¹ Cristofano Bronzini, Della dignità e nobilità delle donne (Florence, 1622), Giornata Seconda, p. 16. All translations in this article, unless otherwise noted, are my own.

² Indicatively, see: Francesco Tommasi, Reggimento del padre di famiglia (Florence, 1580); Torquato Tasso, Il padre della famiglia (Venice, 1583); Giuseppe Passi, Dello stato maritale trattato (Venice, 1602); Gio Battista Assandri, Della economica, overo disciplina domestica (Cremona, 1616); also see: Daniela Frigo, Il padre di famiglia: governo della casa e governo civile nella tradizione dell ‘economica’ tra cinque e seicento (Rome, 1985).

³ Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of manhood in early modern England (Oxford, 2003); idem, ‘From anxious patriarchs to refined gentlemen? Manhood in Britain, circa 1500–1700’, Journal of British Studies, 44, (2005), pp. 281–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anthony Fletcher, Gender, sex and subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1995); idem, ‘Men's dilemma: the future of patriarchy in England, 1560–1660’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4, (1994), pp. 61–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elizabeth Foyster, Manhood in early modern England: honour, sex and marriage (London, 1999); Lyndal Roper, ‘Blood and codpieces: masculinity in the early modern German town’, in idem, Oedipus and the devil: witchcraft, religion, and sexuality in early modern Europe (London, 1994), pp. 107–24; Hendrix, Scott, ‘Masculinity and patriarchy in Reformation Germany’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 56, (1995), pp. 177–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McKeon, Michael, ‘Historicizing patriarchy: the emergence of gender difference in England, 1660–1760’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 28, (1995), pp. 295–322Google Scholar.

⁴ Shepard, Meanings of manhood, pp. 78–80, 83–4.

⁵ Ibid., pp. 6–17, 93–126; on anti-patriarchal, albeit misogynistic, codes of manhood featuring in early modern youth culture, also see: Reinke-Williams, Tim, ‘Misogyny, jest-books and male youth culture in seventeenth-century England’, Gender and History, 21, (2009), pp. 324–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Sandra Cavallo, Artisans of the body in early modern Italy: identities, families and masculinities (Manchester, 2007), pp. 202–23. On the ambiguity of patriarchal masculinity in early modern Rome: P. Renée Baernstein, ‘Reprobates and courtiers: lay masculinities in the Colonna family, 1520–1584’, in David Peterson and Daniel Bornstein, eds., Florence and beyond: culture, society and politics in Renaissance Italy: essays in honour of John M. Najemy (Toronto, 2008), pp. 291–303.

⁷ For a review on early modern England: Harvey, Karen, ‘The history of masculinity, circa 1650–1800’, Journal of British Studies, 44, (2005), pp. 296–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Karen Harvey and Shepard, Alexandra, ‘What have historians done with masculinity? Reflections on five centuries of British history, circa 1500–1950’, Journal of British Studies, 44, (2005), pp. 274–80Google Scholar. Scholarly interest in the formation of masculinity in early modern Italy is quite recent: Michael Rocke, Forbidden friendships: homosexuality and male culture in Renaissance Florence (Oxford, 1996); Valeria Finucci, The manly masquerade: masculinity, paternity, and castration in the Italian Renaissance (Durham, 2003); Margaret Gallucci, Benvenuto Cellini: sexuality, masculinity, and artistic identity in Renaissance Italy (New York, 2003); Cavallo, Artisans of the body; Allison Levy, Re-membering masculinity in early modern Florence: widowed bodies, mourning and portraiture (Aldershot, 2006); Strocchia, Sharon, ‘When the bishop married the abbess: masculinity and power in Florentine episcopal entry rites, 1300–1600’, Gender and History, 19, (2007), pp. 346–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Fahy, Conor, ‘Three early Renaissance treatises on women’, Italian Studies, 11, (1956), pp. 30–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ian Maclean, Women triumphant: feminism in French literature, 1610–1652 (Oxford, 1977); Kelly, Joan, ‘Early feminist theory and the querelle des femmes’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1, (1982), pp. 4–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Linda Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance: literature and the nature of womankind, 1540–1620 (Brighton, 1984); Katherine Usher Henderson and Barbara F. McManus, Half humankind: contexts and texts of the controversy about women in England, 1540–1640 (Urbana, IL, 1985); Constance Jordan, Renaissance feminism: literary texts and political models (Ithaca, NY, 1990); Pamela Benson, The invention of the Renaissance woman: the challenge of female independence in the literature and thought of Italy and England (University Park, PA, 1992).

⁹ Virginia Cox, Women's writing in Italy, 1400–1650 (Baltimore and London, 2008); Sarah Gwyneth Ross, The birth of feminism: woman as intellect in Renaissance Italy and England (Cambridge, MA., and London, 2009).

¹⁰ Cox, Women's writing in Italy, pp. 91–9.

¹¹ My argument is partly informed by R. W. Connell's concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’. The idealized masculinity analysed in the article was fashioned by the Italian lay elites in order to maintain their social and cultural authority and marginalize other groups of men. In this sense, it can be taken as hegemonic. However, it can hardly be seen as culturally dominant since it developed along with other dominant modes of masculinity, most notably the patriarchal masculinity largely forwarded by the church after the Council of Trent. Furthermore, the negotiation of the elite masculinity most likely remained within the world of the literate. On the concept of hegemonic masculinity: R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Cambridge, 2005; first published in 1995), pp. 67–81. For an interesting analysis of the concept and its employment in historiography: John Tosh, ‘Hegemonic masculinity and the history of gender’, in Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann and John Tosh, eds., Masculinities in politics and war: gendering modern history (Manchester, 2004), pp. 41–58.

¹² Alessandro Piccolomini, Dialogo della bella creanza delle donne (n.p., 1540), fos. 2v–3r.

¹³ For modern translations of Marinella's and Fonte's works, see: Lucrezia Marinella, The nobility and excellence of women and the defects and vices of men, ed. and trans. Anne Dunhill (Chicago, IL, and London, 1999); Moderata Fonte, The worth of women: wherein is clearly revealed their nobility and their superiority to men, ed. and trans. Virginia Cox (Chicago, IL, and London, 1997). Marinella's and Fonte's works have received extensive scholarly attention to be mentioned here. For a recent account, see: Cox, Women's writing in Italy.

¹⁴ On the displacement of women as speaking subjects in Castiglione: Valeria Finucci, The lady vanishes: subjectivity and representation in Castiglione and Ariosto (Stanford, CA, 1992); Virginia Cox, ‘Seen but not heard: the role of women speakers in cinquecento literary dialogue’, in Letizia Panizza, ed., Women in Italian Renaissance culture and society (Oxford, 2000), pp. 385–400.

¹⁵ Baldesar Castiglione, The book of the courtier, ed. and trans. George Bull (London, 1976), p. 221.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 211.

¹⁷ Lodovico Domenichi, La nobilità delle donne (Venice, 1549), fo. 69r.

¹⁸ On women as emblems of civility in Castiglione, also see: Quint, David, ‘Courtier, prince, lady: the design of the Book of the courtier’, Italian Quarterly, 37, (2000), pp. 185–95Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Castiglione, The book of the courtier, p. 210.

²⁰ Domenichi, La nobilità, fos. 1r–2v; Sperone Speroni, ‘Dialogo della dignità delle donne’, in idem, Dialoghi (Venice, 1596; first published in 1542), pp. 39–40; Girolamo Ruscelli, Lettura … ove con nuove et chiare ragioni si pruovala somma perfettione delle donne (Venice, 1552), fos. 15r–v; Luigi Dardano, La bella e dotta difesa delle donne in verso e prosa … contra gli accusatori del sesso loro (Venice, 1554), fos. 3r, 7v–11v; Domenico Bruni da Pistoia, Difese delle donne, nella quale si contengano le difese loro, dale calumnie dategli per gli scrittori, e insieme le lodi di quelle (Florence, 1552), fos. 4r–13v; Thomaso Pellegrini, Discorso del costante accademico occulto in laude delle donne (Venice, 1579), fos. 4r, 21v–22r.

²¹ Ruscelli, Lettura, sig. 6.

²² Ibid., fo. 15v.

²³ On homosociality: Eve K. Sedgwick, Between men: English literature and male homosocial desire (New York, NY, 1985); Sharon Bird, R., ‘Welcome to the men's club: homosociality and the maintenance of hegemonic masculinity’, Gender and Society, 10, (1996), pp. 120–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Bronzini, Della dignità, Giornata Prima, pp. 30–2.

²⁵ Giuseppe Passi became a target of criticism in Lucrezia Marinella's La nobilità et l'eccellenza delle donne (Venice, 1600) and in the Venetian nun Arcangela Tarabotti's La tirannia paterna (1654). Tarabotti also attacked Ferrante Pallavicino for Il corriero svaligiato (1641) and Francesco Buoninsegni for his Del lusso donnesco, satira menippea (1638); Marinella, The nobility and excellence of women, pp. 126–7; Arcangela Tarabotti, Paternal tyranny, ed. and trans. Letizia Panizza (Chicago, IL, and London, 2004), pp. 146–7; Francesco Buoninsegni and Arcangela Tarabotti, Satira e antisatira, ed. Elissa Weaver (Rome, 1998).

²⁶ Virginia Cox, The Renaissance dialogue: literary dialogue in its social and political contexts, Castiglione to Galileo (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 12–13.

²⁷ La caccia d'amore del Berni con la riposta del Molza, et una giostra da cavallieri erranti, con un capitulo di Pietro Aretino contra le donne, et un altro capitulo, con un sonetto amoroso aggionti novamente (Venice, 1554); Giacopo Boero Gorretta, I diavoli delle donne (Genoa, 1573); Historia nova, piacevole la quale tratta delle malitie delle donne e le pompe che cercano adonarsi (n.p., [1530?]).

²⁸ Domenichi, La nobilità, fos. 81v, 117v.

²⁹ Bruni da Pistoia, Difese delle donne, fo. 22r.

³⁰ Giovanni David Thomagni, Dell'eccellentia de l'huomo sopra quella de la donna (Venice, 1565), fo. 110v. Despite its title, Thomagni's dialogue set forth the pro-woman side of the debate as well.

³¹ Della nobilità et eccellenza delle donne, nuovamente dalla lingua francese nella italiana tradotto (Venice, 1544), fo. 7r.

³² Nefesogli (spirit-children) were reportedly children that had been conceived without male semen: Della nobilità et eccellenza delle donne, fo. 13v; Domenichi, La nobilità, fo. 99r; Ruscelli, Lettura, fo. 18r; on radical readings of the Bible: Hercole Marescotti, Dell' eccellenza della donna (Fermo, 1589), pp. 70–8, 100–4; Bronzini, Della dignità, Giornata Prima, pp. 66–78; Bruni da Pistoia, Difese delle donne, fos. 14v–15v, 22r–v, 52v–53v; Domenichi, La nobilità, fos. 8v–9r, 12r–19v, 95v, 100r–107r; Ruscelli, Lettura, fos. 14v, 16v–21r, 25 v–26r; Dardano, La bella e dotta difesa, fos. 31r–36r, 49v–55v, 67r–69r; Francesco Agostino della Chiesa, Theatro delle donne letterate con un breve discorso della preminenza, e perfettione del sesso donnesco (Mondovi, 1620), pp. 8–10; Tomaso Garzoni, Le vite delle donne illustri della scrittura sacra … et un discorso in fine sopra la nobilità delle donne (Venice, 1588), pp. 161–6.

³³ Henrico Cornelio Agrippa de la nobilità, e preeccellentia del feminile sesso à la signora Margarita Augusta ([Venice], [1530]); Della nobilità et eccellenza delle donne; the second, a translation by Francesco Coccio and published by Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari, was the main source for later authors. For a modern translation of Agrippa's work, see: Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Declamation on the nobility and preeminence of the female sex, ed. and trans. Albert Rabil (Chicago, IL, and London, 1996).

³⁴ Fahy, ‘Three early Renaissance treatises’.

³⁵ Edoardo Barbieri, Le Bibbie italiane del quatrocento e del cinquecento: storia e bibliografia ragionata delle edizioni in lingua italiana dal 1471 al 1600 (Milan, 1992); Gigliola Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo: la censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della Scrittura (Bologna, 1997).

³⁶ Angela Piscini, ‘Domenichi, Lodovico’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (72 vols., Rome, 1960–2009), xl, pp. 595–601.

³⁷ Domenichi, La nobilità, fo. 1r.

³⁸ Della Chiesa, Theatro delle donne letterate, p. 28.

³⁹ Bruni da Pistoia, Difese delle donne, fos. 14r–v; Bronzini, Della dignità, Giornata Prima, p. 100.

⁴⁰ Domenichi, La nobilità, fo. 43r.

⁴¹ Bronzini, Della dignità, Giornata Prima, p. 117.

⁴² Piccolomini, Dialogo della bella creanza, fo. 2r.

⁴³ On a strong criticism of the Aristotelian views, also see: Ortensio Lando, ‘Che Aristotele fusse non solo un'ignorante, ma anche lo più malvagio homo di quella età’, in idem, Paradossi, cioè sentenze fuori del comun parere (Bergamo, 1594; first published in 1544). On Renaissance criticism of antiquity: Paul Grendler, Critics of the Italian world, 1530–1560: Anton Francesco Doni, Nicolò Franco and Ortensio Lando (Madison, 1969), pp. 148–54; Baron, Hans, ‘The querelle of the ancients and the moderns as a problem for Renaissance scholarship’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 20, (1959), pp. 3–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Trinkaus, Charles, ‘Antiquitas versus modernitas: an Italian humanist polemic and its resonance’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 48, (1987), pp. 11–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁴ For a modern translation, see: Giovanni Boccaccio, Famous women, ed. and trans. Virginia Brown (Harvard, MA, 2003).

⁴⁵ Garzoni, Le vite delle donne illustri, p. 161.

⁴⁶ Della Chiesa, Theatro delle donne letterate, p. 2.

⁴⁷ Dardano, La bella e dotta difesa, fos. 49v–85v.

⁴⁸ Garzoni, Le vite delle donne illustri, p. 161.

⁴⁹ Some fifteenth-century defences of women, such as Bartolomeo Goggio's De laudibus mulierum, Mario Equicola's De mulieribus, Agostino Strozzi's Defensio mulierum, and Vincenzio Maggi's Brieve trattato dell'eccellentia delle donne were connected with the Ferrara or Mantua courts and especially with Eleonora d'Aragona and Anna d'Este: Fahy, ‘Three early Renaissance treatises’; idem, ‘Un trattato di Vincenzo Maggi sulle donne e un'opera sconosciuta di Ortensio Lando’, Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 138, (1961), pp. 254–72Google Scholar; Gundersheimer, Werner, ‘Bartolommeo Goggio: a feminist in Renaissance Ferrara’, Renaissance Quarterly, 33, (1980), pp. 175–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁰ On print and identity formation: Peter Burke, ‘Representations of the self from Petrarch to Descartes’, in Roy Porter, ed., Rewriting the self: histories from the Renaissance to the present (London and New York, NY, 1997), pp. 17–28. On print and the shaping of masculinities: Andrew P. Williams, The image of manhood in early modern literature: viewing the male (Westport, CT, and London, 1999), pp. xi–xv.

⁵¹ Giuseppa Saccaro Battisti, ‘La donna, le donne nel Cortegiano’, in Carlo Ossola, ed., La corte e il Cortegiano (Rome, 1980), pp. 219–49; Cox, ‘Seen but not heard’; Stephen Kolsky, ‘Women through men's eyes: the third book of Il cortegiano’, in idem, Courts and courtiers in Renaissance northern Italy (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 41–91; Marina Zancan, ‘La donna e il cerchio nel Cortegiano di B. Castiglione: le funzioni del femminile nell'imagine di corte’, in idem, ed., Nel cerchio della luna: figure di donna in alcuni testi del XVI secolo (Venice, 1983), pp. 13–56.

⁵² The construction of masculinity in Castiglione has been mainly examined in relation to the courtier's anxiety towards effeminacy: Richards, Jennifer, ‘A wanton trade of living? Rhetoric, effeminacy, and the early modern courtier’, Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts, 42, (2000), pp. 185–206Google Scholar; Milligan, Gerry, ‘The politics of effeminacy in Il cortegiano’, Italica, 83, (2006), pp. 347–69Google Scholar.

⁵³ Castiglione, The book of the courtier, p. 195.

⁵⁴ Ibid., p. 201.

⁵⁵ Pietro Bembo's love theory was mainly developed in Gli Asolani (1505). For a modern translation see: Pietro Bembo, Gli Asolani, ed. and trans. Rudolf Gottfried (Bloomington, IN, 1954).

⁵⁶ Castiglione, The book of the courtier, p. 333.

⁵⁷ Sydney Anglo, ‘The courtier: the Renaissance and changing ideals’, in A. G. Dickens, ed., The courts of Europe: politics, patronage and royalty, 1400–1800 (New York, NY, 1977), pp. 33–53; Curtin, Michael, ‘A question of manners: status and gender in etiquette and courtesy’, Journal of Modern History, 57, (1985), pp. 395–423CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁸ Girolamo Mutio, the women's defender in Lodovico Domenichi's dialogue, warned his adversary and enemy of women, Pier Francesco Visconte, that he and his comrade, Francesco Grasso, would enter that battle of arguments well armed: ‘Of course, I am not going to stay, as one might say, with my hands tied in this undertaking … and although Signor Francesco is a very worthy and successful champion by his own, I will not consider giving him an injury, if opposing you with the same weapons of truth which I have already in my hands, I will make your situation even worse.’ Domenichi, La nobilità, fos. 6v–7r.

⁵⁹ Ruth Mazo Karras, From boys to men: formations of masculinity in late medieval Europe (Philadelphia, PA, 2003), pp. 20–67.

⁶⁰ Jennifer Low, Manhood and the duel: masculinity in early modern drama and culture (New York, NY, 2003); Robert Shoemaker, B., ‘The taming of the duel: masculinity, honour and ritual violence in London, 1660–1800’, Historical Journal, 45, (2002), pp. 525–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on military honour as an element of noble male identity: Richard Wistreich, Warrior, courtier, singer: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the performance of identity in the late Renaissance (Aldershot, 2007).

⁶¹ On recent feminist readings of service to women as exemplified in medieval courtly love: Jane Burns, E., ‘Courtly love: who needs it? Recent feminist work in the medieval French tradition’, Signs, 27, (2001), pp. 23–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶² On a review of Renaissance love theory, see Rinaldina Russell's introduction in Tullia d' Aragona, Dialogue on the infinity of love, ed. and trans. Rinaldina Russell and Bruce Merry (Chicago, IL, and London, 1997), pp. 21–48; Mario Pozzi, Lingua, cultura, società: saggi sulla letteratura italiana del Cinquecento (Alessandria, 1989), pp. 57–100.

⁶³ Domenichi, La nobilità, sig. 9.

⁶⁴ Pietro Paolo Porro, L'eris d' amore (Milan, 1575), sig. 2.

⁶⁵ Lodovico Domenichi, Rime diverse d'alcune nobilissime et virtuossime donne (Lucca, 1559), p. 7.

⁶⁶ Cesare Barbabianca, L'assonto amoroso in difesa delle donne dell' accademico Solingo (Treviso, 1593), pp. 3–4.

⁶⁷ On the rhetoric of nobility and the gradual aristocratization of Italy: Claudio Donati, L'idea di nobilità in Italia: secoli xiv–xviii (Rome, 1988); Christopher Black, Early modern Italy: a social history (London, 2001), pp. 129–48. For similar discussions on English courtship: Frank Whigham, Ambition and privilege: the social tropes of Elizabethan courtesy theory (Berkeley, CA, 1984); Catherine Bates, Rhetoric of courtship in Elizabethan language and literature (Cambridge, 1992); Jennifer Richards, Rhetoric and courtliness in early modern literature (Cambridge and New York, NY, 2003).

⁶⁸ Bronzini, Della dignità, Giornata Prima, pp. 6–7.

⁶⁹ R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a bureaucracy: the Florentine patricians, 1530–1790 (Princeton, NJ, 1986).

⁷⁰ Bronzini, Della dignità, Giornata Seconda, p. 16.

⁷¹ On the dynamics of the Medicean court during the regency of Maria Maddalena and Christine of Lorraine, see: Kelley Harness, Echoes of women's voices: music, art, and female patronage in early modern Florence (Chicago, IL, and London, 2006); Suzanne Cusick, Francesca Caccini at the Medici court: music and the circulation of power (Chicago, IL, and London, 2009).

⁷² See the dedication of Giovanni Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris to Andrea Acciaiuoli, countess of Altavilla, Vespasiano da Bisticci's fifteenth-century Il libro delle lodi delle donne to Maria Pierfilippo Pandolfini, Ruscelli's Lettura to Maria d' Aragona, marchioness of Vasto, Girolamo Borro's Ragionamento della perfettione delle donne (Lucca, 1561) to Isabetta Cibo della Rovere, marchioness of Massa, Garzoni's Le vite delle donne illustri to Margarita Estense Gonzaga, duchess of Ferrara, and Marescoti's Dell'eccellenza della donna to Flavia Peretti Orsina.

⁷³ Girolamo Parabosco, I diporti (Milan, 1814; first published in Venice in 1550), p. 14.

⁷⁴ On the immense influence of Castiglione's The courtier in Italy and abroad: Peter Burke, The fortunes of the courtier: the European reception of Castiglione's Cortegiano (Cambridge, 1995). On the diffusion of Castiglione's, Ariosto's, and Bembo's courtly ideal of affirmative and idealizing attitude to women, also see: Cox, Women's writing in Italy, pp. 53–64, 91–9.

⁷⁵ Domenichi, La nobilità; Girolamo Parabosco, Il tempio della fama in lode d'alcune gentil donne venetiane (Venice, 1548); idem, I diporti; Ortensio Lando, Lettere di molte valorose donne, nelle quali chiaramente appare non esser ne di eloquentia ne di dottrina alli huomini inferiori (Venice, 1549); idem, ‘Che la donna è di maggior eccellentia che l'huomo’, in idem, Paradossi; Ruscelli, Lettura; Giuseppe Betussi, Dialogo amoroso (Venice, 1543); idem, Il Raverta: dialogo nel quale si ragiona d'amore, et de gli effetti suoi (Venice, 1544); idem, Libro di M. Gio. Boccaccio delle donne illustri, tradotto per Messer Giuseppe Betussi con una additione fatta dal medessimo delle donne famose dal tempo di M. Giovanni fino à i giorni nostri (Venice, 1558).

⁷⁶ On poligrafi see: Claudia Bareggi di Filippo, Il mestiere di scrivere: lavoro intellettuale e mercato librario a Venezia nel cinquecento (Rome, 1988); Giovanni Aquilecchia, ‘Pietro Aretino e altri poligrafi a Venezia’, in Storia della cultura veneta dal primo quatrocento al concilio di Trento (6 vols., Vicenza, 1976–86), iii, pp. 61–98; Grendler, Critics of the Italian world.

⁷⁷ Speroni, ‘Dialogo della dignità’; idem, ‘Dialogo in lode delle donne’, in idem, Dialoghi; Piccolomini, Dialogo della bella creanza; idem, L'orazione in lode delle donne (Venice, 1545).

⁷⁸ Giovanni Boccaccio, L'amorosa Fiammetta di nuovo corretta e ristampata (Venice, 1562; first published by Giolito in 1542), p. 4. On Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari as publisher of literature defending women: Dialeti, Androniki, ‘The publisher Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari, female readers, and the debate about women in sixteenth-century Italy’, Renaissance and Reformation, 28, (2004), pp. 5–32Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Galeazzo Flavio Capra, Della eccellenza e dignità delle donne, ed. Luisa Doglio (Rome, 1988; first published in 1525), p. 63.

⁸⁰ This price comes from the Indice copioso, e particolare, di tutti i libri stampati dalli Gioliti in Venetia fino all'anno 1592 (n.p., n.d.), a catalogue published by Giovanni Paolo Giolito.

⁸¹ Dialeti, ‘The publisher Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari'.

⁸² Paul Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian press, 1540–1605 (Princeton, NJ, 1977), p. 14.

⁸³ Domenichi, La nobilità, fo. 2r.

⁸⁴ Girolamo Parabosco's sonnet in Lando, Lettere; Speroni, ‘Dialogo della dignità’, p. 40.

⁸⁵ Domenichi, La nobilità, fo. 2r.

⁸⁶ Sperone Speroni, Dialogo d'amore, in idem, Dialoghi; Betussi, Dialogo amoroso; idem, Il Raverta. Speroni's dialogue was located in the salon of the famous courtesan Tullia d'Aragona and Betussi's dialogues in Francesca Baffa's salon, both in Venice. In 1547 Tullia d'Aragona also wrote a dialogue on love, which was located at her own literary salon in Florence with her as a main speaker. For a modern translation, see: D'Aragona, Dialogue.

⁸⁷ Feldman, Martha, ‘The academy of Domenico Venier, music's literary muse in mid-cinquecento Venice’, Renaissance Studies, 10, (1996), pp. 476–512Google Scholar.

⁸⁸ Betussi, Libro di M. Gio. Boccaccio, fo. 202r.

⁸⁹ On courtesans' place in the Venetian cultural milieu, see: Adriana Chemello, ‘Donna di palazzo, moglie, cortigiana: ruoli e funzioni sociali della donna in alcuni trattati del cinquecento’, in Ossola, ed., La corte e il Cortegiano, pp. 113–32; Margaret Rosenthal, The honest courtesan: Veronica Franco, citizen and writer in sixteenth-century Venice (Chicago, IL, 1992).

⁹⁰ Cornelio Frangipane, Dialogo d' amore (Venice, 1588), p. 9. It was written in 1545 but remained unpublished until 1588.

⁹¹ On the sharing of women as a bond between men in early modern Rome: Tessa Storey, Carnal commerce in Counter-Reformation Rome (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 213–24.

⁹² Falotico de' Rozzi, Ricorso di villani alle donne contro a calunniatori, i quali di loro alle donne hanno commesso male … et recitata in Siena ne' giorni del Carnevale (Siena, 1576), pp. 6–16.

⁹³ Roberto Alonge, Il teatro dei Rozzi di Siena (Florence, 1967); Nino Borsellino, Rozzi e Intronati: esperienze e forme di teatro dal Decameron al Candelaio (Rome, 1974), pp. 96–102.

⁹⁴ Conor Fahy, ‘Women and Italian cinquecento literary academies’, in Panizza, ed., Women in Italian Renaissance, pp. 438–52, at p. 439.

⁹⁵ L'Hortensio, comedia de gl'accademici intronati di Siena (Venice, 1574), fos. 3v–4r.

⁹⁶ Scipion Bargagli, Delle lodi dell'Accademie, oratione da lui recitata nell'Accademia degli Accesi in Siena (Florence, 1569), p. 23.

⁹⁷ Piccolomini's oration is edited in Marie-Piéjus, Françoise, ‘L'orazione in lode delle donne di Alessandro Piccolomini’, Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 170, (1993), pp. 524–51Google Scholar, at pp. 546–7.

⁹⁸ Comedia del sacrificio de gli Intronati da Siena celebrato ne' giochi del Carnovale in Siena, l'anno MDXXXI (Venice, 1559).

⁹⁹ Fahy, ‘Women and Italian cinquecento literary academies’, pp. 441–3. On Intronati's relations to women, also see: Diana Robin, Publishing women: salons, the presses, and the Counter-Reformation in sixteenth-century Italy (Chicago, IL, 2007), pp. 124–59; Coller, Alexandra, ‘The Sienese Accademia degli Intronati and its female interlocutors’, The Italianist, 26, (2006), pp. 223–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Recent scholarship has seen Intronati's comedies, often featuring self-assured female protagonists, encouraging women's learning, and supporting female desire or even homoerotism, as an important part of the debate about women. Male sexuality is also interestingly dealt with in some comedies such as in Alessandro Piccolomini's L'Alessandro: Laura Giannetti, Lelia's kiss: imagining gender, sex, and marriage in Italian Renaissance comedy (Toronto, 2009).

¹⁰⁰ Robin, Publishing women, p. 129.

¹⁰¹ Lectures defending women were commonplace in other Italian academies as well: Pellegrini, Discorso; Cipriano Giambelli, Discorso alla maggioranza dell'huomo e della donna, fatto nell' Accademia de' Solletici di Trevigi (Treviso, 1589); Barbabianca, L' assonto amoroso.

¹⁰² On late medieval clerical masculinity: Robert Swanson, ‘Angels incarnate: clergy and masculinity from Gregorian Reform to Reformation’, in Dawn Hadley, ed., Masculinity in medieval Europe (London and New York, NY, 1999), pp. 160–77; Patricia Cullum, ‘Clergy, masculinity and transgression in late medieval England’, in Hadley, ed., Masculinity in medieval Europe, pp. 178–96; Jacqueline Murray, ‘Masculinizing religious life: sexual prowess, the battle for chastity and monastic identity’, in Patricia Cullum and Katherine Lewis, eds., Holiness and masculinity in the middle ages (Cardiff, 2004); Tracy Adams, ‘“Make me chaste and continent, but not yet”: a model for clerical masculinity?’, in Frederick Kiefer, ed., Masculinities and femininities in the middle ages and Renaissance (Turnhout, 2009), pp. 1–29; on marriage rates in the Italian elite: Cavallo, Artisans of the body, p. 209.

¹⁰³ Cavallo, Artisans of the body, pp. 202–23.

¹⁰⁴ Rocke, Forbidden friendships; Gallucci, Benvenuto Cellini.

¹⁰⁵ Robert Davis, The war of the fists: popular culture and public violence in late Renaissance Venice (New York, NY, and Oxford, 1994).

¹⁰⁶ Instead of the feminist notion of patriarchy as a system based on male domination and privilege on the one hand and female subjection and victimhood on the other, several scholars have recently proposed that patriarchy caused anxiety among early modern men who often felt unable or did not wish to fulfil their patriarchal duties: Kathleen Brown, Good wives, nasty wenches and anxious patriarchs: gender, race, and power in colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, NC, and London, 1996); Shepard, Meanings of manhood; Foyster, Manhood in early modern England; Fletcher, Gender, sex and subordination; Hendrix, ‘Masculinity and patriarchy in Reformation Germany’. On recent interest in witchcraft under the prism of masculinity: Alison Rowlands, ed., Witchcraft and masculinities in early modern Europe (Basingstoke, 2009); Rolf Schulte, Man as witch: male witches in central Europe (Basingstoke, 2009).