Female Actors and Gendered Spaces Inside the Florentine Home between Trecento and Quattrocento

My study summarizes the most important findings of my survey of 1,100 unpublished domestic inventories listed by the Magistrato dei Pupilli in the Archivio di Stato in Florence, covering the period of the Albizi oligarchic government of Florence, between 1384 and 1432. This unprecedented wealth of information describes in detail the architectural spaces where women (both old and young members of the family, servants, and slaves) operated independently or as part of the household. Different aspects of their lifestyle emerged through their possessions, the location and iconography of works of art, the devotion of women’s books of prayer, the wealth of exotic items, the strategies of display, the tools used for their daily tasks not only in Florentine homes but also in countryside villas and residences scattered around Tuscany, providing an unprecedented chance to reveal the gendered spaces in the Tuscan house between Trecento and Quattrocento.