Scholarship regarding court dwarfs during the Renaissance and early modern periods has traditionally focused on male dwarfs, who feature prominently in contemporary written sources, such as secretaries’ letters and ambassadors’ reports. Male dwarfs also appear frequently in the visual record, as seen, for example, in Agnolo Bronzino's double-sided portrait (pre-1553) of Braccio di Bartolo, nicknamed Morgante, who served as an attendant to Cosimo I de’ Medici (r. 1537–74). Although female dwarfs are recorded within aristocratic women's entourages across Europe, from Isabella d’Este in Mantua to Elizabeth I in England, extant documents provide far less information about their lives, and as part of the “domestic” female sphere they have, until recently, been largely ignored. Furthermore, in comparison to their male dwarf counterparts, very few images of them survive, a notable exception being Andrea Mantegna's portrait of Barbara of Brandenburg's unidentified female dwarf, who appears in the Gonzaga group portrait in the Camera Picta frescoes (1465–74) at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua (see figure I.10 in the Introduction).

This chapter examines evidence regarding female dwarfs in the sixteenthcentury Medici court in Florence and takes a dual approach. Firstly, it considers the role of these attendants within noblewomen's households by assessing archival material regarding Maria, a female dwarf in the retinue of Cosimo I's consort Eleonora di Toledo (1522–1562).