ABSTRACT
Readers of the works of the seventeenth-century Venetian nun, Suor Arcangela Tarabotti, will be struck by the vehemence both of her accusations against civil and religious personages and institutions, and by her often deliberately provocative choice of themes. Arcangela Tarabotti led a life of extreme material deprivation and was denied the education she wanted. Yet she was attacked more for the Antisatira than for any other composition. Tarabotti's denunciation of male hypocrisy concerning women's clothing and adornment is most keenly observed in the case of the Antisatira against Buoninsegni. Tarabotti takes the side of women in the world rather than the one generally adopted by religious orders, traditionally opposed to any form of luxury and vanity. On the occasion of the approval of the sumptuary laws promulgated by Cardinal Bessarion in 1453, Nicolosa Sanuti entered the field in defence of female ornamentation with an oration that, while preceding Tarabotti's work by approximately two centuries, presented similar points of view.
