G. B. Tiepolo at Valmarana: Gender Ideology in a Patrician Villa of the Settecento Norma Braude The rural villas that proliferated in the Veneto region of gender propaganda. Some of the stories illustrated here, rare northern Italy from the sixteenth through the eighteenth in villa decoration but popular in contemporary Venetian centuries were domestic spaces that had a public face and theater and opera, had been treated pictorially by Tiepolo role. Designed to reinforce and reflect the wealth, position, elsewhere.6 But never before had he brought these literary achievement, learning, and magnanimity of their high-rank­ subjects together to form what I will examine here as a ing or patrician owners, they also represented, through their coherent sociopolitical as well as iconographic statement. spatial arrangement and decoration, an ideal of gender and Only at Valmarana are we confronted with a consistent and class relations in a well-tuned cosmos. 1 Many early decorative pervasive cycle of imagery that focuses on wome n as compli­ cycles in the villas included scenes involving the agricultural ant victims, evil sorceresses, and abandoned temptresses, life cycle, thereby showcasing the procreative side of the rural while their male counterparts are presented as warrior heroes life ideal. The country villa was also often shown in such who are carnally tempted but able to overcome temptation cycles as the setting for domestic life, leisurely pursuits, and for a higher purpose. What does it mean when such imagery civilized recreation and interchange between the sexes, im­ is chosen not simply to adorn but overwhelmingly to domi­ plicitly advancing the concept of the household as a micro­ nate a domestic interior? I shall propose here that the Va l­ cosm or reflection of cosmic harmony related to the cycles of marana cycle reflected and embodied reactionary social nature.2 norms and a conservative societal backlash in the middle of By contrast, at the so-call ed palau. ina of the Vi ll a Val marana the eighteenth century, and that its messages can be fully ai Nani on the outskirts of Vicenza (Fig. 1 ), site of an ambi­ understood only against the background of changing condi­ tious program of wall decorations carried out by Giambattista tions in the domesti c and public lives of both women and Tiepolo in about 1757, there is an abrupt shift to a more men in the Veneto during this era. artificial set of images that does not deal with these conven­ tional tropes and ideals of villa life. At Valmarana, no domes­ The Frescoes tic imagery appears, and images of the agricultural cycles of The frescoes of Giambattista Tiepolo at Val marana, with their rural life are few in number and relegated to the separate emphatically blond tonalities, pastel palette, and light-filled, space of the foresteria, the guest quarters, where the decora­ transparent spaces, are among the most visually seductive tions were painted largely by the younger Giandomenico works of this artist's decorative oeuvre. And it may well be in Tiepolo. In the palaz.z.ina itself, members of the household pan the "prettiness" of their surface appeal for later viewers would have lived surrounded, at eye level, by proportionally that has masked their message, disguising as poetic "stories massive and theatrical renderings of stories drawn from works about love" a programmatic cycle, based on gendered duali­ by four of the major classical and Renaissance epic poets: ties, that extols and promotes the renunciation of romantic Homer's Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid, Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando fu­ and sensual love and the sacrifice of feminized fonns of rioso, and Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata. personal gratification for the sake of duty and the preserva­ In the art historical literature, the Valmarana cycle is com­ tion of a patriarchal social order. monly described as taking for its theme "stories of love," wh ile The themes that permeate and unify the cycle are an­ the clearly gendered bases of its subjects, intentions, produc­ nounced in the entrance hallway that runs the length of the tion, and reception have never been recognized, let alone palaz.z.ina and in the first of the four rectangular rooms that contextually probed. Usually cited to explain the thematic flank it (Fig. 2), where the classical heroes of Homer's Iliad choices that structure the cycle- choices now thought to are splendidly showcased7 In the hallway, treated as though have resulted directly from the influence of Tie polo's fri end it were the stage of a theater, visitors to the house are con­ th e art broker, librettist, and connoisseur Conte Francesco fronted with the dramatic portrayal of the arrested sacrifice Algarotti :~ -are traditions in literary criticism that compared of lphigenia, occupying the entire, unbroken right-hand wall the ancient and the modern poets;1 the patron's fondness for (Fig. 3), while on the left-hand wall , the ships of the Greek the opera and the popularity of some of these stories in fleet stand ready, their sails filling with the rising wind. On contemporary Venetian theater and opera; the emerging th ~ ceiling, Diana and Aeolus hover in the sky, the former to ethos of Neoclassicism in Italy and Europe during this period; stop the sacrifice and the latter to unleash the winds. At the and the pressure being brought to bear on Tiepolo, princi­ center of the "Sacrifice," the priest Calcante positions his pally by his classically oriented friend Algarotti, to become a knife, about to pi erce the bared breast of the yo ung woman "learned painter. ,c, who leans against the altar, as a servant holds aloft a basin to These explanations, however, beg another and, for me , receive her blood. The action is dramatically halted , however, much larger question by ignoring what is striking about these as-in the words of Algarotti 's libretto Iphigenie en A ulide frescoes for a modern female visitor to the palaz.z.ina at Va l­ ( 1755 )- "a noise of arms is heard," and "everyone turns in marana, and that is the cycle's thematic unity as regressive that direction" toward the clouds at the upper left, where (; . ll . T I EPO I. O AT VAI.MARANA 161 Orlando Furioso ~e:~ I Room lphigenia ~ Room Iliad Gerusalemme 1 Villa Valmarana ai Nani , San Sebastiano, Vi ce nza, ca. 1665- Room 70, exteri or vi ew of th e pal.au.ina (photograph by th e author) Liberata Room cherubs lead from the wings the sacrificial deer that wi ll replace Iphigenia on the a ltar. >~ Indeed , the larger arrangeme nt ofTiepolo's two Iphigenia frescoes, fa cing one another across the entrance ha ll at Val­ marana, sugge tive ly echoes the theatrical setting described by Algarotti for this climactic eve nt in act 5, scene 2 of his libretto, wh ere , he writes, "the theater represents on one side the Woods and Temple of Diana; on the o ther, one sees part 2 Arrangement of the frescoed rooms in the pal.au.ina of Vi ll a of the Greek encampment, the port of Au lis, and the fl eet. "!' Val marana It was on the basis of similar details of seuing and acti on that a case was first made in 1985 by the histOrian Roberto Guer­ rini for Algarotti's influence on the vi ual realization of these specifi c scenes at Val marana and on the cycl e as a wh o le. 10 An genia goes much further than a meek and blind acceptance even more compelling case fo r Algarotti's authorship of the of her fate. She is an articulate and will ing spokeswoman for program , as we ll as an understanding of the special relevance the patriarchy and her place within it, repeatedly proclaiming of the lphigenia ep i ode as its keynote image, may be gleaned her will ingness to die for the g,-eater good. Unlike Helen o f from a closer reading of Algarotti 's libretto and a consider­ Troy, the aberrant and divisive fe male "other" of this tale, she ati on of the ideological message that li es at the heart of its is a prime example to all women of"other" strivi ng tO become 1 retelling of the patriarchal myth. "self. " :{ Thus, she begs Agamemnon not tO blame himself In his essay "Saggio sopra l'opera in musica," wh ere the and asks Clytemnestra not tO mourn her but rather tO "cher­ Iphigenia libretto is offered as a case study, Algarotti explains ish my father and your husband," becau e "it is despite him­ that he has based his text on plays by Euripides and J ean self and for the good of Greece that he relinquishes me. " Racin e, putting forward "the same action that was presented Ho noring the larger pl an o f the gods, she declares: "1 wi ll live by Euripides in the theater of Athe ns, " but departing fro m his forever as the happy liberator of Greece.'" 1 To the prote ts sources by further simplifying the acti on and, like the "mod­ and risin g anger of Ac hilles, she responds: "Let me die, my ern" poet Racine, giving a larger part within the wh ole tO lord .... You can reach Troy on ly at the price o f my lphigenia herself. 11 As Al garotti constructs his librettO , lphi­ blood . Lf I have not been able tO li ve as the companion of genia assumes pivo tal prominence in a classical tory that Achilles, I hope that yo ur name and mine wi ll be forever encapsulates and reinforces the established hierarchies of the joined , and that my death wi ll be the source of yo ur glory." 1~ patriarchal socia l order.