ABSTRACT
The mass production of printed pictures in Italy, which expanded exponentially as of the mid-fifteenth century, vastly changed the relationship of the viewing public to images. This chapter examines the selection of the most numerous—and most normative—representations with respect to gender and the social identity of women that were transmitted by prints in sixteenth-century Italy. The model of the patriarchal Holy Family heavily influences moralized representations of the nuclear family as the epitome of ideal social organization. Pictorial propaganda with respect to the social identity of women could be idealized and indirectly didactic, as seen in the religious and classicizing prints promoting marriage, maternity and female chastity as easily as it could be blatantly pedagogical. Positive-example prints that aim at reinforcing the domestic model of female social identity tend to implicitly identify the prosperity of the household with the diligence of its mistress.
