing small ivory objects and expensive belts, which the future groom sent to the young to seal the engagement, jewels and furnishings, offered by the husband and his relatives or brought as a dowry by the bride on her wedding day, up to including a birth tray and majolica tableware, used to serve the puerpera the first invigorating meal after the hard work, and the narrow escape, of childbirth.
Among the nuptial gifts there will also be painted chests and fronts of chests, furnishings until the mid-fifteenth century commissioned by the father of the bride - inside which to store the trousseau - and exhibited during the procession that escorted her from the birthplace to that of her husband, to then be placed inside the master bedroom, while starting from the second half of the 400th century they will be commissioned by the groom and his family.
Through these objects it will be possible to outline a story of the role of the female figure in the late Gothic and Renaissance periods and of the rituals that marked her transition from a girl placed under the guardianship of her father to a bride subject to her husband. A passage which, in addition to being bound by private agreements, required public ceremonies to communicate to the entire citizenry the political and economic power acquired by the two families through the marriage alliance. These celebrations were an opportunity to reaffirm one's social rank and show off the financial resources one could have, to the point that to stem the excessive pomp of parties and gifts, the cities were forced to enact sumptuary laws.
Precious objects such as the ivory mirror valve with the scene of the Assault on the castle of love on display in the section dedicated to the engagement, the unpublished painted and gilded chest from the Verona Museum of Castelvecchio in the marriage section and the marten head in rock crystal with enamels and rubies from the Thyssen-Boernemisza collection in the birth section to induce the authorities to limit and regulate the permitted expenses.
The dominant theme of the exhibition will be the reading of the symbolic values attributed by the society of the time to the artifacts created for these events. If at first glance the preciousness of the materials and the refinement of the workmanship signaled the high cost, the choice of materials implied more intimate and recondite meanings: from the erotic allusion of the ivory toilet objects, a material from contemporary literature equated for its whiteness and smoothness to the female complexion, to the auspicious messages of the rings, due to the properties of the precious stones set.
In some cases, the content suggested by the conformation of the object was superimposed on these contents: the rings called maninfede evoked, due to the motif of the two intertwined hands, the promise of marriage sanctioned by the handshake, while the casket recalled, due to its function to contain and guard, the female womb receptacle of the male seed. Other times, the symbolic values were taken from ancient traditions, as in the case of the belt considered an emblem of chastity, and therefore a typical engagement gift, in relation to the Roman era rite of tying a ribbon untied by the husband on the bride's waist on the first night wedding.
The iconography chosen to decorate these splendid artifacts can also be traced back to the symbolic sphere. The themes, reproposed on objects in different materials, were mostly drawn from ancient history and literature and aimed at exalting the feminine virtues of purity, obedience and fidelity, qualities considered essential for a wife at the time. Instead, for the birthing tray and majolica crockery intended for the new mother, birth scenes taken from those in the sacred sphere were preferred - exhibited in the exhibition together with a medical treatise on conception and birth - in order to underline the success of the childbirth and the safety of the mother.
To enrich the exhibition context and highlight the meanings of the objects, the juxtaposition with contemporary paintings in which jewels, fabrics and artefacts are depicted will be proposed.
On the occasion of the exhibition, which will present works from the major Italian and Swiss museums as well as from private collections, an illustrated catalog will be created, accompanied by essays and fact sheets with a purely interdisciplinary approach in order to highlight the social and symbolic values that these objects assumed for the society of the time and thus make them immediately understandable also for the wider public.
