Contrary to a tradition of scholarly insistence on the invisibility of Florentine patrician women outside the domestic sphere, it can be argued such women did in effect perform a significant, public, or quasi-public, function in the negotiation of relationships between the Republic and other Italian, and European, elites. This article assembles fragmentary evidence concerning dancing and musical performance by women directed towards the entertainment of visiting notables in the second half of the Quattrocento, and uses modern concepts of gendered performance and the performance of gender to speculate on the nature of that experience for the women involved.
This article examines aspects of the relationship of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Ippolita Sforza, Duchess of Calabria, through a close reading of two familiar letters by the latter dating from 1480 and 1486. The reading takes into account the respective political contexts of these letters – the end of the War of the Pazzi Conspiracy and of the Barons’ Revolt respectively – but seeks above all to use them to explore the nature of a ‘friendship’ complicated by the political and dynastic agendas of the two individuals as well as by issues of status and, particularly, of gender.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.