Morosina Morosini-Grimani (1545 - January 21, 1614) was a Venetian patrician. She was the Dogaressa of Venice from 1595 to 1606.
Life
Morosina Morosini-Grimani was the daughter of Andrea Morosini, a wealthy Venetian patrician. She married in 1560 to Marino Grimani.
With her spouse's election as doge in 1595, her own coronation as official dogaressa consort was conducted with enormous pomp and ceremony in May 1597. No other dogaressa would be crowned after her until Elisabetta Querini in 1694, who would be the last dogaressa to be crowned. The ceremony was conducted with the purpose of surpassing all previous seen in Venice, and celebrated with processions of gondolas, banquets for foreign princes and ambassadors and dignitaries of the church, and the dogaressa was given the Golden Rose by the Papal envoy.
Dogaressa Morosina was described as ambitious, gracious and hospitable. She became the patron of the famous lace-making industry at Burano, and established a committee to promote and popularize the craft among the upper class women of Venice.
Morosina survived her spouse and died at the age of seventy. She did not follow the tradition that the dowager dogaressa should enter a convent, but devoted herself to charitable and devout projects. She restored the church of San Sebastiano from her own private fortune.
References
- Staley, Edgcumbe: The dogaressas of Venice : The wives of the doges, London : T. W. Laurie, 1910