Dr Valerio Zanetti 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 has 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, Dr Zanetti 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
Dr Zanetti’s research interests encompass 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.
He is currently writing my first monograph discussing the emergence of the Amazon as a fashionable model of athletic femininity in seventeenth-century France.
Other past research projects investigated women’s regattas in early modern Venice, the medical underpinnings of national characters and hunting as a form of affective exercise.
Dr Zanetti’s 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.
Publications
- Zanetti, ‘The Amazon Refashioned: Théroigne’s Riding Habit and Women’s Political Uniforms in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1793’, Gender & History (26 September 2023), pp. 1–24
- ‘Amazons in the Flesh: Defining the Female Athletic Body in Seventeenth-Century France’, Francia. Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte 48 (2021), pp. 345-366
- ‘Breeched and Unbridled: Bifurcated Equestrian Garments for Women in Early Modern Europe’, Costume 55.2 (2021), pp. 163-185
- ‘Holding the Reins: Female Horse Riding and Aristocratic Authority in Seventeenth-Century France’, Ludica. Annals of the history and culture of games 25 (2020), pp. 125-143
- ‘From the King’s Hunt to the Ladies’ Cavalcade: Female Equestrian Culture at the Court of Louis XIV’, The Court Historian 24.3 (2019), pp. 250-268
- (forthcoming) ‘Sensing the Fit: Reflections on Wearing a Reconstructed Tailor-Made Seventeenth-Century Doublet’, Textile History
- (under review) ‘Fashionable Equivocation of Gender: A Bust Portrait of a Lady in Hunting Garb Attributed to Jacob Ferdinand Voet’, The Burlington Magazine
- (forthcoming) ‘“Nothing is fashionable till it be deformed”: Sartorial Materials and Aesthetic Ideals of Beauty in Early Modern Europe’, in S. Toulalan (ed.) A Cultural History of Beauty in the Early Modern Age (London: Bloomsbury)
- (forthcoming) ‘Diana in Amazonian Dress: Fashioning the French Huntress in the Mercure Galant, 1672–1715’, in L. Beck and M. Saß (eds), Hunting Troubles: Gender and its Intersections in the Cultural History of the Hunt (London: Palgrave Macmillan)
- (forthcoming) ‘The Game of Five Nations: Educational Galanterie in Seventeenth-Century France’, in J. Kiliańczyk-Zięba and M. Wade (eds), Books-games: Printed Materials as Vehicles for Play in Early Modernity (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag)
- (forthcoming) ‘Experiment in Focus VII: Tailor-Made Male Doublet: Embodied Experience’, in P. Hohti (ed.), Refashioning the Renaissance: Everyday Dress and the Reconstruction of Early Modern Material Culture, 1550–1650 (Manchester: Manchester University Press)
- (in preparation) ‘Medical Notions of Physical Strength and Reproductive Health in the Early Modern Period’, in J. Kosmin (ed.), Bloomsbury Cultural History of Pregnancy and Childbirth: The Early Modern Age (1500 – 1765) (London: Bloomsbury)
- (in preparation) ‘Un-Making a Dowry: The Marriage and Legal Separation of Marguerite-Louise d’Orléans and Cosimo III de’ Medici, 1659–1675’, in R. Martínez López (ed.), Pricing a Bride: Medieval and Early Modern Dowries and Nuptial Economic Policies (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press)
- ‘Un giro di valzer’, in V. La Mendola and M. Villano (eds), Film da sfogliare: Dalla pagina allo schermo (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2013)