society and the sexes in the venetian republic 359
Whether or not their husbands were in Venice, elite women were
accompanied to these sites of mixed-gender sociability by cisisbei: mar-
ried or unmarried men of their own class, who usually attended them
in their homes as well, often over a period of many years. Consider, for
example, Caterina (Cattina) Contarini, married in 1755 at around 22 to
an age-mate, Giovanni (Zanetto) Querini Stampalia. Taking with him the
eldest of their four young sons, Zanetto departed in 1768 for Spain, where
he spent almost five years as Venetian ambassador. During his absence,
as Cattina reported regularly to her husband by letter, Senator Girolamo
Giustinian (a distant bachelor relative of Zanetto some 20 years the
couple’s senior, who had become her cicisbeo six years earlier) served as
her escort. He also lent a helpful hand in paying off Zanetto’s enormous
gambling debts. Although Cattina’s father was not happy about her rela-
tionship with Giustinian, her husband expressed no objection.24 Contrary
to allegations by foreign visitors and moralists of all nationalities, cicis-
beismo (a pervasive practice in most Italian cities but less common in
provincial environments) seems seldom to have involved adultery.25
Taking for granted that patrician palaces and other homes inhabited by
the wealthy were private female spaces is an error. The ground floors of
elite residences, where men conducted business and stored merchandise,
surely qualify as male preserves. Nor can areas on the upper stories be
accurately gendered exclusively female. In parts of palaces inhabited by
one or more related patrician families, male heads of household exercised
their recognized right and responsibility to govern their wives, children,
and servants, often with an iron fist. Except for the portego (the great hall
on the piano nobile), the paterfamilias’s study, and the rooms of unmar-
ried daughters (who once they reached the “dangerous age” of puberty
were confined to inner parts of the building out of males’ sight), upstairs
spaces in these residences were not strictly segregated by gender.26
Churches, too, were dual-gender spaces. Somewhat like ducal proces-
sions, they featured males (officiating priests) in prominent positions, but
congregations included members of both sexes, seated on opposite sides
of the central aisle. So were some female monastic houses. In 1563 the
Council of Trent reiterated the prescription of strict active and passive
enclosure for religious women: nuns were not to venture outside their
24 Roberto Bizzocchi, Cicisbei. Morale privata e identità nazionale in Italia (Rome, 2008),
pp. 135–47.
25 Bizzocchi, Cicisbei, pp. 241–92.
26 Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice, pp. 64–82, 91.