Eleonora di Toledo was a powerful and influential woman who, over the course of nearly a quarter century (1539-62), contributed profoundly to the cultural flowering of ducal Florence. Her patronage of some of the leading artists of the time, her support of newly arrived Jesuit preachers, her involvement in charitable activities, her unfailing devotion to her husband and his policies, not to mention her successful farming and business ventures are only some of the areas where her influence was unambiguously exercised and felt. She also provided the House of Medici with a full stable of children to re-invigorate the failing family line, ensure male succession even in the face of unexpected calamities, and provide enough females to establish marriage connections with a variety of noble and ruling houses in Italy. In spite of all these contributions, Eleonora has attracted little attention from scholars. This apparent disinterest may be a factor of Eleonora's personal style, or of the bad press that, as a Spanish noblewoman, she quickly received from her Florentine subjects, or of modern antipathy for some of the basic characteristics of ducal Florence. An examination of her impact on Tuscany is long overdue. In fact, a fuller, more nuanced understanding of the duchess can shed a more profound light not only on her as a person, or on her impact on Tuscan culture in the sixteenth century, but also on the contribution of female consorts to the vitality of a successful early-modern state. The essays collected here bring together a variety of scholars working in various disciplines. While many of the articles take their cue from art history (a natural reflection of the innovative research recent art historians have carried out on the duchess), they also reach out towards other disciplines - political history, literature, spectacle, and religion to mention just a few. In so doing, they expand our understanding of Eleonora's place in her society and reveal a very complex, determined, and capable woman.

Eleonora di Toledo was a powerful and influential woman who, over the course of nearly a quarter century (1539-62), contributed profoundly to the cultural flowering of ducal Florence. Her patronage of some of the leading artists of the time, her support of newly arrived Jesuit preachers, her involvement in charitable activities, her unfailing devotion to her husband and his policies, not to mention her successful farming and business ventures are only some of the areas where her influence was unambiguously exercised and felt. She also provided the House of Medici with a full stable of children to re-invigorate the failing family line, ensure male succession even in the face of unexpected calamities, and provide enough females to establish marriage connections with a variety of noble and ruling houses in Italy. In spite of all these contributions, Eleonora has attracted little attention from scholars. This apparent disinterest may be a factor of Eleonora's personal style, or of the bad press that, as a Spanish noblewoman, she quickly received from her Florentine subjects, or of modern antipathy for some of the basic characteristics of ducal Florence. An examination of her impact on Tuscany is long overdue. In fact, a fuller, more nuanced understanding of the duchess can shed a more profound light not only on her as a person, or on her impact on Tuscan culture in the sixteenth century, but also on the contribution of female consorts to the vitality of a successful early-modern state. The essays collected here bring together a variety of scholars working in various disciplines. While many of the articles take their cue from art history (a natural reflection of the innovative research recent art historians have carried out on the duchess), they also reach out towards other disciplines - political history, literature, spectacle, and religion to mention just a few. In so doing, they expand our understanding of Eleonora's place in her society and reveal a very complex, determined, and capable woman.

The articles in this volume re-evaluate and present to an English-reading public the figure of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici (1518-1572), the alleged destroyer of Florentine liberty and republicanism. Although much maligned, especially in Italian and English liberal/republican scholarship, the work demonstrates that Duke Cosimo I was, in fact, an incredibly astute, successful, and even benevolent ruler who, on being raised unexpectedly to power at the young age of 17 during a particularly tense political moment, managed not only to survive the immediate crisis, but also to stabilize the situation, revive a dying state, double its territory, and establish a dynasty that ruled for 200 years. This work aims to illustrate these achievements within the broader category of culture.

Despite the paramount importance of confraternities (especially to males) in medieval European society, scholars have tended to neglect not only the social role they played but also the influence they had on the art, drama, music, and thinking of the society in which they not only existed but thrived. This collection of essays serves to illuminate this oft-ignored facet of medieval society, and each essay carefully examines some element of the influence of confraternities on society and its products.

First published in 1548, On the Beauty of Women purports to record two conversations shared by a young gentleman, Celso, and four ladies of the upper bourgeoisie in the vicinity of Florence. One afternoon Celso and the ladies consider universal beauty. On a subsequent evening, they attempt to fashion a composite picture of perfect beauty by combining the beautiful features of women they know. The standards of beauty established in the garden give way to the artistic, creative imagination of the human spirit, and the group's movement from garden to hall seems to echo the dialogue's movement from Nature to Art, from divinely to humanly created beauty. Konrad Eisenbichler and Jacqueline Murray have provided the first translation into English of Firenzuola's dialogue since the nineteenth century. In their introduction, they argue that Firenzuola's work presents a useful point of entry into the society and values of the mid-sixteenth century. In its discussion of beauty, the dialogue reveals the intersection of Neoplantonic philosophy and mathematically based artistic theory, both inherited from classical antiquity. Indeed, Firenzuola's treatise has been assessed as one of the most significant expositions of Renaissance aesthetics.

In The Sword and the Pen: Women, Politics, and Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Siena, Konrad Eisenbichler analyzes the work of Sienese women poets, in particular, Aurelia Petrucci, Laudomia Forteguerri, and Virginia Salvi, during the first half of the sixteenth century up to the fall of Siena in 1555. Eisenbichler sets forth a complex and original interpretation of the experiences of these three educated noblewomen and their contributions to contemporary culture in Siena by looking at the emergence of a new lyric tradition and the sonnets they exchanged among themselves and with their male contemporaries. Through the analysis of their poems and various book dedications to them, Eisenbichler reveals the intersection of poetry, politics, and sexuality, as well as the gendered dialogue that characterized Siena's literary environment during the late Renaissance. Eisenbichler also examines other little-known women poets and their relationship to the cultural environment of Siena, underlining the exceptional role of the city of Siena as the most important center of women's writing in the first half of the sixteenth century in Italy, and probably in all of Europe. This innovative contribution to the field of late Renaissance and early modern Italian and women's studies rescues from near oblivion a group of literate women who were celebrated by contemporary scholars but who have been largely ignored today, both because of a dearth of biographical information about them and because of a narrow evaluation of their poetry. Eisenbichler's analysis and reproduction of many of their poems in Italian and modern English translation are an invaluable contribution not only to Italian cultural studies but also to women's studies.

Confraternities and their contribution to the fabric of society have become invisible history for us today. Although their activities began in the Renaissance and continued until the end of the Enlightenment, confraternities have not yet found a place in the standard histories of the period, or even in the histories of religion or of the Church. With The Boys of the Archangel Raphael, Konrad Eisenbichler brings to light the daily life and history of one such organization from its founding in 1411 to its final suppression in 1785. While focusing on the Compagnia dell'Arcangelo Raffaello, the first confraternity to be established in Florence, the author also discusses other, similar organizations. By constantly comparing developments across several confraternities, the book provides us with insight into the entire phenomenon of premodern lay religious associations for youths. The study is firmly grounded on archival and contemporary documents, and covers a variety of fields of interest: social history, church history, the history of childhood, and the history of art, literature, and music. The Boys of the Archangel Raphael will be the authoritative work on youth confraternities for years to come.