Full Description
The anthology of original sources from c.1400 to 1650, translated from Italian or Latin, and accompanied by introductions and bibliographies, is concerned with women's varied involvement with the visual arts and material culture of their day. The reader gains a sense of women not only as patrons of architecture, painting, sculpture and the applied arts, but as users of art both on special occasions, like civic festivities or pilgrimages, and in everyday social and devotional life. As they seek to adapt and embellish their persons and their environments, acquire paintings for solace or prestige, or cultivate relationships with artists, women emerge as discerning participants in the consumer culture of their time, and often as lively commentators on it. Their fervent participation in religious life is also seen in their use of art in devotional rituals, or their commissioning of tombs or altarpieces to perpetuate their memory and aid them in the afterlife. -- .
Contents
Part I The material world of women1. Buildings and interiors2. Beauty, quality and elegance: objects in the house3. Clothes: legislation, description and uses4. Ceremony and travel: women participants and observersPart II Women, secular art and artists: commissioning, buying, preserving5. The building and embellishment of palaces, villas and gardens6. Women and their use and commissioning of portraits7. Relationships with artistsPart III Women, devotion and art8. Private devotion9. Communal devotion: spectacles, rituals, miraculous images and pilgrimage10. Public devotional patronage: personal and collectivePart IV Female artists, craftswomen and writers11. Female artists and craftswomen12. Women writing on art and artefacts Index -- .
