Review by Choice Review
This careful monograph analyzes the role of women in Medici family politics, 1434-1537, as that family's leading men gained control of Florence and ultimately became its hereditary rulers. Conversant in feminist theory, Tomas (historical studies, Monash Univ.) draws extensively on archival sources to show how these women used their authority as wives, widows, and mothers to influence powerful men. Insofar as they were viewed as supporting their own menfolk's interests, they could play an active role in politics, especially when their male relatives were in exile. Under the Medici popes Leo X (1513-21) and Clement VII (1523-34), they were even influential at the papal court, which previously had been an all-male preserve. But there were always limits to what was acceptable: Alfonsina Orsini, widow of Piero de' Medici, became a focal point for resentment of the increasingly seigneurial character of Medici governance. Contemporary critics interpreted her unofficial "rule" of Florence, 1515-19, as "a powerful metaphor for the loss of Florence's republican liberty," and they vilified her accordingly. Of interest particularly to scholars of Renaissance Italy and historians of women in the early modern period. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. K. Gouwens University of Connecticut
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review