In his treatise On the Family (1444), the Italian humanist Leon Battista Albert! defined a humanist vision of the domestic household, owned by men but run by women:

Drawing on Cicero and the Greek writer Xenophon's Oeco-nomicus, Alberti created a highly influential vision of the sexual division of labour and the domestic economy of the household. The eloquent public man is contrasted with his silent, domestic wife, who remains locked up at home'. Her only training is in the running of the household. To ensure its successful maintenance, the husband reveals all its contents to his wife, with just one exception. Only 'my books and records' are kept locked away, and 'these my wife not only could not read, she could not lay hands on them'. Alberti is anxious at the thought 'of bold and forward females who try too hard to know about things outside the house and about the concerns of their husband and of men in general'.

From humanism's rhetoric of the dignity of humanity it might be expected that it also afforded new intellectual and social opportunities for women. In fact, humanism's relationship to women was far more ambivalent.

Albert! wrote in his Treatise on Architecture (De re aedificatoria):

In Albert!'s ideal world, individuals would accept their status and live their lives accordingly. This concept of social hierarchy was expressed in another, equally complex source for our understanding of contemporary attitudes towards ownership and display. These are the sumptuary laws which were issued by urban magistrates either in civic statutes or as part of a government campaign to control waste and to maintain sexual as well as social distinctions. Unlike humanist treatises, this legislation could be widely publicized and enforced. The sumptuary laws of Florence, Genoa, and Venice, for example, were included in civic statutes, announced by town criers, and supervised by special magistrates. The legislation limited the number of courses served at weddings, and banned or restricted gifts to the bride and groom. It laid down the number of rings a woman could wear (an unmarried girl was permitted to wear more than a married woman) and the detailing of the neckline or the number of buttons or the length of her train; it stipulated the clothing that the prostitute should wear, threatening her with public beatings if these rules were contravened.

The sumptuary laws, examples of which can be found from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, should not be read as legislation which worked, but rather as evidence for the kinds of activities, behaviour, and clothing which elicited confusion and anxiety. In Venice, for example, the Great Council kept trying, despite its obviously limited success, to create a special magistracy to control excess in terms of dress and ritual. To encourage prosecution, it set out boxes where secret denunciations could be placed and encouraged informers by offering them a percentage of the fine. In 1512, however, we still find waiters and cooks being ordered, under threat of imprisonment, to allow Venetian officers to inspect banquets which were under way. The servants were not 'to interfere with our officers ... [by] throwing bread or oranges at their heads, as certain presumptuous persons have done'.

The moral emphasis enshrined in such legislation was vigorously promoted, particularly in the Italian republics. The Florentine 'officials on women's ornaments', who were appointed to patrol the streets looking for women who had breached the regulations, were to restrain the barbarous and irrepressible bestiality of women who, not mindful of the weakness of their nature, forgetting that they are subject to their husbands, and transforming their perverse sense into a reprobate and diabolical nature, force their husbands with their honeyed poison to submit to them. These women have forgotten that it is their duty to bear the children sired by their husbands and, like little sacks, to hold the natural seed which their husbands implant in them, so that children will be born. They have also forgotten that it is not in conformity with nature for them to decorate themselves with such expensive ornaments when their men, because of this, avoid the bond of matrimony on account of the unaffordable expenses, and the nature of these men is left unfulfilled. For women were made to replenish this free city and to observe chastity in marriage; they were not made to spend money on silver, gold, clothing and gems.

Compared to this vehemence, art, as we understand it today, was literally not an issue. The possessions which inspired the greatest concern were not paintings or statues, but the far more expensive acquisitions made by men and women such as their clothing and their jewellery as well as the temporary rituals and festivities, such as weddings, which they organized.