ABSTRACT
Assumptions and standards regarding the appropriate role for patrician women in the Tuscan republics appear to have remained fairly static during the Quattrocento, and female political influence continued to be narrowly restricted by the patriarchal system. The emergence of a class of erudite, powerful, politically active women inspired a number of writers to compose literary works expressly intended to appeal to them, for which projects the precedent of Famous Women proved useful. Current scholarship supports the assertion that a series of three panels depicting famous women was commissioned for, and probably by, Eleonora d'Aragona d'Este, and painted by Ercole de'Roberti. In considering sources of inspiration which may have driven Ercole's daring break from convention in the portrayal of a classical heroine, a reasonable beginning would be Bartolommeo Goggio's treatise De laudibus mulierum. Unlike Portia and the wife of Hasdrubal, images of Lucretia proliferated in Quattrocento Italy. Extensive modern scholarship has associated Florentine representations of Lucretia's story with republican sentiment.
