Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance

Editorial BoardPaul F. Gehl, Newberry Library Julia L. Hairston, University of California, Rome Study Center Letizia Panizza, Royal Holloway College, University of London Deanna Shemek, University of California, Santa Cruz Janet Lavarie Smarr, University of California, San Diego Elissa Weaver, University of Chicago

Encyclopedia of Women in the RenaissanceItaly, France, and England

DIANA ROBIN, ANNE R. LARSEN, AND CAROLE LEVIN, EDITORS

Santa Barbara, California Denver, Colorado Oxford, England

Copyright 2007 by ABC-CLIO, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Encyclopedia of women in the Renaissance : Italy, France, and England / edited by Diana Robin, Anne R. Larsen, Carole Levin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-10: 1-85109-772-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-85109-777-5 (ebook) ISBN-13: 978-1-85109-772-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-85109-777-7 (ebook) 1. WomenHistoryRenaissance, 14501600Encyclopedias I. Robin, Diana Maury II. Larsen, Anne R. III. Levin, Carole, 1948 HQ1148.W67 2007 305.48'80900902403dc22 2006038854 11 10 09 08 07 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Production Editor: Kristine Swift Editorial Assistant: Sara Springer Production Manager: Don Schmidt Media Editor: John Withers Media Resources Coordinator: Ellen Brenna Dougherty Media Resources Manager: Caroline Price File Management Coordinator: Paula Gerard This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an ebook. Visit http://www.abc-clio.com for details. ABC-CLIO, Inc. 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 931161911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

For Judith Hallett, muse, mentor, and dear friend. Diana Robin To Carolyn Charnin, a true friend whose wisdom and counsel I always value. Anne Larsen For my dear friend Jo Carney, for her many years of courage, generosity, and wisdom. Carole Levin

Contents

Contributors, xi Introduction, xv Chronology, xvii Women in the Renaissance: A Historical Encyclopedia

AAbortion and Miscarriage, 1 Albret, Jeanne d, 2 Alchemy, 4 Amazons, 6 Amboise, Catherine d, 8 Andreini, Isabella, 9 Androgyne, 12 Anguissola, Sofonisba, 14 Anna of Denmark, 18 Anne of Brittany, 20 Anne of Cleves, 20 Aragona, Giovanna d, 22 Aragona, Maria d, 24 Aragona,Tullia d, 26 Art and Women, 30 Askew, Anne, 34 Aubespine, Madeleine de L, 35

Bectoz, Claude Scholastique de, 44 Beguines, 45 Behn, Aphra, 47 Bess of Hardwick, 49 Boleyn, Anne, 49 Borgia, Lucrezia, 51 Bourbon, Catherine de, 54 Bourbon, Gabrielle de, 55 Bourbon-Montpensier, Charlotte de, 56 Bourgeois, Louise, 57 Bradstreet, Anne, 59 Bresegna, Isabella, 60

CCambis, Marguerite de, 61 Campiglia, Maddalena, 62 Cary, Elizabeth Tanfield, 64 Catherine of Aragon, 65

BBacon, Anne Cooke, 37 Barton, Elizabeth, 38 Battiferra, Laura, 38 Beaufort, Lady Margaret, 42 Beaujeu, Anne de, 42

Catherine de Mdicis, 66 Catherine of Siena, 68 Cavendish, Elizabeth Brackley and Jane Cavendish, 71 Cavendish, Margaret, 72 Cecil, Mildred Cooke, 74

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CONTENTS

Cereta, Laura, 74 Childhood, 77 Cibo, Caterina, 79 Claude de France, 80 Clermont, Claude-Catherine de, 81 Clifford, Anne, 83 Clitherow, Margaret, 84 Coignard, Gabrielle de, 84 Coligny, Louise de, 86 Colonna,Vittoria, 87 Contraception and Birth Control, 91 Convents, 92 Cookbooks and Recipes, 95 Copio Sullam, Sara, 96 Cornaro, Caterina, 98 Cotteblanche, Marie de, 100 Courtesans and Prostitution, Italy, 101 Crenne, Hlisenne de, 105

Eve, 135

FFedele, Cassandra, 137 Feminism in the Renaissance, 139 Fetti, Lucrina, 143 Flore, Jeanne, 145 Fontana, Lavinia, 147 Fonte, Moderata, 150 Forteguerri, Laudomia, 151 Franco,Veronica, 153

GGaillarde, Jeanne, 159 Gmbara,Veronica, 160 Gentileschi, Artemisia, 163 Gonzaga, Giulia, 166 Gournay, Marie de, 170 Graville, Anne de, 173 Grey, Jane, 175 Guillet, Pernette du, 176

DDames des Roches, 109 Datini, Margherita Bandini, 112 DEnnetieres, Marie, 113 Dowriche, Anne, 115

HHalkett, Anne, 181 Henrietta Maria, 181 Hermaphrodite as Image and Idea, 182 Howard, Catherine, 185 Howard, Frances, 186

EEducation, Humanism, and Women, 117 Eleanora dAragona, 125 Elizabeth I, 126 Elizabeth Stuart, 129 Este, Isabella d, 130 Estienne, Nicole, 133

IInglis, Esther, 189

JJoan of Arc, 191 Jussie, Jeanne de, 192

CONTENTS

ix

KKilligrew, Anne, 193

Morel, Camille de, 271 Mornay, Charlotte Arbaleste Duplessis, 272 Morra, Isabella di, 274 Music and Women, 276

LLab, Louise, 195 La Font, Jeanne de, 198 Lanyer, Aemilia Bassano, 199 Le Gendre, Marie, 200 Literary Culture and Women, 202 Literary Patronage, 216 Locke, Anne Vaughan, 218 Loynes, Antoinette de, 219 Lumley, Jane, 221

NNelli, Plautilla, 281 Nogarola, Isotta, 282

OOld Age and Women, 285 OMalley, Grace, 286

PParr, Katherine, 289 Philips, Katherine, 290 Piscopia, Elena Lucrezia Cornaro, 291 Pizan, Christine de, 293 Poitiers, Diane de, 296 Power, Politics, and Women, 298 Primrose, Diana, 301 Printers, the Book Trade, and Women, 301 Pulci, Antonia Tanini, 304

MMakeup and Cosmetics, 223 Makin, Bathsua, 224 Malatesta, Battista da Montefeltro, 225 Margaret of Parma, 225 Margaret Tudor, 227 Marguerite de Navarre, 228 Marguerite de Valois, 231 Marie of Guise, 234 Marinella, Lucrezia, 234 Marquets, Anne de, 237 Marriage, 239 Mary I, 243 Mary Stuart, 245 Mary Tudor, 249 Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender, 249 Matraini, Chiara, 253 Medicine and Women, 255 Montenay, Georgette de, 266 Morata, Fulvia Olympia, 269

QQuerelle des Femmes, 307

RRape and Violence Against Women, 313 Religious Persecution and Women, 315 Religious Reform and Women, 320 Renata di Francia, 321 Rhetoric, Public Speaking, and Women, 323 Romieu, Marie de, 325 Roper, Margaret More, 326

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CONTENTS

Roye, Elonore de, 327

Theater and Women Actors, Playwrights, and Patrons, 359 Toledo, Eleonora di, 362 Tornabuoni de Medici, Lucrezia, 367 Translation and Women Translators, 369 Transvestism, 375

SSappho and the Sapphic Tradition, 329 Savoie, Louise de, 331 Scala, Alessandra, 332 Schurman, Anna Marie van, 333 Seymour, Jane, 336 Sforza, Caterina, 336 Sidney, Mary Herbert, 339 Speght, Rachel, 341 Stampa, Gaspara, 342 Strozzi, Alessandra Macinghi, 345 Strozzi, Barbara, 346 Stuart, Arbella, 348

VVarano, Costanza, 379 Vere, Anne Cecil de, 380

WWard, Mary, 383 Weston, Elizabeth Jane, 383 Whitney, Isabella, 384 Widows and Guardianship, 387

TTarabotti, Arcangela, 351 Teerlinc, Levina, 355 Terracina, Laura Bacio, 356

Witchcraft,Witches, and Witch-Hunting, 390 Work and Women, 394 Wroth, Mary, 397

Bibliography, 401 Index, 445

Contributors

Martha Ahrendt Green Bay,Wisconsin Hariette Andreadis Texas A&M University Kory Bajus University of NebraskaLincoln Deborah Lesko Baker Georgetown University Debra Barrett-Graves California State UniversityEast Bay Cathleen Bauschatz University of Maine Marlo M. Belschner Monmouth College Pamela J. Benson Rhode Island College Lynn Botelho Indiana University of Pennsylvania Susan Broomhall The University of Western Australia Abigail Brundin University of Cambridge Julie D. Campbell Eastern Illinois University Jo Carney The College of New Jersey Grace E. Coolidge Grand Valley State University Jane Couchman Glendon College,York University

Ann Crabb James Madison University Joy M. Currie University of NebraskaLincoln Nancy Dersofi Bryn Mawr College Diane Desrosiers-Bonin McGill University Jane Donawerth University of MarylandCollege Park Bruce Edelstein New York University in Florence Tim Elston Newberry College Gary Ferguson University of Delaware Sheila ffolliott George Mason University Catherine Field University of MarylandCollege Park Hannah Shaw Vickers Fournier University of Waterloo Amy Gant University of NebraskaLincoln Amyrose McCue Gill University of California at Berkeley Cynthia Gladen Portland, Oregon Teresa Grant University of Warwick

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CONTRIBUTORS

Melanie Gregg Wilson College Julia L. Hairston University of California, Rome Study Center Nancy Hayes St. Ambrose University Shawndra Holderby Mansfield University Brenda M. Hosington University of Montreal Vittoria Kirkham University of Pennsylvania Carrie F. Klaus DePauw University Alexandra M. Korey University of Chicago Mary Ellen Lamb Southern Illinois University Anne R. Larsen Hope College Carole Levin University of NebraskaLincoln Kathleen M. Llewellyn Saint Louis University Kathleen Perry Long Cornell University Nadia Margolis Leverett, Massachusetts Mary B. McKinley University of Virginia Lianne McTavish University of New Brunswick Sara Mendelson McMaster University Shannon Meyer University of NebraskaLincoln Gerry Milligan College of Staten Island

Catherine M. Mller Neuchatel, Switzerland Jonathan Nelson Syracuse University in Florence Karen Nelson University of MarylandCollege Park Marie-Thrse Noiset University of North CarolinaCharlotte Tara Nummedal Brown University Michele Osherow University of MarylandBaltimore County Carol Pal Stanford University Letizia Panizza Royal Holloway, University of London Holt Parker University of Cincinnati Daria Perocco Universit di Venezia Graziella Postolache Washington University in St. Louis Alisha Rankin Trinity College, University of Cambridge Sid Ray Pace University Rgine Reynolds-Cornell Agnes Scott College Anya Riehl University of IllinoisChicago Louis Roper SUNYNew Paltz Joann Ross University of NebraskaLincoln Sarah Gwyneth Ross Northwestern University Marian Rothstein Carthage College

CONTRIBUTORS

xiii

Brigitte Roussel Wichita State University Rinaldina Russell City University of New York, Queens College Lisa Sampson University of Reading Martine Sauret University of Minnesota Deanna Shemek University of California, Santa Cruz Linda Shenk Iowa State University Brandie R. Siegfried Brigham Young University Nria Silleras-Fernndez University of California, Santa Cruz Martha Skeeters University of Oklahoma, Norman Janet Smarr University of California, San Diego Sara Jayne Steen Montana State University Kevin Stevens University of Nevada, Reno Jane B. Stevenson University of Aberdeen Marguerite Tassi University of NebraskaKearney Fran Teague University of Georgia Emily Thompson Webster University James Grantham Turner University of California, Berkeley Jane Tylus New York University

Retha Warnicke Arizona State University Elissa Weaver University of Chicago Lynn Westwater The George Washington University Jane Wickersham The Newberry Library Merry Wiesner-Hanks University of WisconsinMilwaukee Corinne Wilson Washington University in St. Louis Kathleen Wilson-Chavelier The American University of Paris Colette H.Winn Washington University in St. Louis Mary Beth Winn SUNYAlbany Diane S.Wood Texas Tech University Tara Wood Arizona State University Richardine Woodall York University Cathy Yandell Carleton College Naomi Yavneh University of South Florida Irene Zanini-Cordi Florida State University Gabriella Bruna Zarri University of Florence Carla Zecher The Newberry Library

Introduction

In a now-classic essay published thirty years ago, the historian Joan Kelly asked the question, Did Women Have a Renaissance? Challenging conventional representations of early European history, Kelly answered her own question with a resounding no. At the time, she was responding to the received historiography of the Renaissance as an age of great men, the florescence of the arts, and the recovery of the culture of Greco-Roman antiquity. This was a history from which women had effectively been purged. Indeed, until the 1980s, little attention had been paid to early European women. But Kellys bold essay galvanized interest in womens collective past and prompted scholars to test her argument. In the three decades since the publication of her work, an avalanche of books, articles, and, most influentially, editions and translations of works by early women writers themselves has enabled us to redefine the idea of the Renaissance and to reevaluate the varied roles women assumed during the period between roughly 1350 and 1700. In his introduction to Scribners six-volume Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, Paul F. Grendler noted that the study of women stands among the three most important developments in recent work on early modern European history, flanked only by research in humanism and social history. The new scholarship has shown that notable women of this period came from a variety of social and economic ranks. In the age of the Reformation and the Renaissance, women played significant roles in the revival of the classical tradition and the rise of national literatures, religious reform, art and music, polxv

itics and statecraft, and science and medicine. Women of the Renaissance were widely experienced in both work and family.The Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance brings together the newest scholarship in a broad array of issues. The articles are written for students and teachers at all levels, and the reading public in general. The very term Renaissance has been recently contested, with some social historians perceiving the rubric as too oriented toward literary and artistic developments. Some scholars have preferred the descriptor early modern as less encumbered by the cultural baggage of the pre-Kellian age.Yet no term can in fact be completely free of historiographical biases, and we have chosen to use Renaissance as broadly inclusive in that it reflects a specific period that was neither completely medieval nor entirely modern. Just as we use the term inclusively, so too our chronology is comprehensive. The Renaissance self-consciously began in fourteenth-century Italy with a group of writers, artists, and thinkers who looked back to the ancient world for inspiration. This generated a movement known as humanism, which reflected ethical and epistemological as well as artistic values, and spread throughout Europe, still having a major impact in England, France, and other Euopean countries at the end of the seventeenth century. While this encyclopedia focuses primarily on Italy, France, and England, it takes other regions into account and covers about three hundred and fifty years. The title of this collection, Encylopedia of Women in the Renaissance, is important in that it

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INTRODUCTION

emphasizes the pluralwomen, not woman and the multiplicity of experiences women had. We cannot speak of the Renaissance woman or even the Italian, French, or English Renaissance woman. Womens experiences changed not only as they crossed geographic and chronological boundaries, but also in terms of social and economic status, religious belief, and access to education.This encyclopedia has over one hundred and fifty biographical entries on specific women artists, writers, musicians, patrons, religious leaders, and medical practitioners. There are articles on nuns, workingclass women, and women of the elite classes. There are essays on topics ranging from amazons and alchemy, marriage and midwifery, prostitution, the book trade, the figure of the hermaphrodite, to Sappho. There are essays on such public roles as womens involvement in religious reform, education, medical care, entertainment at courts, salons, and homes; and the more domestic issues such as marriage,

birth control, and child rearing.Above all, there are articles on feminism, the idea and ideology of gender, and the concept of woman and sexuality in the Renaissance. One of the great values of early modern womens scholarship is its collaborative nature, and we, the editors, have found it a benefit as well as a pleasure to work not only with one another but with our many contributors and our advisory board: Janet Smarr, Deanna Shemek, Julia Hairston, Letizia Panizza, Elissa Weaver, and Paul Gehl.We would like to thank Margaret King and Paul Grendler for their indispensable advice at the beginning of the project.We would also like to express our gratitude to Amy Gant and her assistant Erica Wright at the University of Nebraska for their expertise and their work on the project.Above all, we owe a debt of thanks to our editors at ABC-CLIO, without whose advice, enthusiasm, and technological sophistication this encyclopedia could not have been produced.

Chronology

1307 13091378 13371453

Dante (12651337), The Divine Comedy. Papacy at Avignon. Hundred YearsWar: Series of wars between France and England. In the end, England is expelled from all of France, except Calais. Francesco Petrarca (13041374) is crowned with laurel, Rome. The Black Death decimates the population of Europe. Giovanni Boccaccio (13131375), Decameron. Philip the Bold (Burgundy). Charles V (France). Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 13431400), Canterbury Tales. Papacy reestablished in Rome, Pope Gregory XI. Richard II (England). Great Schism. Peasants Revolt in England. The Medici family founds its bank, laying the foundation for one of the greatest ruling families in Italian history. Henry IV (England). Christine de Pizan circulates in manuscript her Le livre de la cit des dames (The Book of the City of 1453 1454 1450 1451 1431 1434 1436 14471455 1415

Ladies), the first world historical interpretation of womens lives by a woman. The English led by King Henry V rout the French at the Battle of Agincourt. Brunelleschis Dome of Florence Cathedral. Alliance between Burgundy and England. Philip the Good (Burgundy). English occupy Paris. Charles VII (France). Charles VII is crowned king of France. Joan of Arc is executed. Cosimo de Medici establishes rule in Florence. French recapture Paris from English. Pope Nicholas V establishes Vatican Library. Mercenary leader Francesco Sforza seizes power in Milan. Isotta Nogarola publicly debates Ludovico Foscarini in Verona on whether Adam or Eve bears greater responsibilty for the Fall. Turks capture Constantinople. Peace of Lodi (end of wars between Milan,Venice, Florence).

14171436 1419 14191467 1420 14221461 1429

1341 13471361 13511353 13631404 13641380 13731394 1377 13771399 13781417 1381 1397

13991413 1405

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14551487 14551456

Wars of the Roses in England. Johannes Gutenberg (ca. 1400 1467) invents printing with movable metallic type. Louis XI rules France. Platonic Academy is established in Florence under the patronage of Cosimo de Medici. Reign of King Edward IV of England. Lorenzo de Medici (the Magnificent) rules Florence. Pontificate of Sixtus IV. Ferdinand V of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, with authorization of Pope Sixtus IV establish Spanish Inquisition. Lodovico Sforza seizes power in Milan. Battle of Bosworth ends the Wars of the Roses and Henry Tudor is crowned King of England (Henry VII); Botticelli paints The Birth of Venus. Laura Ceretas autobiographical Latin letterbook circulates in manuscript in the Veneto. Christopher Columbus (14511506) discovers the New World; Rodrigo de Borja y Borja is elected as Pope Alexander VI; Jews are expelled from Spain. Maximilian I becomes Austrian Emperor. Ludovico Sforza becomes Duke of Milan. Charles VIII of France invades Italy. Leonardo da Vinci (14521519) paints his Last Supper in Milan.

1498 1499 15011504 15021503 1507 1508 15081512 1509 1513 1515 1516 1519 1517

Savonarola is burned at the stake in Florence. Louis XII (14981515) of France seizes Milan. Michelangelo sculpts the statue David. Leonardo da Vinci (14521519) paints Mona Lisa. Margaret of Austria is appointed Regent of the Netherlands. Raphael enters service of Pope Julius II. Michelangelo paints the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Henry VIII becomes King of England (until 1547). Leo X is elected pope; Machiavellis The Prince published. Francois (Francis) I becomes king of France (until 1547). Ariostos Orlando furioso published. Charles V of Spain (15001556) becomes Holy Roman Emperor. Martin Luther (14831546) posts the 95 Theses (Wittenberg, Saxony); Reformation begins. Machiavellis Art of War published. Luthers translation of the Bible. Francis I of France is captured at Pavia. Troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, sack Rome and capture Pope Clement VII. The Ottoman Turks besiege Vienna. Henry VIII breaks with Rome, establishes English Church (Anglican).

14611483 14621463

14611470 14691492 14711484 1478

1480 1485

14851499

1492

1521 1522 1525 1527

1493 1494 1494 14951498

1529 15321534

CHRONOLOGY

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15351541 1536 1538

Michelangelo paints the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. Execution of Anne Boleyn. Titian paints Venus of Urbino; the first edition of Vittoria Colonnas collected poetry inaugurates the print-debuts of a series of important women writers in Italy. Hlisenne de Crennes novel Les angoysses douloureuses qui procedent damours (The Torments of Love) is reprinted in eight editions. Ignatius Loyola (14911556) founds the Jesuit Order. Calvin establishes reformed church in Geneva. Paul III opens the Inquisition. Council of Trent. Henry II ascends the throne of France. Edward VI, King of England. Mary Tudor, Queen of England. Peace of Augsburg; salonnire and poet Louise Lab publishes her Oeuvres (Works) with the prominent Lyon printer Jean de Tournes. Charles V abdicates the throne of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. His son Phillip II rules Spain from 1556 to 1598, while his brother Ferdinand I becomes the Holy Roman Emperor (15561564). Four editions of the Italian heretic Olimpia Moratas Omnia opera are published in Basel. Elizabeth I, Queen of England. Sophonisba Anguissola, court painter to King Philip II of Spain, 1572 1576 1582 1587 1588 1589 1571 1560

completes a series of paintings for the royal family in Madrid. The poet Laura Battiferra publishes the first book of her collected poetry in Florence. Wars of Religion in France during the reigns of Francis II (1559 1560), Charles IX (15601574), Henry III (15741589). Maximilian II becomes Holy Roman Emperor (rules until 1576). Dutch Wars of Independence. Rebellion of Catholic nobility in northern England. The Dames des Roches, mother and daughter, inaugurate their important literary salon in Poitiers. Italian and Spanish forces defeat the Ottoman Turks in the Battle of Lepanto. Massacre of Saint Bartholomews Day in Paris. Rudolf II is elected Holy Roman Emperor (until 1612). Pope Gregory XIII, reform of the calendar. Mary, Queen of Scots, is executed. Spanish Armada. Henri III of France is assassinated. Henri IV renounces Protestantism to become King of France;Venetian dramatist, Isabella Andrieni stars in a performance of her play La pazzia di Isabella in Florence. Shakespeare produces Comedy of Errors. Edict of Nantes grants Huguenots freedom of worship and equal rights.

15621598

15381560

1564 15681648 15691570 1570s

15401541 1541 1542 15461563 1547 15471553 15531558 1555

1556

15581570

1592 1598

15581603 15591580

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1599

Globe Theatre established; Shakespeares Julius Caesar; As You Like It produced. James I (James VI of Scotland) becomes King of England (until 1625). Louise Bourgeois publishes her handbook on gynecology and obstetrics, Observations diverses, in Paris. After the assassination of Henry IV of France, Louis XIII ascends the throne. Artemisia Gentileschi executes her famous painting, Judith Slaying Holofernes, in Naples. Thirty YearsWar in Germany. Ferdinand II becomes the Holy Roman Emperor (until 1637). Pilgrims sail from England in the Mayflower. Cardinal Armand du Plessis de Richelieu consolidates royal power and enhances Frances international standing. Charles I becomes King of England.

16421646 16431661

English Civil War. Cardinal Jules Mazarin directs the French government due to infancy of King Louis XIV. French-Spanish War. Peace of Westphalia ends Thirty YearsWar. French civil war. Charles I of England is executed. Oliver Cromwell dissolves the English Parliament. Margaret Cavendish publishes the first utopia authored by a woman, The Description of a New World Called The Blazing World, in London. Leopold becomes the Holy Roman Emperor. English monarchy is reestablished: Charles II. Louis XIV is crowned King of France. Louis XIV establishes French court at Versailles. Turks besiege Vienna. James II is crowned King of England; Louis XIV revokes the Edict of Nantes. James II of England is deposed; Aphra Behn publishes the most popular of her numerous novels, Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave, in London.

1603

16471659 1648 16481653 1649 1653 1655

1609

1610

1612

16181648 1619 1620 16241642

1657 1660 1661 1682 1683

1625 1637 1639 1641

1685 Ferdinand III is elected Holy Roman Emperor (until 1657) France enters Thirty YearsWar. Marie de Gournay publishes her feminist essay, LEgalit des hommes et des femmes (The Equality of Men and Women) in Paris. 1688

AAbortion and MiscarriageEarly modern medical treatises explained how women could avoid miscarriage and abortion, often using both terms to refer to inadvertent pregnancy loss. In her Observations diverses sur la strilit, perte de fruict, foecondit, accouchements et maladies des femmes et enfants nouveaux naiz (Various Observations on Sterility, Miscarriage, Fertility, Childbirth and Diseases of Women and Newborns) of 1609, for example, French midwife Louise Bourgeois urged pregnant women to remain calm, because passions such as anger disrupted the flow of nutritive blood to the unborn child. English midwife Jane Sharp offered similar advice in her The Midwives Book of 1671, suggesting a powder women could take to hinder abortion, which included coriander and wine. The majority of European obstetrical treatises cautioned pregnant women against lifting heavy objects, riding in bumpy carriages, and raising their hands over their heads. These descriptions could have provided information about what to do if ending a pregnancy was desired. Denis Fournier wrote his Laccoucheur mthodique (The Methodical ManMidwife) of 1677 in French, but used Latin to convey remedies designed to expel a dead child or retained afterbirth from the womb, fearing untrustworthy persons might use the recipes to induce abortion. Yet the deliberate termination of pregnancy was not always considered an immoral act during the early modern period. Interventions at an early stage before ensoulment, thought to occur at around thirty days for boys and forty-five days for girlswere considered contraceptive rather than abortive techniques. Following ancient tradition, medical practitioners as well as the1

church distinguished between formed and unformed fetuses in the womb. Legal and religious sanctions against induced abortion were more severe for later pregnancies but did not necessarily govern womens behavior. According to historian Angus McLaren, early modern abortions would have been mostly self-induced, with women turning to abortionists only if other remedies had failed and they could afford it. Classicist John Riddle has collected herbal remedies with consistent ingredients such as rue, myrtle, myrrh, and pennyroyal, arguing they were used as effective abortifacients. Riddles research indicates that both medieval and early modern women were interested in contraception and abortion, but various scholars question his approach, which relies on modern scientific tests and assumes herbs have not changed over time. Historian Helen King claims that Riddle furthermore fails to appreciate the historical belief that menstruation was crucial to the health of the female body. Recipes designed to bring forth the menses were not always abortifacients, as he suspects. Pregnancy was notoriously difficult to determine during the early modern period, and the absence of menstruation or sensation of movements in the womb could indicate other conditions.A swelling womb might contain wind, water, or a false conception, such as a fleshly mole lacking life. These early modern understandings of the female body stubbornly resist modern ways of thinking about pregnancy. Lianne McTavishSee also the subheadings Childbirth and Reproductive Knowledge; Midwives and Licensing Male Midwifery;The Practice of Pharmacology and Laywomen (under Medicine and Women); Contraception and Birth Control.

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Bibliography Dunstan, G. R., ed. The Human Embryo: Aristotle and the Arabic and European Traditions. Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press, 1990. King, Helen. HippocratesWoman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece. London: Routledge, 1998. McClive, Cathy. The Hidden Truths of the Belly: The Uncertainties of Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe. Social History of Medicine 15, no. 2 (2002): 209227. McLaren, Angus. A History of Contraception: From Antiquity to the Present Day. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Riddle, John M. Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Riddle, John M. Eves Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Rtten,Thomas. Receptions of the Hippocratic Oath in the Renaissance:The Prohibition of Abortion as a Case Study in Reception. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 51, no. 4 (1996): 456483.

Jeanne dAlbret, queen of Navarre and Protestant leader. Portrait by unknown artist. (Bettmann/Corbis)

Albret, Jeanne d (15281572)Queen of Navarre, sovereign of Barn, duchess of Vendme, Protestant leader, author of Mmoires et posies and letters Jeanne dAlbret was born at Saint-Germainen-Laye on 16 November 1528, the only child of Henry dAlbret, king of Navarre, and Marguerite de Navarre, the sister of Francis I, king of France. Both parents rarely spent time with their daughter during her childhood. Eager to have a son, they neglected her; her education, which was supervised by the humanist Nicolas Bourbon, was directed by Ayme de Lafayette, a friend of her mothers, in the Norman countryside. In 1537, Jeanne dAlbret became an instrument both to her father and her uncles policy. At the request of Francis I, she moved closer to court, to the chateau of Plessis-lesTours, as her father considered using her to recover the kingdom of Navarre by marrying her to the son of Charles V, the Habsburg emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. However, Francis I arranged a marriage alliance with the duc de

Cleves in 1541. Marguerite de Navarre, ambivalent about this alliance, managed to delay it by having the duc de Cleves agree to wait before the consummation of the marriage because Jeanne dAlbret was only twelve years old at the time. Jeanne dAlbret wrote a couple of testimonies with witnesses to protest against the marriage, was whipped on the order of her mother to comply with the king of Frances demands, and also defied Francis I before the wedding. Nonetheless, she was carried to the altar on 13 June 1541 to marry the duc de Cleves at Chtellerault.After the latter betrayed Francis I, the marriage was annulled and dissolved by Paul III on 12 October 1545 on grounds that the marriage was never consummated and that Jeanne dAlbret never ceased to protest against the union. In 1548, as a pawn to the new king of France, Henry II, Jeanne dAlbret was to marry Antoine de Bourbon, duc de Vendme (First Prince of the Blood) to provide the king with an alliance with the Hapsburgs. Although her

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parents were also against this second alliance, Jeanne dAlbret was content with it and the marriage was celebrated on 20 October 1548. Their union led to two children, Henry (the future Henry IV), born on 14 December 1553 and Catherine, born in 1559. The rise of Calvinism in the 1550s was accompanied by a lenient enforcement of legislation against heresy. Thus Antoine de Bourbon joined the movement, mostly out of political interest: his claims to Spanish Navarre having been ignored by both Philip II of Spain and Henry II of France, he hoped that they would in turn be more accommodating to him for fear of the spread of heresy. Despite Jeanne dAlbrets long-standing interest in Calvinism, she did not announce her conversion until Christmas Day 1560. Both Jeanne dAlbret and her husband encouraged the Reformation in their domains of Navarre. The constant Catholic pressure, soon to be followed by a counteroffensive in February 1562, forced Antoine de Bourbon to convert back to Catholicism in January 1562, leaving Jeanne dAlbret alone at the head of the Calvinist cause, supported by both Calvin and Queen Elizabeth I. During the First Civil War (15621563), Jeanne dAlbret chose strategic neutrality, as Antoine de Bourbon threatened to repudiate her. She fled the court, leaving her son in the care of her husband.When Antoine de Bourbon died on 17 November 1562, Jeanne dAlbret resumed control of her sons education, reinstating his Protestant tutors, although Henry was retained at court away from his mother. From 1563 to 1567, Jeanne dAlbret guaranteed the religious autonomy of Barn, establishing Calvinism. She founded the framework of a unified Calvinist Church by the autumn of 1563. In February 1564, she issued the simultaneum, a declaration of liberty of conscience for all her subjects. Catherine de Mdicis, hoping to pacify the troubles and unite the leaders to the crown, offered Jeanne dAlbret protection from her enemies provided that she join the court.

Jeanne dAlbret resumed the second phase of her reform in 1566 in a more authoritarian manner by reforming morals and purging idolatry from churches in her lands, which led to the Third Civil War (15691570). Jeanne dAlbret then abandoned neutrality and went with her children to join the leaders of the Huguenots, the prince of Cond and Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, at La Rochelle, the center of Huguenot activity. She established a Protestant college and held the first Protestant synod in April 1571, where the Confession of La Rochelle, a uniform creed of the French Reformed Church, was written. Jeanne dAlbret believed in her absolute right over her subjects and showed intolerance with her confirmation of the DArros edict of January 1570, which closed Catholic churches and required obedience to the Calvinist church. In the final stage of her life, Jeanne dAlbret struggled with Catherine de Mdicis, who wanted the alliance of their children, Henry de Navarre and Marguerite de Valois, to guarantee the peace negotiations and stop a French alliance with England. After a difficult marriage treaty, Jeanne dAlbret accepted the conditions, but died suddenly in Paris on 9 June 1572, before the celebration of the marriage. It was believed that she may have been poisoned. Her letters cover her political and religious activism, while her memoirs seek to justify her actions as a leader of the Huguenot cause. Corinne WilsonSee also Marguerite de Navarre; Power, Politics, and Women; Religious Reform and Women. Bibliography Primary Works Albret, Jeanne d. Lettres dAntoine de Bourbon et de Jehanne dAlbret. Edited by de Rochambeau. Paris: Renouard, 1877. Albret, Jeanne d. Mmoires et posies. Edited by Alphonse de Ruble. Geneva: Slatkine, 1970. (Originally published in Paris, 1893.) Secondary Works Bainton, Roland H. Jeanne dAlbret. In Women of the Reformation in France and England. Pages 4373. Boston: Beacon Press, 1973.

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Bryson, David. Queen Jeanne and the Promised Land: Dynasty, Homeland, Religion and Violence in Sixteenth-Century France. Boston: Brill, 1999. Roelker, Nancy Lyman. The Appeal of Calvinism to French Noblewomen in the Sixteenth Century. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (Spring 1972): 391418. Roelker, Nancy Lyman. Queen of Navarre Jeanne dAlbret 15281572. Cambridge, MA:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968.

AlchemyStretching back to antiquity, alchemys long textual tradition is largely male. With only a few exceptions, women appear in the alchemical corpus as symbolic figures, personifications of fundamental alchemical principles, not as authors or practitioners themselves. In the Renaissance, however, alchemical knowledge became accessible to a new range of people, both male and female; as a part of this expansion, a small number of women began to carve out a place as practitioners, patrons, and authors. Initially, women were most likely to participate in practical alchemical operations that verged on medicine or household tasks, such as making cosmetics and dyes. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, female alchemists began to engage in alchemy as a philosophical pursuit, taking their place alongside male natural philosophers in elucidating natures secrets. Alchemy has encompassed a wide variety of ideas and practices throughout its long history, including natural philosophical inquiries into the nature of metals; the production of mineral and metallic medicines; spiritual practices linking changes in matter to changes in the alchemists soul; practical techniques for producing dyes, artificial gemstones, and pearls; and, most famously, the transmutation of metals. In the Renaissance, practical and medicinal alchemy in particular flourished. Practitioners of all sorts took advantage of newly printed and translated alchemical texts, translations, and anthologies, as well as the market for recipes and techniques both to gain access to

Woodcut frontispiece from Marie Meurdracs Accessible and Easy Chemistry for Women, published in 1666. (Othmer Library, CHF)

alchemical knowledge and to sell their expertise in return. Women participated in alchemys sixteenth-century expansion as well, though in largely private, informal ways that historians have yet to trace fully. Because there was no formal training in alchemy in universities, guilds, or colleges, women could access alchemical knowledge in the same way that most men did: by cobbling together an alchemical education from a few vernacular texts, by learning techniques from other practitioners, or perhaps by buying a recipe from

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another peddler of alchemical secrets. Women could also draw on their experience with traditional activities that utilized similar techniques, such as distilling water and cooking. Those who could read or whose social status put them in a scholarly milieu may also have supplemented this kind of household knowledge with a theoretical understanding of alchemical theory and practice. A very small number of women went on to use their alchemical knowledge publicly, authoring texts or pursing employment for wealthy patrons. Most womens alchemical practice before the seventeenth century, however, remains almost invisible, documented not in printed texts, but only in letters, contracts, and other manuscript documents, if at all. These archival traces suggest that in the sixteenth century women did participate informally in alchemy as students, assistants, or practitioners. In England, for instance, Mary Sidney, countess of Pembroke (15611621), was known for her interest in making medicines; although her precise involvement in alchemical projects remains unclear, she might well have joined the alchemical activities of the physicians and scholars associated with her household. In Central Europe, Duchess Sibylla of Wrttemberg (15641612) clearly shared her husband Duke Friedrichs (ca. 15501608) interest in patronizing alchemical projects, for she signed a contract with an alchemist named Andreas Reiche, binding him to teach her and her son the theory and practice of alchemy. Women of more humble backgrounds certainly staffed some of the laboratories set up by wealthier patrons, even as servants or managers. In Bohemia, Salome Scheinpflugerin worked in the laboratory of the Bohemian magnate Wilhelm Rosenberg (15351592) in the 1570s and 1580s. Her fellow alchemists comments suggest that they accorded her a certain amount of authority in managing the laboratory. Such tiny glimpses suggest that women did participate in alchemy in Renaissance Europe, although the full extent and na-

ture of their involvement await further historical research. Two examples from the sixteenth century stand out: Isabella Cortese, whose alchemical secrets first appeared in print in 1561 in Venice under the title I secreti della signora Isabella Cortese (The Secrets of Signora Isabella Cortese), and Anna Maria Zieglerin (ca. 15501575), who worked at the court of Duke Julius of Braunschweig-Wolfenbttel (1528 1589) in the 1570s. Little is known about Cortese other than what appears in I secreti, where she recounted her alchemical education. She evidently learned more from her travels in central Europe than from traditional alchemical texts, which she dismissed as only fictions and riddles (Cortese 1561, 19).The formulaic elements in her autobiography, as well as the uncertain provenance of the book, however, make it a problematic autobiographical source; the text may initially have been a private manuscript intended for family that somehow found its way into a print shop, where it was embellished for the market. However it ended up in print, I secreti was hugely successful, appearing in at least fifteen Venetian editions and one German translation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Corteses book was one of several books of secrets that appeared in Italy in the mid-sixteenth century, revealing practical secrets of nature that appealed to an aristocratic audience, such as how to make perfumes, cosmetics, oils, and distilled waters, as well as how to work with metals. As the only printed book by a female alchemist in the sixteenth century, Corteses book was an anomaly. Although she did not publish, Anna Zieglerin did pursue her own alchemical work at the Northern European court of Duke Julius of BraunschweigWolfenbttel. Zieglerin initially arrived at court with her husband, who came to work as an alchemical assistant there, but she quickly set up her own laboratory and hired at least one assistant. She also completed a short treatise, which contained recipes for a golden oil

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she called lions blood as well as its uses in preparing the philosophers stone, medicines, artificial gemstones, and fertilizing fruit trees. Zieglerins alchemy was particularly focused on fertility and childbirth, suggesting that she was reinterpreting male alchemists efforts to create an artificial human, or homunculus. Zieglerin quickly distinguished herself from the other alchemists at court (including her husband) through her connections to a mysterious adept named Count Carl, who, she claimed, not only had unique alchemical expertise but was also the son of the legendary early sixteenth-century medical practitioner Paracelsus (14931541). Despite initial favorable attention from the ducal court, Zieglerin and her fellow alchemists all found themselves unable to deliver on their promises (including Count Carl, who turned out not to exist after all). The male alchemists were ultimately executed for fraud and treason, while Zieglerin was executed for sorcery and adultery. These highly unusual charges against Zieglerin indicate that the Wolfenbttel authorities found it difficult to comprehend her alchemical practice, forcing it instead into the more familiar categories of magic and witchcraft. Cortese and Zieglerin both seem to be exceptional in that they sought a kind of publicity for their work that most women who pursed alchemy in the sixteenth century did not. In the seventeenth century, however, a number of learned women included alchemy in their scholarly pursuits. Like their learned male counterparts, Kristina Wasa, queen of Sweden (16261689), Marie le Jars de Gournay (1565 1645), and Marie Meurdrac (fl. 1666) all understood alchemy as a path to the knowledge of nature and included it in their studies. Women certainly continued to pursue practical alchemical projects and to assist their husbands and brothers, but by the mid-seventeenth century they could stake a public claim to be alchemical philosophers as well. Tara Nummedal

See also Gournay, Marie de; the subheading The Practice of Pharmacology and Laywomen (under Medicine and Women). Bibliography Primary Works Cortese, Isabella. I secreti della signora Isabella Cortese, deqvali si contengono cose minerale, medicinali, arteficiose, & alchimiche, & molte de larte profumatoria . . . Con altri bellissimi secret aggiunti. . . . Venice: Giovanni Variletto, 1561. De Gournay, Marie Le Jars de. Apology for the Woman Writing and Other Works. Translated and edited by Richard Hillman and Colette Quesnel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Secondary Works kerman, Susanna. Queen Christina of Sweden and Her Circle:The Transformation of a SeventeenthCentury Philosophical Libertine. Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1991. Eamon,William. Science and Popular Culture in Sixteenth Century Italy:The Professors of Secrets and Their Books. Sixteenth Century Journal 16 (Winter 1985): 471485. Eamon,William. Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Hunter, Lynette, and Sarah Hutton, eds. Women, Science and Medicine 15001700: Mothers and Sisters of the Royal Society. Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton, 1997. Nummedal,Tara. Alchemical Reproduction and the Career of Anna Maria Zieglerin. Ambix 48 (July 2001): 5668. Patai, Raphael. Maria the JewessFounding Mother of Alchemy. Ambix 29 (November 1982): 177197. Tosi, Lucia. Marie Meudrac: Paracelsian Chemist and Feminist. Ambix 48 (July 2001): 6982.

AmazonsAmazons appear with some frequency in late medieval and early modern literature, from Christine de Pizans The Book of the City of Ladies (1405) to Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream (1595) to Thomas Heywoods Exemplary Lives . . . of the Nine Most Worthy Women (1640). Amazons grew in popularity in the sixteenth century not only because of the revival of interest in classical mythology and

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literature but also because of the stories explorers of the Americas and Africa told of Amazonian encounters in the New World; the topical interest resulted in the depiction of the exotic Amazon queen and her female community in dramatic productions, poems, prose romances, and masques. The representation of Amazons comprised several common features: Amazons were alleged to live in self-sufficient, all-female societies; they were reputed to be warrior women who removed one breast in order to use weapons more skillfully; they mated with men periodically, primarily for reproductive purposes; they raised their daughters but abandoned their sons, killed them, or forced them to perform domestic duties for the Amazon community.Any of these behaviors would have challenged the paradigm of the ideal woman in early modern England; collectively, they depicted a model of female monstrosity. Some authors were drawn to the exotic otherness of the Amazon women, while others were fascinated by their transgressive attention to military prowess rather than domestic matters. On occasion, British writers evoked the Amazon myth to represent their nation and its female regent as formidable in war, but for the most part even Elizabethan iconography avoided Amazonian connections. In general, the figure of the Amazon was appropriated to represent the violation of the natural order, and as such she was both a fascinating and frightening figure in the early modern imagination. One exception to the predominant view of Amazons as threatening comes from the French woman writer, Christine de Pizan. In Pizans The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), the Amazonian community is upheld as exemplary for its resourcefulness and cooperation. In her revisionist history of women, Amazon women exist peaceably within the boundaries of their own government but are also capable of negotiating successfully with the threats posed by male forces. For Pizan, what is most striking and ad-

mirable about the Amazons is the orderly and reasonable governance of the female community. In contrast to Pizans positive depiction of a well-structured Amazonian government is the work of Protestant reformer John Knox, whose polemic against women on the throne, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), cites the Amazons as emblematic of the dangers of female sovereignty. Knox was responding in particular to the many contemporary examples of queenship in England and on the Continent that he found abhorrent: Catherine de Mdicis, Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots), and Mary Tudor.Although Knox was opposed to the Catholicism of these female rulers, he also insisted that their positions of power represented a monstrous perversion of the natural order in the tradition of the Amazons. Edmund Spensers epic poem, The Fairie Queene (15901596), illustrates even further the association between Amazons and the exercise of female power. Both the figures of the good, just warrior Britomart and the monstrous Radigund are Amazonlike, suggesting the dichotomous implications of the Amazonian figure who could demonstrate strength and justice but who could also threaten the natural order. In a version of the Hercules-Omphale legend, Spenser describes a roomful of weakened men who are ordered to keep spinning under the direction of Amazonian women, their participation in domestic duties a sign of their emasculation. Ben Jonsons Jacobean The Masque of Beauty (1609) presents an interesting variation on the Amazonian motif because the star role of the Amazon queen in the drama was played, according to Jonson, by Queen Anne of Denmark herself; as both performer and patron of the work,Anne was implicitly endorsing the association between her position of powerhowever secondary it was to that of King James I of Englandand the Amazon figure. In Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream (1595) and again in The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613), a play on which he collaborated

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with John Fletcher, the Amazon represents no such threat to orthodox patriarchy. Hippolyta, the Amazon queen who figures in both plays, was, according to many legends, conquered and courted by Theseus. Shakespeares Hippolyta does not represent female agency, as in Pizan, nor a political threat, as in Knox; rather, she is depicted as a relatively passive character whose power has been suggested in the play but then erased, as is the female community she represents. If many of the early modern works exploiting the Amazon legends reveal a cultural anxiety about female rule, other works reflect unease about constructions of sexuality. Sir Walter Raleigh, an enthusiastic advocate of exploration, wrote of the Amazons after his expedition to South America in search of the gold treasures of El Dorado. In the Discovery of Guiana (1596), Raleigh is interested in locating Amazons geographically and historically, a theme he treats more fully in The History of the World (1614). Both works are preoccupied with the sexual and reproductive practices of the Amazon community that imply control and agency on the part of the women. Sir Philip Sidneys pastoral romance, The Arcadia (ca. 1580), also suggests that the Amazonian figure was associated with an unnatural sexuality. In this work, a central male character disguises himself as an Amazon to gain closer access to the woman he wishes to court; cross-dressing as a seduction strategy is not uncommon in the romance genre, but the particular form of transvestism implies a connection between Amazonian representation and emasculation. During the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Amazons continue to appear in literary texts, but it was the early modern period that found the figure of the Amazon particularly compelling. Jo Eldridge CarneySee also Androgyne; Hermaphrodite as Image and Idea; Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender; Querelle des Femmes;Transvestism.

Bibliography Schwartz, Kathryn. Tough Love: Amazon Encounters in the English Renaissance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. Shepherd, Simon. Amazons and Warrior Women:Varieties of Feminism in Seventeenth-Century Drama. New York: St. Martins Press, 1981.

Amboise, Catherine d (ca. 14821550)French author, literary patron Daughter of Charles I dAmboise and Catherine de Chauvigny, Catherine dAmboise belonged to the powerful and wealthy dAmboise family. She was married three times: first to Christophe de Tournon who left her widowed at age seventeen, then in 1501 to Philibert de Beaujeu (d. 1540), and lastly, at age 65, to Louis de Cleves. Biographical information comes chiefly from her writings: Book of the Prudent and Imprudent and Complaint against Fortune, both in prose, and Devout Epistles, in verse. Book of the Prudent, dated 1 July 1509, offers an illustrated catalogue of men and women from history, mythology, and the Bible, noted for their prudence or lack thereof. Prudence is recognized through adversity, and, while Catherine seeks consolation in writing of her own personal tragedies (the loss of her parents, her first husband, and their only child), she underscores the difficulties faced by women authors: limited access to learning, inexperience in writing, and feminine modesty, which curtails discussion of dishonorable subjects.These difficulties justify the charitable reception of womens work, just as Catherines gender, along with her God-given intelligence and reason, leads her to recount the good that has come from women. Catherine declares that she regularly retires to her study to compose lamentations and feminine regrets, but her next two works probably date from after 1525. The autobiographical Complaint against Fortune relates how the author (dame pasmee) faints upon receiving

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sad news (of her nephews death in 1525). She is resuscitated by Dame Raison, who advises her not to accuse Fortune but to accept adversity as part of Gods order. Raison accompanies Catherine to the Park of Divine Love, where she finds Patience seated at Tree of the Cross. This allegorical journey may have inspired the penitential verses called Devout Epistles. For the first epistle to Christ, Catherine apparently rewrote a text that Jean Bouchet had dedicated to Gabrielle de Bourbon (d. 1516).The second epistle to the Virgin concludes with an unusual chant royal, which is followed by a third epistle assuring Christs grace and pardon, as depicted in the accompanying miniature by a ring brought from heaven to the kneeling author. Like her illustrious uncle, Cardinal-Archbishop George dAmboise (d. 1510), Catherine was a patron, notably to her nephew, the poet Michel dAmboise. Catherines works are preserved in deluxe, abundantly illustrated manuscripts displaying her name and arms and depicting the author. Probably intended as gifts for family members, especially her niece and heir, Antoinette dAmboise, they reflect a strong tradition in early Renaissance France of aristocratic women writing, illustrating, and dedicating their works. Mary Beth WinnSee also the subheading Literary Patronage (under Literary Culture and Women). Bibliography Primary Works Catherine dAmboise. La Complainte de la Dame pasmee contre Fortune. 3 manuscripts: Paris, Bibliothque Nationale de France, n.a.fr. 19738; SMAF Ms. 979, on deposit at the Bibliothque Nationale de France; and London, in private hands, sold by Sam Fogg. An edition by Ariane Bergeron is forthcoming, based on her thesis (2002) for the Ecole des Chartes, Paris. Catherine dAmboise. Le Livre des Prudens. Paris: Bibliothque de lArsenal, Ms. 2037. Catherine dAmboise. Les Devotes Epistres. Paris: Bibliothque Nationale de France, Ms. fr. 2282. Catherine dAmboise. Les Devotes Epistres. Edited by J.-J. Bourass.Tours: Mame, 1861.

Catherine dAmboise. Les Devotes Epistres. Edited by Yves Giraud, with introduction, transcription, and reproduction of original manuscript on facing pages. Friburg: ditions Universitaires, 2002. Catherine dAmboise. Les Devotes Epistres. Edited by Catherine M. Mller, with substantial introduction and notes. Montreal: Ceres (Inedita et rara: 16), 2002. Catherine dAmboise. Posies. Bibliothque Nationale de France, fr. 2282. Secondary Works Berriot-Salvadore, Evelyne. Les Femmes dans la socit franaise de la Renaissance. Geneva: Droz, 1990. Orth, Myra D. Dedicating Women: Manuscript Culture in the French Renaissance, and the Cases of Catherine dAmboise and Anne de Graville. Journal of the Early Book Society 1, no. 1 (1997): 1739. Souchal, G. Le Mcnat de la famille dAmboise. Bull. Soc. Antiq. de lOuest et des Muses de Poitiers part II, XIII, no. 4 (1976): 567612.

Andreini, Isabella (15621604)Italian playwright, actor, poet Isabella Andreinis renown was owed not only to her great talent and erudition but also to her keen ability to manage her public image. She was born in Padua in 1562 into the Venetian Canali family, and at age fourteen she joined the well-known commedia dellarte company, the Gelosi. In 1578 she married a fellow member of the company, Francesco Andreini, with whom she performed and managed the troupes activities. Her correspondence reveals that she was able to negotiate delicate political situations for procuring patronage, and, because Andreinis creative life is integrally tied to financial concerns, her career required her to participate in what have traditionally been perceived as the early modern males social spaces. Andreini is first remembered as a celebrated actor. With the theater troupe the Gelosi, she most frequently performed the role of female love lead. When invited to perform in allfemale environments, she would also play male roles such as the character Aminta in Tassos

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Isabella Andreini, Italian playwright, actor, and poet. Engraving by unknown artist. (Maria Bandini Buti, Enciclopedia biografica e bibliografica italiana: poetesse e scrittrici)

play by the same name. Although she and her company became closely associated with the Gonzaga court at Mantua, Andreini enjoyed fame in all of the important courts of Italy and beyond the Alps at the French court of Henry IV and Queen Marie de Mdicis in 1603 1604. It was on her journey returning home in 1604 that she died in Lyon on 10 June, during the birth of what would have been her eighth child. Because professional actresses of the period had a social status not different from that of prostitutes, Andreini faced a challenge in crafting her public image as a virtuous woman. Her choices in her stage career and literary production are notably marked by their humanist themes, the stamp of what was considered high culture. Some of Andreinis most famous roles were in a series of plays under her own name, Lucky Isabella, Jealous Isabella, and, the bestknown, Isabellas Madness. Although these works belonged in great part to the entertain-

ing genre of commedia dellarte, her acting eschewed the buffoonery of the so-called vulgar comics. Her stage roles and literary production combined humanist values such as neo-Platonic meditation on the soul with popular Christian discourses of marriage and family. Andreinis literary publications demonstrate a familiarity with classical sources, often citing Aristotle, Plato, or the Greek and Roman playwrights directly. Her published works include about five hundred poems, one pastoral play, correspondence, and a collection of scenes for comic plays. Here too, her works often advocate the centrality of marriage and motherhood to the health of society. It is in fact her adherence to the precepts of the virtuous woman in her writings and in her personal life that prompted many writers throughout the centuries to praise her as a model to be emulated by young women. It is also this fact that might make some twenty-first-century scholars pause before hailing her work as protofeminist. For example, her pastoral play Mirtilla, which in part demonstrates some interesting rewritings of traditionally misogynist scenes, concludes with all of its female characters being cajoled or persuaded into marrying men that they do not seem to desire. Furthermore, her well-known missive, Letter on the Birth of Women, argues that daughters bring more happiness to fathers than do sons since women are submissive and are content to live in the sweet prison of the household. Both her play and her letters at times might suggest a certain critique of the limited roles of women, but they stop short of the direct social criticism found in other contemporary women writers. We should not forget, however, that it is precisely because Andreini was able to portray herself as a virtuous woman that she was able to assert her career as a woman actress and writer in the most prominent circles of the time. Through her staged mastery of language utterance alone, Andreini perforce demands that the audience recognize a female body and female voice that controls the logos, the long

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argued territory of men. This relationship between language and the discourse surrounding women is most interesting if we consider her best-known comic work, Isabellas Madness, performed for the wedding of Ferdinand I de Medici and Christine of Lorraine.The characters madness is caused when she is abducted by a young man, and it is characterized in two phases. In one moment Isabella sings French chansons and speaks in foreign languages, while in the other she imitates the dialects of the fellow characters on stage. Madness, which is a common topos in commedia dellarte, is thus marked by linguistic confusion, a confusion that allowed for the demonstration of Andreinis virtuosic linguistic and vocal skills as well as providing a chance for the actress to address the French bride in her own language. When Isabellas character regains her senses by drinking magic waters, she delivers a discourse on the sublime and Platonic nature of love. If madness opened the space for performative virtuosity, her return to more fashionable themes on humanist thought allowed Andreini to demonstrate her own exceptional learning, bolster the image of performers and women, and finally appeal to the contemporary tastes of Italian courts, thus securing continued support and patronage. It is this image of erudite thinker and virtuous woman that marks Andreinis life. She was praised during her own life and for centuries after in Christian terms as a mother, devout wife, and woman of virtue while she was also regarded as an artist and student of classical thought. In recognition of her achievements, Andreini was invited to become a member of the Academy of the Intenti of Pavia in 1601, and, in that same year, her first book of poetry was published. The portrait that accompanies the frontispiece of her Rhymes shows Andreini dressed as a member of the high bourgeoisie with eyes cast sideways, depicting the gaze of a woman aware of the subversive theatricality of her person and her work. For example, we see in the first and most famous poem in her collection, one of the ear-

liest literary examples of a woman artist who expresses the link between illusory stage performance, poetry, and life. In an age slow to slough off the influence of Petrarchism, Andreini begins her collection of poems not with an apology of her amorous verse, but with a warning of the dangers of artifice and art:If anyone should ever my neglected verses read, let him not believe in these pretended passions, For, on stage, I am accustomed to treating imagined loves with untrue affects. (1601)

This attention to theatricality and artifice associates Andreinis poetry with the baroque works of contemporary poets such as Marino and Tasso, who were admirers of the poetess. Her verse also contains large numbers of poems written about a female object of desire. Though this has often been called Andreinis unique appropriation of the male voice, we may view these verses within the theatrical context that Andreini herself has declared, one that calls attention to her lifetime on a stage of feigned passions andto borrow her own word from the same poemrepresentations of human emotion. Though her poetry and correspondence are rich and quite extensive, it is her pastoral play that stands as Andreinis literary masterpiece. Mirtilla is a fully scripted play that tells of the desires of shepherds and nymphs, ending in the conjugal pairings of three couples. Andreinis pastoral is loosely based on Tassos Aminta, yet the seasoned commedia dellarte actress chooses to stage action that Tasso left to narration. Most notably, Andreini stages the attempted rape of the nymph Filli by the Satyr and effectively reverses the female role of sexual object into one of shrewd manipulator of seduction and power. Andreini composes a highly dramatic and comedic scene that engages both male and female bodies in the erotic tensions of the audiences gaze. As the Satyr gets closer to undressing and violating the nymph, she outwits him by suggesting that she wishes to tie him to a

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tree and kiss and caress his body. The shrewd nymph, a role famously played by Andreini herself, then binds the powerful Satyr and leaves him to lament his emotional and physical helplessness. Andreinis literary production thus oscillates between conventional and radical representations of women and ultimately escapes an easy classification. Finally, it is in the scene in Mirtilla where nymphs compete for mens attention in a singing competition that we may find Andreinis truest depiction of her career. Such a competition is a gendered reversal of the chivalric tournaments, where knights battled for the kiss of their ladies, but it may also in some manner mirror the real-life situations faced by Andreini as a diva of the stage in which her company would perform multiple plays with different leading ladies; for we know that when Isabella performed at the wedding of the Medici duke to his French bride, she would have been in direct competition with the other show produced that same weekthis one led by Vittoria Piisimi. Andreini knew through experience that women in the early modern period were judged based on their talents, merits, and reputation. She thus challenges our understanding of womens history in that she provides an example of a woman who demonstrates the necessity of women to be professionally trained, educated, and talented in a competitive and public world. Hers was a tenuous position of performer both on and off stage, where she operated within the social and economic spheres of men by portraying herself as both an erudite humanist and a conventional Christian wife without seeking to reconcile one with the other. Gerry MilliganSee also Literary Culture and Women; Theater and Women Actors, Playwrights, and Patrons. Bibliography Primary Works Andreini, Isabella. La Mirtilla: A Pastoral. Translated by Julie Campbell.Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002.

Andreini, Isabella. Lettere. Edited by Francesco Andreini.Venice, 1607. (Published many times after 1607.) Andreini, Isabella. The Madness of Isabella. In Scenarios of the Commedia dellArte. Translated by Henry Salerno. New York: Limelight Editions, 1996. Andreini, Isabella. Mirtilla, favola pastorale. Verona, 1588; Ferrara, 1590;Venice, 1590; Milan, 1605. Andreini, Isabella. Rime. Milan, 1601; Paris, 1603; Milan, 1605. Stortoni, Laura Anna, and Mary Prentice Lillie. Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance. Pages 221249. New York: Italica Press, 1997. Secondary Works Dersofi, Nancy. Isabella Andreini. In Italian Women Writers. Edited by Rinaldina Russell, 1825.Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. Macneil, Anne. Music and Women of the Commedia dellArte in the Late Sixteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Tylus, Jane.Women at the Windows: Commedia dellarte and Theatrical Practice in Early Modern Italy. Theatre Journal no. 49 (1997): 323342.

AndrogyneThe most familiar source of the figure of the androgyne is the myth recounted by the comic poet Aristophanes in Platos Symposium describing a quasi human creature, four-armed, four-legged, with two faces and two sets of genitals (Symposium, 189e192b). These early quadruped-humans existed in three forms: those who were entirely male; those who were entirely female; and those who were half male and half female. Thus, according to Platos myth, there were originally three sexes: the male, the female, and the hermaphrodite or androgyne. When these four-legged protohumans tried to attack the gods, Zeus ordered them cut in half to reduce their strength, while he moved their genitals from the backs to the fronts of their bodies so that they could procreate in their reduced state. But these creatures, now humans, longed to be reunited with their other halves: the male-female creatures sought union with the opposite sex, while the descendants of the male-male and female-

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female quadrupeds yearned to be made one again with members of their own sex. Poets in the Renaissance expected their audience to be familiar with Platos androgyne, and they used it as a metaphor of the joining of lover and beloved, bringing two bodies together as they were meant to be according to Aristophanes myth. These poetic references, all by male poets, are almost all to male-female pairings. In such cases, the androgyne includes the beloved more as a marker of the poets desire than as a way of depicting the woman who is immediately subsumed in the new androgyne. The latter is how the androgyne is evoked by a female poet, Louise Lab, in the Debate of Folly and Love.There, Apollo, defending Love, explains that man requires woman who Causes him to have two bodies, four arms, and two souls more perfect than the first men in Platos Symposium. The term androgyne was also applied to a lesbian couple celebrated in French literature: Diane, a noblewoman of the highest order, and Anne, a lady of lower rank.The French Renaissance poets Pierre de Ronsard, Etienne Jodelle, and Pontus de Tyard wrote about their love; in each case the male poet spoke in the voice of Anne, declaring her love for Diane. In Ronsards elegy, the figure of the androgyne marks the friendship of two women declared to be pure (1948, l. 9) and holy (1948, l. 10).The poem is equivocal, seemingly depicting their bond as a deep friendship rather than a homoerotic relationship, although the total effect is that it was both.The body is subordinate to the friendship that makes them one. Their same shared body might be intended merely as a metaphor of the unity created by their friendship.The apparent erotic associations of a reference to my mistress are perhaps blurred by the difference in the social standing of the two women made explicit at the end of the poem (1948, ll. 129130); the word might apply to a servant/mistress relationship as well as to an erotic one.Their friendship is earlier compared to that of Orestes and Pylades, a type of true

friendship. Building on this comparison, Anne declares herself ready to die for her friend.The androgyne references (half, same shared body) are expressions of the intensity of this friendship, preparing its ultimate statement in the evocation of the Platonic notion of the fusion or exchange of lovers souls, which by the time this poem was published was heavily charged with sexual implications from its frequent other (heterosexual) contemporary literary uses. The names of Anne and Diane, presumably the same two women, reappear in a sonnet by Etienne Jodelle, whom he also associates with the androgyne. Summarizing Platos rendering of the meaning of the myth of the androgyne, Jodelle passes from male-male couplings to heterosexual ones and finally to lesbian pairings. Again, the audience is expected to be familiar with these choices and the speaker is one of the women. Jodelles sonnet is more openly homoerotic than Ronsards elegy, taking no pains to veil the eroticism in a system of equivocations: we are dealing with the ardent fires of a total love. Both poems refer to the possible anagram of Anne in Diane as a kind of marker of the physical joining of the two. The androgyne also can be traced to another source, of which the Renaissance was equally aware. The Bible, in Genesis 1:27, declares: God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. Since this precedes the creation of Eve, there is a tradition predating Christianity and taken up by early Christian fathers, interpreting the hesitation between singular and plural as marking an androgyne, a single human creature containing both genders.The passage, including the shift from singular to plural and the declaration that humankind was created in the image of God is echoed in Genesis 5:12:In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; Male and female created he them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam in the day when they were created. Gender

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rather than sex is at issue in this tradition: man here is understood as having been made in the image of God, who is both immaterial and contains all things, including male and female. Genesis 1 is an authorizing text for the spiritual androgyne, as a state of prelapsarian man with greater resemblance to the image of God. Once Eve is created, there are two separately sexed beings who through marriage are to be one flesh (Gen. 2:24), a familiar image repeated several times in the New Testament. Genesis 2 is the authorizing text for the Mosaic androgyne as a marriage figure.The marital androgyne serves as a metaphor binding married women to their husbands, and, like the usual poetic use of the Platonic androgyne, it does not have much to tell us about women. In contrast, the spiritual androgyne of Genesis 1 was equally available to Renaissance women and men, creating a possibility, a likeness to the image of God, to which all humans had equal rights of access. Marguerite de Navarre provides perhaps the most moving use of the idea in her poem The Prisons (1989, ll. 921930), where she speaks of the essence of God reflected in the divine androgyne, using it to demonstrate womens (as well as mens) access to the divine. Marian RothsteinSee also Hermaphrodite as Idea and Image; Marguerite de Navarre; Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender; Querelle des Femmes; Sappho and the Sapphic Tradition. Bibliography Primary Works Jodelle, Etienne. uvres Compltes. 2 vols. Edited by Enea Balmas, vol. 1.379. Paris: Gallimard, 19651968. Lab, Louise. The Debate of Folly and Love. Translated by Anne-Marie Bourbon. New York: Peter Lang, 2000. Lab, Louise. uvres Compltes. Edited by Franois Rigolot. Paris: Flammarion, 1986. Marguerite de Navarre. Les Prisons. Edited by Simone Glasson. Geneva: Droz, 1978. Marguerite de Navarre. Prisons. Translated by Claire Lynch Wade. New York: Peter Lang, 1989. Plato, Symposium.

Ronsard, Pierre de. Elegies, mascarades et bergerie (1565). In uvres Compltes. Edited by Paul Laumonier, 13: 170176. Paris: Didier, 1948. Secondary Works Merrill, Robert Valentine, and Robert J. Clements. Platonism in French Renaissance Poetry. New York: New York University Press, 1957. Rothstein, Marian. The Mutations of the Androgyne: Its Functions in Early Modern France. Sixteenth Century Journal 34, no. 2 (2003): 409437.

Anguissola, Sofonisba (b. ca. 15321625)Italian painter born in Cremona Sofonisba Anguissola is best classified as the first great woman artist of the Renaissance (Perlingieri 1992). Like her younger contemporary, the Bolognese painter Lavinia Fontana, Anguissola was praised by contemporary theorists, including Georgio Vasari, for her skill in portraiture. Unlike most women artists of the early modern period, however, Anguissola was recognized not only for her technical competence (diligenza, a category of praise commonly awarded to women), but also for her inspired ability to invest her subjects with lifea creative capacity that was coded masculine and thus usually reserved for the greatest male practitioners of the visual arts.Yet Vasari considered Anguissolas portraits as truly alive (vive), lacking nothing except speech, and executed so well that they appear to be breathing and absolutely alive (Jacobs 1997, 51). Like many women artists and writers of her time, Anguissola enjoyed the strong support of her father. Amilcare Anguissola, a nobleman and connoisseur of art, saw to the education of his six daughters, Sofonisba, Elena, Lucia, Europa, Minerva, and Anna Maria, in addition to their brother, Asdrubale. Lucia, Europa, and Anna Maria Anguissola were also known to contemporaries for their abilities as painters, but to a lesser degree than their elder sister. Most artists of the Renaissance era, male and

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Sofonisba Anguissola, Italian painter. Self-portrait. (Palazzo Spada/Library of Congress)

female, were the children of artists. Anguissola presents a different paradigm: she was a noblewoman who did not use her painting as a pastime or accomplishment, but instead conducted herself as a professional. Although the Anguissola family of Cremona was noble, their finances were in a perilous state by the time Amilcare Anguissola began to think of his sons patrimony and his daughters dowries.The education of all his daughters may have enhanced their marriage prospects, supplementing their less than optimal financial dowries with cultural cachet. Several scholars have suggested in particular that part of Amilcares motivation for encouraging Sofonisba to make a professional career out of her evident talent was the hope that she would be able to help restore the family resources. In the event, Sofonisba did use part of her salary from the Spanish court to support her family back in Cremona.After her fathers death in 1573, Anguissola assisted her younger brother Asdrubale, returning him to

solvency when he found himself in especially dire straits (1578) and later (15891590) gave him an annual stipend of 800 lire (Garrard 1994, 618, n. 107). In 1606, she requested that her lifetime pension from the Spanish crown be transferred to Asdrubale (Perlingieri 1992, 193). Amilcare arranged for Sofonisba and her sister Elena to study with Bernardino Campi from about 1545 to 1549; thereafter Sofonisba studied with Bernardino Gatti (il Sojaro). Under Campis guidance, she developed her facility with the mannerist style, which characterizes much of her oeuvre. Anguissolas studies with Gatti sharpened her taste for genre scenes, inventive approaches to portraiture, and an anecdotal mode of visual storytelling aesthetic choices that set her work apart from the sometimes stifling formality attendant to Mannerism (DBI 1961, 322). Anguissolas father also corresponded with Michelangelo concerning her artistic education. Several of Amilcares letters attest that the illustrious artist served informally as her instructor and also that he came to admire her work. In 1557, Amilcare wrote to Michelangelo requesting that he send one of his drawings to Sofonisba so that she may color it in oil, with the obligation to return it to you faithfully finished by her own hand (Garrard 1994, 614, n. 100). One of her own drawings, Asdrubale Bitten by a Crab, was a study piece that Michelangelo suggested (Hochman 1993, 72). In 1558, Amilcare wrote again to Michelangelo expressing his gratitude that, such an excellent gentleman, the most virtuous above all others, deigns to praise and judge the paintings done by my daughter Sofonisba (Garrard 1994, 614615, n. 100). In addition,Amilcare took pains early in his daughters career to publicize her talent. In 1556, he sent two of her self-portraits to the duke of Ferrara. In 1558, he invited the writer Annibal Caro to visit his home and loaned him one of her self-portraits. Anguissola received numerous commissions during the course of her career. Her most notable patron

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was King Philip II of Spain, who hired her as a court portraitist in 1559. She moved to Madrid about 1560 and remained at her post as portraitist and lady-in-waiting until around 1580, enjoying not only the kings sponsorship in the abstract, but considerable financial remuneration. Her annual pension was 100 ducats (Garrard 1994, 618, n. 107). In addition, Philip arranged Anguissolas marriage (1572) to Fabrizio Moncada, a native of Palermo and the brother of Francesco II, viceroy of Sicily. The queen, Elizabeth of Valois, provided Anguissola with a dowry of three thousand ducats (Murphy 2003, 38). Widowed around 1580, Anguissola intended to return to her native Cremona. On her journey homeward, however, she met the Genovese nobleman Orazio Lomellini, whom she soon married. Established in Genoa by 1584, Anguissola became an important salonnire in that city, hosting at the Lomellini palazzo both artists and famous literary figures (DBI 1961, 323 and Garrard 1994, 618). She spent the final years of her long life in Palermo where, in 1623, the portraitist Anthony Van Dyck met her. He has left an affecting description of this remarkable career woman, whom he greatly admired, which reveals that even as a nonagenarian and nearly blind, Anguissola retained her memory and sharp wit (Garrard 1994, 577, n. 43).

WorksAnguissolas family portraits and self-portraits constitute a significant portion of her oeuvre. Paintings featuring her family members include Portrait of a Nun (1551; her sister Elena; London,Yarborough Collection), Portrait of Asdrubale (ca. 1556; Cremona: Museo Civico ala Ponzone), Portrait of a Lady (ca. 1556; probably her mother, Bianca Ponzone Anguissola; Cremona: Museo Civico ala Ponzone), and The Family Group (ca.1558; Minerva,Amilcare, and Asdrubale Anguissola; Niva, Nivaagaards Malerisamling). Anguissolas most famous painting, The Chess Game or Anguissola Sisters Play-

ing Chess (1555; Poznan, Museum Narodowe), is both a family portrait and genre scene. This work has elicited much scholarly interest, in part because it represents a striking typological departure: rather than depicting her three noble sisters and their nurse with traditional feminine props such as needlework, prayerbooks, or pets, she shows them engaged in an intellectual game. In the same vein, her Old Woman Studying the Alphabet Instructed by a Girl (1550s; Florence, Uffizi Gallery) portrays women edifying themselves. Anguissolas self-portraits similarly emphasize her own diverse talents. She depicts herself holding the painters tools (1552; Florence: Uffizi Gallery); playing the clavichord (ca. 15551556; Naples: Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte; and 1561; Althorp: Collection Earl Spencer); reading (1550s; drawing in black chalk; Florence: Uffizi); and holding medallions (ca. 1555; Boston: Museum of Fine Arts) or books with Latin inscriptions. Her earliest securely dated self-portrait (1554; Vienna: Kunsthistoriches Museum) depicts the artist holding a book open to a page that reads, in Latin, Sophonisba Anguissola virgo seipsam fecit (Sophonisba Anguissola, a maiden, painted this image of herself). Through these devices, Anguissola underscored her participation in artistic, musical, and literary culture. She also contravened gender assumptions concerning female sensuality and irrationality by emphasizing her sobriety and self-mastery in her selfportraits: she usually appears with tightly bound, unornamented hair and wearing highcollared black dresses in the conservative Spanish style (Garrard 1994, 583586, 594595). As Mary Garrard has shown, moreover, the double portrait called Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola (1550s; Siena: Pinacoteca Nazionale) can be seen to mimic tropes of female inferiority by destabilizing the subjectobject relationship (Garrard 1994, 556564). Anguissola continued to paint her own image well into her nineties. Her Self-Portrait (ca. 1610; Bern: Gottfried Keller Collection) em-

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phasizes once again her status as a woman of letters and client of the Spanish crown. Commissioned by Philip III, who continued to pay her the lifetime pension that his father had granted to her, this portrait shows Anguissola holding in one hand a letter addressed to His Catholic Majesty and in the other a book, which she keeps open with one finger to mark her place (Perlingieri 1992, 193194). Her final Self-Portrait (ca. 1620; Niva: Nivaagards Art Museum) constitutes a subtle meditation on her age and increasing frailty. In the course of her long career, Anguissola worked steadily as a professional portraitist. She painted intellectual men (Portrait of a Dominican Astronomer, 1555; whereabouts unknown), artists (Portrait of Giorgio Giulio Clovio, 1578; Mentana: Zeri Collection), and clerics (Portrait of a Dominican Monk, 1556; Brescia: Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo; Portrait of a Monk, ca. 1556; England: Private Collection). She was also a popular portraitist among men and women of the nobility. Her works in this genre, most of which belong to her Spanish period, include Portrait of Massimiliano Stampa (1557; Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery); Portrait of Don Sebastian of Portugal (1572; Madrid: Fundacin Casa de Alba); several portraits of Queen Isabel de Valois (ca. 1561; Milan: Pinacoteca de Brera; 1561, Vienna: Kunsthistoriches Museum; 1563 1565; Madrid: Prado Museum); Portrait of Don Carlos (ca. 1560; Madrid: Prado Museum); Portrait of Queen Anne of Austria (ca. 1570; Glasgow: The Stirling Maxwell Collection, Pollok House, Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries); Portrait of the Infantas Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela (ca. 15691570; London: Buckingham Palace, Royal Collection); Portrait of Margarita Gonzaga (1571; Derbyshire: Captain Patrick Drury-Lowe Collection); Portrait of Doa Mara Minrique de Lara y Pernstein and One of Her Daughters (ca. 1574; Prague: Central Gallery of Bohemia); Portrait of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia (ca. 1578; Madrid: Prado Museum); and Portrait of Philip II (Madrid ca. 1551: Prado Museum).

Anguissola also made several contributions in the field of religious painting. These works include her Holy Family (1559; Bergamo: Accademia Carrara); Madonna Nursing Her Child (1588: Budapest: Museum of Fine Arts); Holy Family with Saints Anne and John (1592; Florida: Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami); and Piet (1550s; Milan: Pinacoteca di Brera). The successful career of Sofonisba Anguissola attests the degree to which ambitious early modern women were able to make their mark on contemporary culture. One of Anguissolas distinctive achievements, as Mary Garrard has argued, was to present herself in such a way that she avoided both the dismissive category only a woman and the equally problematic category of the exceptional woman. In Garrards words, Anguissola fashioned herself with not so much virility as to offend, but enough to stake her serious claim on culture (Garrard 1994, 588). She also set an example for painting as a socially acceptable profession for women, an example that encouraged other women artists of her era (Pagden 1995, 10; Perlingieri 1992, 210). No less important, Anguissola pioneered psychological intimacy in portraiture (Perlingieri 1992, 210). Anguissola enjoyed widespread recognition from artists, art critics, and humanists. In addition to encomia from writers like Vasari and Caro, her appearance alongside other famous women in the encyclopedias of female biography that poured out of the Italian presses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reified her legacy. One male biographer noted that Sofonisba not only created the most wonderful and beautiful things with her brush, but also desired to write with her pen (since she was very learned) certain things, which have been much praised and appreciated by virtuosi (Chiesa 1620, sig. U7r). Another biographer classified her in his collection of 845 famous women as a musician, writer and above all an exceptionally fine painter (musica, letterata, e soprattuto rarissima pittrice); he devoted four pages to her transcategorical excellence (Ribera 1609, sig.

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Rr2r et seq.).Testimony of this kind reinforced the image that Anguissola fashioned for herself: she was not only a woman and indeed not only a painter, but also a Renaissance woman in the fullest sense of the term. Sarah Gwyneth RossSee also Art and Women; Fetti, Lucrina; Fontana, Lavinia; Gentileschi, Artemisia; Nelli, Plautilla. Bibliography Primary Works Chiesa, Franceso Agostino della. Theatro delle donne letterate, con un breve discorso della preminenza, e perfettione del sesso donnesco. Mondovi, Italy: Giovanni Gislandi e Gio,Tomaso Rossi, 1620. Ribera, Pietro Paolo de. Le glorie immortali detrionfi, et heroiche imprese dottocento quarantacinque Donne Illustri antiche, e moderne. Venice: Evangelista Deuchino, 1609. Secondary Works Dizionario biografico delgi Italiani. Rome: Istituto dellEnciclopedia Italiana, 1961. Garrard, Mary D. Heres