Giovanna Dandolo

Pietro da Fano, Giovanna Dandolo, Wife of Pasquale Malipiero (reverse), c. 1452-1464, NGA 44557 Giovanna Dandolo was a dogaressa of Venice by marriage to doge Pasquale Malipiero (reign 1457–1462).

She was born circa 1400 as the daughter of Antonio Dandolo and married to Pasquale Malipiero in 1414.

She gathered a circle of 'men of letters' and writers around her and acted as their patron. Palazzi in La Virtu in Giuocco records that she was "a princess of splendid physical and mental gifts but possessed of no private fortune.... In 1469 Giovanni Spira dedicated to her the first book ever printed in Venice". Many of the early books printed in Venice are dedicated to her, in gratitude for her patronage. Four of the first books printed in Venice in 1469 were all dedicated to her patronage. She also became a patron of the lace industry of Burano, which developed during this period. Reportedly, she gathered a circle of noblewomen and manufactured the lace herself as well. She was the only dogaressa depicted on a portrait medal prior to the 16th-century, as well as one of only three Italian women, with Isotta degli Atti and Gianfrancesco I Gonzaga's daughter Cecilia Gonzaga, to have portrait medals made of them prior to this period.