The Medici Women
The Medici Women

Author: Natalie R. Tomas

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1351885839

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The Medici Women is a study of the women of the famous Medici family of republican Florence in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Natalie Tomas here examines critically the changing contribution of the women in the Medici family to the eventual success of the Medici regime and their exercise of power within it; and contributes to our historical understanding of how women were able to wield power in late medieval and early modern Italy and Europe. Tomas takes a feminist approach that examines the experience of the Medici women within a critical framework of gender analysis, rather than biography. Keeping the historiography to a minimum and explaining all unfamiliar Italian terms, Tomas makes her narrative clear and accessible to non-specialists; thus The Medici Women appeals to scholars of women's studies across disciplines and geographical boundaries.

Medici Women
Medici Women

Author: Gabrielle Langdon

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 0802038255

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The ducal court of Cosimo I de' Medici in sixteenth-century Florence was one of absolutist, rule-bound order. Portraiture especially served the dynastic pretensions of the absolutist ruler, Duke Cosimo and his consort, Eleonora di Toledo, and was part of a Herculean programme of propaganda to establish legitimacy and prestige for the new sixteenth-century Florentine court. In this engaging and original study, Gabrielle Langdon analyses selected portraits of women by Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, Alessandro Allori, and other masters. She defines their function as works of art, as dynastic declarations, and as encoded documents of court culture and propaganda, illuminating Cosimo's conscious fashioning of his court portraiture in imitation of the great courts of Europe. Langdon explores the use of portraiture as a vehicle to express Medici political policy, such as with Cosimo's Hapsburg and Papal alliances in his bid to be made Grand Duke with hegemony over rival Italian princes. Stories from archives, letters, diaries, chronicles, and secret ambassadorial briefs, open up a world of fascinating, personalities, personal triumphs, human frailty, rumour, intrigue, and appalling tragedies. Lavishly illustrated, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love and Betrayal in the Court of Duke Cosimo I is an indispensable work for anyone with a passion for Italian renaissance history, art, and court culture.

The Medici Women
The Medici Women

Author: Natalie R. Tomas

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1351885820

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The Medici Women is a study of the women of the famous Medici family of Florence in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Natalie Tomas examines critically the changing contribution of the women in the Medici family to the eventual success of the Medici regime and their exercise of power within it; and contributes to our historical understanding of how women were able to wield power in late medieval and early modern Italy and Europe. Tomas takes a feminist approach that examines the experience of the Medici women within a critical framework of gender analysis, rather than biography. Using the relationship between gender and power as a vantage point, she analyzes the Medici women's uses of power and influence over time. She also analyzes the varied contemporary reactions to and representation of that power, and the manner in which the women's actions in the political sphere changed over the course of the century between republican and ducal rule (1434-1537). The narrative focuses especially on how women were able to exercise power, the constraints placed upon them, and how their gender intersected with the exercise of power and influence. Keeping the historiography to a minimum and explaining all unfamiliar Italian terms, Tomas makes her narrative clear and accessible to non-specialists; thus The Medici Women appeals to scholars of women's studies across disciplines and geographical boundaries.

"Women, Patronage, and Salvation in Renaissance Florence "

Author: Stefanie Solum

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1351536508

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Long obfuscated by modern definitions of historical evidence and art patronage, Lucrezia Tornabuoni de? Medici?s impact on the visual world of her time comes to light in this book, the first full-length scholarly argument for a lay woman?s contributions to the visual arts of fifteenth-century Florence. This focused investigation of the Medici family?s domestic altarpiece, Filippo Lippi?s Adoration of the Christ Child, is broad in its ramifications. Mapping out the cultural network of gender, piety, and power in which Lippi?s painting was originally embedded, author Stefanie Solum challenges the received wisdom that women played little part in actively shaping visual culture during the Florentine Quattrocento. She uses visual evidence never before brought to bear on the topic to reveal that Lucrezia Tornabuoni - shrewd power-broker, pious poetess, and mother of the 'Magnificent' Lorenzo de? Medici - also had a profound impact on the visual arts. Lucrezia emerges as a fascinating key to understanding the ways in which female lay religiosity created the visual world of Renaissance Florence. The Medici case study establishes, at long last, a robust historical basis for the assertion of women?s agency and patronage in the deeply patriarchal and artistically dynamic society of Quattrocento Florence. As such, it offers a new paradigm for the understanding, and future study, of female patronage during this period.

Catherine de Medici
Catherine de Medici

Author: Leonie Frieda

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2022-01-11

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 0063235919

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The inspiration for the STARZ original series, The Serpent Queen, premiering September 11. “A beautifully written portrait of a ruthless, subtle and fearless woman fighting for survival and power in a world of gangsterish brutality, routine assassination and religious mania. . . . Frieda has brought a largely forgotten heroine-villainess and a whole sumptuously vicious era back to life. . . . This is The Godfather meets Elizabeth.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar Poisoner, besotted mother, despot, necromancer, engineer of a massacre: the dark legend of Catherine de Medici is centuries old. In this critically hailed biography, Leonie Frieda reclaims the story of this unjustly maligned queen of France to reveal a skilled ruler battling extraordinary political and personal odds. Based on comprehensive research including thousands of Catherine’s own letters, Frieda unfurls Catherine’s story from her troubled childhood in Florence to her tumultuous marriage to Henry II of France; her transformation of French culture to her reign as a queen who would use brutality to ensure her children’s royal birthright. Brilliantly executed, this enthralling biography goes beyond myth to paint a very human portrait of this remarkable figure.

Lorenzo De' Medici at Home
Lorenzo De' Medici at Home

Author: Richard Stapleford

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 027105641X

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"An inventory of the private possessions of Lorenzo il Magnifico de' Medici, head of the ruling Medici family during the apogee of the Florentine Renaissance"--Provided by publisher.

Sacred Narratives
Sacred Narratives

Author: Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2007-11-01

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 0226808572

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The most prominent woman in Renaissance Florence, Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici (1425-1482) lived during her city's golden age. Wife of Piero de' Medici and mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Tornabuoni exerted considerable influence on Florence's political and social affairs. She was also, as this volume illustrates, a gifted and prolific poet. This is the first major collection in any language of her extensive body of religious poems. Ranging from gentle lyrics on the Nativity to moving dialogues between a crucified Christ and the weeping sinner who kneels before him, the nine laudi (poems of praise) included here are among the few such poems known to have been written by a woman. Tornabuoni's five storie sacre, narrative poems based on the lives of biblical figures-three of whom, Judith, Susanna, and Esther, are Old Testament heroines-are virtually unique in their range and expressiveness. Together with Jane Tylus's substantial introduction, these poems offer us both a fascinating portrait of a highly educated and creative woman and a lively sense of cultural and social life in Renaissance Florence.