The Economy of Desire

The Economy of Desire uses mirror images of five profile portraits, reproduced from Italian quattrocento painters to explore the psychosocial status of early Renaissance women. The portraits are interspersed with passages from Leon Battista Alberti’s text Della Famiglia. Alberti’s text is a treatise on domestic economy with attention to the required role of women and wives in Renaissance Florence. Through the positioning and repetition of the portraits The Economy of Desire emphasizes the subject’s identity as both a heraldic device and object of exchange.