Biography

Giulia Lovison studies early modern history with a focus on witchcraft, the Inquisition, women and gender, and legal culture. She earned her PhD from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and has held a Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust Fellowship at the Medici Archive Project. She serves as Journal Manager for the academic journal Storia delle Donne and is a member of the international research project The Inquisition Tribunal in Florence. In 2025, she was awarded the Premio Gaetano Cozzi. Her recent publications include the monograph La legge e il rogo. Fra’ Modesto Scrofeo e la caccia alle streghe di Sondrio (Carocci, 2025), and the article Quando la Morte dà scacco matto: genesi e sviluppi di un motivo ludico-tanatologico (Ludica, 2025).
 

Project Summary

In Renaissance Italy, the biological reality of pregnancy collided with a rigorous system of juridical scrutiny and medical-legal oversight. While historiography has long focused on the social imagery of childbirth, the diagnostic and judicial frameworks governing the state of pregnancy itself remain a crucial, yet largely unexplored, field of inquiry. This research investigates the normative status of pregnant women between the 15th and 17th centuries, exploring how female physiology was translated into statutory categories and evidentiary procedures. Moving beyond the moment of delivery, the project reconstructs the procedural frameworks inherited from Roman law – such as the inspectio ventris – where physicians, jurists, and midwives collaborated to identify and regulate the gravid body. The research bridges the history of medicine and law with visual and material culture, analyzing a diverse corpus of medical treatises, legal commentaries, and anatomical illustrations. By examining how medical expertise informed judicial authority, the study demonstrates how the pregnant body became a site of legal proof, where signs of gestation were scrutinized to determine specific rights and safeguards. Ultimately, the goal is to clarify how Renaissance culture conceptualized the pregnant woman simultaneously as a medical object and a legal subject, situating the Italian experience within a broader European dialogue on social control and the institutionalization of the female body.