Between modesty and spectacle: Women and Science in Eighteenth Century Italy

This essay is one of the chapters of a book on the culture of the Italian Enlightenment seen from the perspective of the transformations of the gender roles and identities, as viewed by the travellers of the Grand Tour. In particular this contribution is centred on the phenomenon of the numerous learned women (from Laura Bassi to Maria Gaetana Agnesi and Angela Ardinghelli), the travellers met and discussed with, and on the intellectual and social context in which they interacted. The essay analyses the contradiction between the public exaltation of the learning of these few women, and the contemporary accepted representations of the nature and social role of women, whose more essential virtues were expected to be modesty and the concealing of their learning.