Imagining Images of Powerful Women: Maria de' Medici's Patronage of Art and Architecture

This anthology reflects a larger impulse to recover women's involvement in the creation of an aesthetic culture from the late medieval through the early modern periods. By asking how the perspectives and experiences of female patrons contributed to the invention of particular styles or iconographies, or how they shaped taste, or what kind of impact they had on demand, these twelve original essays introduce significant new information about specific women patrons while raising theoretical issues for patronage studies more generally.