CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Carolina Stutz |
|---|---|
| Title | Objects of Embodiment: Crosses, Clothing, and Canvases in Cecilia Ferrazzi's Early Modern Venice |
| Summary | A Venetian woman named Cecilia Ferrazzi was tried by the Roman Inquisition in 1664 for purportedly pretending to be a saint. Drawing on the trial documentation–containing rich details about Ferrazzi’s material world–this thesis focuses on the interplay between artifacts and her corporeal engagement with them in quotidian life. Employing methodologies of material culture and embodied histories, it argues that through her contact with crucifixes, garments of clothing, and paintings, Ferrazzi assumed embodied authority and influence in her domestic and sometimes ecclesiastical spheres. Such objects, taken up as individual case studies, served as “props” for subtle yet theatrical defiance, aids for disguising as or role-playing religious figures, and mediums through which to demand the deference of others. These possibilities unsettled a number of her religious and inquisitorial superiors because, the thesis posits, Ferrazzi struck on larger cultural and religious anxieties about the body and senses–concerns that had been brewing across Europe with particular force since the Reformation and Counter Reformation. |
| Supervisor | Al-Bagdadi, Nadia; Radway, Robyn Dora |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/stutz_carolina.pdf |
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