Dr Valerio Zanetti

Valerio received his undergraduate degree from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, writing an iconographical study of the Mannerist Sacro Bosco of Bomarzo. He was then awarded a master’s degree in Eighteenth Century Studies from the University of Sheffield with a prize-winning dissertation on political women’s dress in Revolutionary Paris. Between 2016 and 2020, he completed a PhD in History at the University of Cambridge (St John’s College), where his project on female equestrian culture in seventeenth-century France was funded by the AHRC and the Cambridge Trust. He since held fellowships with the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, the Society for Renaissance Studies, the Warburg Institute, the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, the Herzog August Bibliothek and the British School at Rome. In 2021, he collaborated with the Refashioning the Renaissance ERC-funded project at Aalto University.

At Cambridge, Valerio taught various History papers including ‘European History, 1450–1760’, ‘Material Culture in the Early Modern World’ and ‘Historical Argument and Practice’. In March 2022, he was a guest lecturer for the ‘Women in Western Culture’ paper at Florida State University International Programs in Florence. He currently teaches the ‘Disciplines of History’ and ‘Theory & Methods in Historical Analysis (MSt/MPhil)’ History papers at Oxford.

Research Interests

Valerio’s research encompasses various aspects of early modern European cultural history, with a special focus on the French Grand Siècle. He is particularly intrigued by the role of health-related practices, such as physical exercise, in shaping early modern gender and national identities. He is also interested in the study of early modern dress and fashion as embodied practice.

Valerio’s first monograph, to be published by Amsterdam University Press within their ‘Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World’ series, focuses on women’s equestrian culture during the reign of Louis XIV, studying the rise of the Amazon as a fashionable gender icon. He is currently expanding his research into ‘Amazonian’ dress into a second monograph with Bloomsbury, which explores women’s equestrian fashions in early modern Europe. He is also curating an exhibition on this topic, Amazones! Cavalières et icones de mode, which will be held at the Musée de la Mode et du Costume in Arles between May and October 2026. His new project Strong Women explores the embodied side of the French querelle des femmes, examining gendered notions of bodily strength and physical exercise in early modern medicine, pedagogy and art. His most recent research interests include hunting as a form of affective exercise across early modern Europe and the role of hunting in shaping encounters between indigenous populations and European colonists in seventeenth-century New France.

Publications