Leonora Bernardi (1559-1616), a gentlewoman of Lucca, was ahighly regarded poet, dramatist and singer. She was active in thebrilliant courts of Ferrara and Florence at a time when creativewomen enjoyed exceptional visibility in Italy. Like many suchfigures, she has since suffered historical neglect. Drama,Poetry and Music in Late-Renaissance Italy presents the firstever study of Bernardi's life, and modern edition of her recentlydiscovered

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Wife, mother, leader, warrior. Caterina Riario Sforza was one of the most prominent women in Renaissance Italy--and one of the most vilified. In this glittering biography, Elizabeth Lev reexamines her extraordinary life and accomplishments. Raised in the court of Milan and wed at age ten to the pope's corrupt nephew, Caterina was ensnared in Italy's political intrigues early in life. After turbulent years in Rome's papal court, she moved to the Romagnol...

Domestic Devotions in Early Modern Italy illuminates the vibrancy of spiritual beliefs and practices which profoundly shaped family life in this era. Scholarship on Catholicism has tended to focus on institutions, but the home was the site of religious instruction and reading, prayer and meditation, communal worship, multi-sensory devotions, contemplation of religious images and the performance of rituals, as well as extraordinary events such as miracles....

In 'The imagined and real Jerusalem in art and architecture' specialists in various fields of art history, from Early Christian times to the present, articulate a variety of cultural, religious and political implications of the visualization of Jerusalem. This collection of essays calls attention to two axes emerging from the study of Jerusalem in art: on the one hand, the volatile contemporary situation, and on the other hand, the abiding chain of...