Defining the proper female body, seeking elective surgery for
beauty, enjoying lavish spa treatments, and combatting impotence
might seem like today s celebrity infatuations. However, these
preoccupations were very much alive in the early modern period.
Valeria Finucci recounts the story of a well-known patron of arts
and music in Renaissance Italy, Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua
(1562 1612), to examine the culture, fears, and captivations of his
times. Using four notorious moments in Vincenzo s life, Finucci
explores changing concepts of sexuality, reproduction, beauty, and
aging.
The first was Vincenzo s inability to consummate his earliest
marriage and subsequent medical inquiry, which elucidates new
concepts of female anatomy. Second, Vincenzo s interactions with
Bolognese doctor Gaspare Tagliacozzi, the father of plastic
surgery, illuminate contemporary fascinations with elective
procedures. Vincenzo s use of thermal spas explores the
proliferation of holistic, noninvasive therapies to manage pain,
detoxify, and rehabilitate what the medicine of the time could not
address. And finally, Vincenzo s search for a cure for impotence
later in life analyzes masculinity and aging.
By examining letters, doctors advice, reports, receipts, and
travelogues, together with (and against) medical, herbal,
theological, even legal publications of the period, Finucci
describes an early modern cultural history of the pathology of
human reproduction, the physiology of aging, and the science of
rejuvenation as they affected a prince with a large ego and an even
larger purse. In doing so, Finucci deftly marries salacious tales
with historical analysis to tell a broader story of Italian
Renaissance cultural adjustments and obsessions."
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