Woman In Italy

Imagine creating an Italian dream vacation with a fun-loving savvy traveler girlfriend whispering in your ear. Go with writer Susan Van Allen on a femme-friendly ride up and down the boot, to explore an extraordinarily enchanting country where Venus (Vixen Goddess of Love and Beauty) and The Madonna (Nurturing Mother of Compassion) reign side by side. With humor, passion, and practical details, this uniquely anecdotal guidebook will enrich your Italian days. Enjoy masterpieces of art that glorify womanly curves, join a cooking class taught by revered grandmas, shop for ceramics, ski the Dolomites, or paint a Tuscan landscape. Make your trip a string of Golden Days, by pairing your experience with the very best restaurant nearby, so sensual delights harmonize and you simpply bask in the glow of bell'Italia. Whatever your mood or budget, whether it's your first or twenty-first visit, with 100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go, 3rd Edition, Italy opens her heart to you.

Studies of the city, and of women's experiences of the city, have focused primarily on modern times, especially as modernism was defined in large part by urban life. Italy, however, has a long history of urban-centered culture, and women have been a vocal part of that culture since the Renaissance. This volume, therefore, looks at the art and literature of both earlier and more modern periods to investigate the meanings of the city for Italian women, the intensely gendered meanings (for both sexes) of those city spaces that excluded women, and the conditions that permitted a limited permeability of gendered boundaries. Two aspects to the combination of "women" and "city" are salient to these investigations. One involves their metaphorical relationship. Urbs, citta, ville -- the words for city tend to be grammatically feminine, and a long tradition of representation associates the city. with a woman. Women, especially writers, could exploit, modify, or resist the prevailing uses of such metaphors. The second aspect of connection involves social realities. What was or is the relation of the (female) city with the real women who inhabit it? What kind of site has it provided for women seeking a satisfying life for themselves? How has art and literature, by men and by women, represented the relationship of female persons or characters to urban spaces?

"For the common reader as well as the professional one, Victoria de Grazia opens doors and sheds new light on a fascinating subject."—Mary Gordon, author of The Other Side

This book is the first part of Gianna Patriarca's trilogy on Italian women. Winner of the Milton Acorn award, the collection remains popular today almost 20 years after it was first published.

In ten chapters spanning two centuries, this collection of essays examines the relationships between women artists and their publics, both in early modern Italy as well as across Europe. Drawing upon archival evidence, these essays afford abundant documentary evidence about the diverse strategies that women utilized in order to carry out artistic careers, from Sofonisba Anguissola's role as a lady-in-waiting at the court of Philip II of Spain, to Lucrezia Quistelli's avoidance of the Florentine market in favor of upholding the prestige of her family, to Costanza Francini's preference for the steady but humble work of candle painting for a Florentine confraternity. Their unusual life stories along with their outstanding talents brought fame to a number of women artists even in their own lifetimes - so much fame, in fact, that Giorgio Vasari included several women artists in his 1568 edition of artists' biographies. Notably, this visibility also subjected women artists to moral scrutiny, with consequences for their patronage opportunities. Because of their fame and their extraordinary (and often exemplary) lives, works made by women artists held a special allure for early generations of Italian collectors, including Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici, who made a point of collecting women's self-portraits. In the eighteenth century, British collectors wishing to model themselves after the Italian virtuosi exhibited an undeniable penchant for the Italian women artists of a bygone era, even though they largely ignored the contemporary women artists in their midst.

Reproduction of the original: A Decade of Italian Women by T. Adolphus Trollope

The first comprehensive guide to women's promotion and use of textual culture, in manuscript and print, in Renaissance Italy.