1 - The Performative Palace
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 June 2021
Summary
Abstract:
This chapter outlines the concept of performative space as something constructed through the relationships between corporeality, gender roles, and the built environment. It draws on the work of Judith Butler, Elizabeth Grosz, Henri Lefebvre, and Michel de Certeau in order to demonstrate that gender and space are inextricably intertwined, and uses early modern courtesy literature and works of art to investigate the construction and performance of gender at court. Chapter one also argues that the Palazzo Te in particular, and early modern spaces in general, were active agents in the construction of the Renaissance self. Gender was produced and performed through the interplay of spaces, discourses, and bodies.
Keywords: Corporeality, Courtesy Literature, Identity, Performativity
On 1 April 1530 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V arrived at the Palazzo Te, located on an island just outside the boundaries of Renaissance Mantua (Fig. 1). Upon entering the Camera di Psiche ‘he stood completely awestruck, and there he remained for more than half an hour contemplating it and praising everything immensely’. As he moved around the room, the unfolding story of Psyche on the ceiling and the images of mythological lovers and sensuous banquets on the wall invited Charles to take up varying positions and identities. A fresco of Jupiter and Olympia depicting the pair mid-coitus allowed the Emperor to see himself as the robust and virile King of the gods, and as Philip of Macedon, whose illicit gaze cost him his sight. Charles could even identify with Olympia, who grasps the fictive frame of the painting, penetrating the picture plane and entering into the physical space of the room (Pl. 1). Charles was triumphant, condemned, and sexualized.
This book examines the dynamic relationships between gender, space, and experience at the Renaissance court, using the Palazzo Te as a case study to analyze interactions between buildings and their inhabitants. It is my contention that the built environment is an active agent in the construction and performance of gendered and sexual identities. The Palazzo Te is thus a place composed of constantly shifting physical and signifying surfaces that provoke the production and negotiation of gender identities. Rather than a monolithic monument with a unified iconography and stable interpretive framework, the Palazzo Te is open, polyvalent, and, at times, troubling.
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- Information
- Gender, Space and Experience at the Renaissance CourtPerformance and Practice at the Palazzo Te, pp. 15 - 48Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019