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

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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?