ABSTRACT
The question “Did women have a Renaissance?” was posed first by Joan Kelly-Gadol in 1977 and, over the subsequent three decades, the answers have become increasingly nuanced.5 While women did not benefit from the equality described so prosaically by Jacob Burckhart in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, it is evident that certain women – both in courtly and Republican settings – found a way to make the best of the situation in which they found themselves.6 Like Isabella d’Este – famous for her interest in music, her
1.1 Piero della Francesca, Diptych, front, portraits of Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro, c. 1472, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
leadership, and her patronage of artists like Andrea Mantegna – the Malatesta, Sforza, and Varano women were groomed for positions of relative prestige and power. Born into some of the most powerful regional dynasties, aspirations for each woman’s usefulness within a complicated system of negotiated allegiances was high as were expectations for rule and patronage. Many of these women would serve as regent or reign in their own right which meant that they needed to be as highly, if not more highly, educated than their husbands.7 As in the case of Barbara of Brandenburg, the wife of Ludovico d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, the consort often served as liaison with her natal family or as a conduit for information too important to be sent directly to her husband.8
