Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy(54 Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies)

Beyond Isabella d'Este, who were the secular female patrons of art and architecture in Renaissance Italy? This volume brings together fourteen essays that examine the important and often unrecognised roles secular women -- both aristocratic and bourgeois -- played in the patronage of visual culture during the Italian renaissance.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Recognizing New Patrons, Posing New Questions.....David G. Wilkins Fina da Carrara, née Buzzacarini: Consort, Mother, and Patron of Art in Trecento Padua....Benjamin G. Kohl Controlling Women or Women Controlled? Suggestions for Gender Roles and Visual Culture in the Italian Renaissance Palace.....Roger J. Crum The Women Patrons of Neri di Bicci.....Rosi Prieto Gilday Caterina Piccolomini and the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena.....A. Lawrence Jenkens Renaissance Husbands and Wives as Patrons of Art: The Camerini of Isabella d’Este and Francesco II Gonzaga.....Molly Bourne Widow, Mother, Patron of Art: Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici.....Sheryl E. Reiss Two Emilian Noblewomen and Patronage Networks in the Cinquecento.....Katherine A. McIver Dutiful Widows: Female Patronage and Two Marian Altarpieces by Parmigianino.....Mary Vaccaro Vittoria Colonna and the Commission for a Mary Magdalen by Titian.....Marjorie Och Bronzino in the Service of Eleonora di Toledo and Cosimo I de’ Medici: Conjugal Patronage and the Painter-Courtier.....Bruce L. Edelstein A Medici Miniature: Juno and a Woman with “Eyes in Her Head Like Two Stars in Their Beauty”......Gabrielle Langdon A Widow’s Choice: Alessandro Allori’s Christ and the Adulteress in the Church of Santo Spirito at Florence.....Elizabeth Pilliod Matrons and Motives: Why Women Built in Early Modern Rome.....Carolyn Valone

About the Author :
Sheryl E Reiss and David Wilkins, Editors

Review :
“In fourteen substantial essays Reiss, Wilkins, and their collaborators offer rich new evidence for the activity of secular women in the production and reception of Italian Renaissance art, calling into serious question traditional stereotypes of female patronage and reconceptualizing art patronage itself.” —Renaissance Quarterly “The literature assessing the importance of women in visual culture has tended to find the quintessential woman patron in Isabella d’Este. This stimulating and informative collection of essays, each a detailed case study, opens up the subject with a broad chronological and geographical span. Intriguing and relatively unknown women patrons are introduced into the literature.... Well-known women patrons are treated from new points of view, and even Isabella herself gets a new slant, seen here as fueled in her artistic enterprises by rivalry with her husband.... An important contribution to the literature, certain to have heavy use in the classroom.” —Choice