The articles in "Patronage, Gender & the Arts in Early Modern Italy" celebrate the work and legacy of Carolyn Valone, professor of Art History, teacher, mentor and friend to many. Valone's publications on "matrons as patrons" and "pie donne" became influential, ground-breaking work in the 1990s. Her continuing research on women as patrons of art and architecture has pioneered a methodological approach that many scholars have followed. Contributions include: Katherine A. McIver & Cynthia Stollhans, Introduction. Brenda Preyer, The "Wife's Room" in Florentine Palaces of the Fifteenth and...

Through a visually oriented investigation of historical (in)visibility in early modern Italy, the essays in this volume recover those women - wives, widows, mistresses, the illegitimate - who have been erased from history in modern literature, rendered invisible or obscured by history or scholarship, as well as those who were overshadowed by male relatives, political accident, or spatial location. A multi-faceted invisibility of the individual and of the object is the thread that unites the chapters in this volume. Though some women chose to be invisible, for example the cloistered nun, these...

The foods people catch, cook, and eat often tell us a great deal about a society during a given time period. By examining both the tools and methods of the kitchen as well as the menus and mores of those eating the products, Katherine McIver offers an historical glimpse into the medieval Italian kitchen.