View the OSpaMa project online

OSpaMa is an interdisciplinary project that integrates history, art history, and material culture to investigate the female presence behind spaces of power in republican contexts.

In the male-dominated European republics of the modern age, strict gender boundaries excluded women from the direct exercise of power. Unlike queens, princesses, or duchesses, the consorts of republican leaders lacked dynastic roles, and historiography has long relegated them to the margins—if not erased them entirely.

Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, the OSpaMa project (Objects, Spaces, and Material Culture. Gender and Politics in Early Modern European Republics) challenges this narrative. Adopting a comparative approach to Venice and Genoa—two Italian republics that retained their independence until the late 18th century—the project explores the roles of Doges’ wives and female kin, the creation and use of gendered spaces, furnishing practices in public and private apartments, and display strategies.

By engaging with written and visual sources alongside objects preserved in museums, OSpaMa highlights the sensory and spatial dimensions of material culture as a means to re-evaluate women’s roles and identities in republican contexts. The project seeks to define their spheres of influence and agency, uncover the strategies they employed to negotiate power, and bring to light their contribution to the still-unfolding history of gender equality.

Giacomo Franco, “La Dogaressa”