Bejewelled Identities: 'Aesth/Ethic' Jewels in the Portrayal of Identity in Sixteenth Century Venice

在文艺复兴时期的意大利，珠宝的获得和佩戴一直被认为是颓废的产物，从而产生了一种假设，即肖像中珠宝的功能是吸引和放纵观众的眼睛（Simon, 1988）。珠宝与物质贪食和好色的联系在一起，伴随着为奢侈品法律辩护而加剧，这些法律试图限制珠宝的装饰，声称它们鼓励道德松弛，但收效甚微。这些“正当理由”现在被理解为掩盖恢复可见的社会等级制度的总体目标的借口（Newton, 1988; Howell, 2010）。然而，珠宝并没有得到批判性的反思，而是继续被视为惰性的轻浮的装饰品，从而导致学者们完全忽视了这些人工制品的物质作用。我试图开创一个创新的跨学科研究，首先调查珠宝的语义特异性和材料代理，其次重新考虑珠宝作为肖像中身份表现的积极组成部分，重点是16世纪的威尼斯。威尼斯是欧洲出版和奢侈品生产的首都（Lanaro, 2006），使其成为研究文学，物质和艺术文化之间交集的最佳地点。有三个主要的基础研究问题：特定的珠宝拥有什么代理？珠宝是如何发挥其代理作用的？-珠宝的设置、佩戴和展示如何识别和利用它们的感知能力？-艺术家是如何运用和实验珠宝的物质媒介来描绘和修改肖像中的感知身份的？

The acquisition and wearing of jewels in Renaissance Italy have been repeatedly considered the product of decadence, bringing about the assumption that the function of jewellery in portraiture was to elicit and indulge the viewer's eye (Simon, 1988). The association of jewellery with material gluttony and lasciviousness has been exacerbated by accompanying 'justifications' for sumptuary laws that sought, with little success, to restrict adornment in jewels claiming they encouraged moral laxity. These 'justifications' are now understood to be little better than excuses to mask an overarching aim to reinstate a visible social hierarchy (Newton, 1988; Howell, 2010). However, jewels have not received critical reconsideration and continue to be perceived as inert frivolous ornamentation, thus causing scholars to completely overlook the material agency of these artefacts.I seek to pioneer an innovative interdisciplinary study that firstly investigates the semantic specificity and material agency of jewels and secondly reconsiders jewels as active components in the representation of identity within portraiture, with focus on sixteenth century Venice. Venice was a European capital for publishing and the production of luxury goods (Lanaro, 2006), making it the optimal locality to investigate this intersection between literary, material and artistic cultures.There are three principal underpinning research questions:-What agencies did specific jewels possess and how were jewels believed to exert their agency?-How did the setting, wearing and display of jewels recognise and harness their perceived agency?-How did artists employ and experiment with the material agency of jewels to portray and modifyperceived identity in portraiture?