A Tale of Two-City States: Early Modern Venetian and Florentine Perceptions of Melancholy
Project Type
Oral Presentation
Publication Date
4-29-2021
Department or Program
Department of Art and Art History
College
College of Arts and Sciences
Faculty Mentor #1
DeLancey, Julia
Abstract
Despite the significant amount of scholarship produced about sixteenth century Venetian and Florentine visual cultures, there is a considerable lack of academic approaches to early modern research from the perspective of disability studies. However, this does not belie a lack of disability histories to analyze. In fact, Venetian and Florentine images of disability can be employed to paint a picture of early modern attitudes towards difference. Images of melancholy from Venice and Florence particularly speak to the significant difference between conceptions of the condition and the reality of the everyday lives of melancholics. Scholar Elizabeth W. Mellyn has supported this line of thought, arguing that those with privilege were afforded better circumstances in relation to their mental conditions than did the underprivileged. Thus, this presentation will argue that late 16th century Venetian and Florentine visual depictions of melancholy reveal early modern attitudes towards people with the condition that both ignore the lived experiences of the individual and provide persons with higher standing more privilege. Such disparities in privilege amongst those with diverse mental health conditions are relevant to contemporary perceptions of disability. Research for this project has drawn from interdisciplinary scholarship, translated primary sources, and visual analyses. Melancholy has a rich history, but scholarship often fails to represent the condition from the perspective of disability theory that acknowledges the ways in which the underprivileged have been left to disappear with time. The research employed for this project has aimed to address this issue, and therefore enriches the history of disability while providing considerable insight into two cultural hubs of the Italian Renaissance.
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