Architecture as a public voice for women in sixteenth‐century Rome

Abstract

Women in Renaissance Rome used architectural patronage to achieve a public voice; they spoke about radical religious reform and the family, and often their discourse differed from that of Renaissance men. Unhampered by the demands of civic humanism, wealthy women such as Caterina Cibo, Vittoria Colonna, and Giovanna d'Aragona were willing to support the radical rhetoric of poverty proposed by the Capuchins, providing chiese povere– small, unadorned churches – for the newly founded order. Other women chose to talk about family as a bilinear construction as opposed to the patrilinear, patriarchal structure recommended by humanists and the Roman Catholic church. In the Gesù, four related women became patrons of the two large chapels surrounding the high altar in order to talk about reform and the affective relationships between women in the family in terms which were not defined by their husbands or fathers, or by the Jesuits.