Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:40:54.210Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Performing for Strangers: Women, Dance, and Music in Quattrocento Florence*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Judith Bryce
Judith Bryce*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Contrary to a tradition of scholarly insistence on the invisibility of Florentine patrician women outside the domestic sphere, it can be argued such women did in effect perform a significant, public, or quasi-public, function in the negotiation of relationships between the Republic and other Italian, and European, elites. This article assembles fragmentary evidence concerning dancing and musical performance by women directed towards the entertainment of visiting notables in the second half of the Quattrocento, and uses modern concepts of gendered performance and the performance of gender to speculate on the nature of that experience for the women involved.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 54 , Issue 4-Part1 , Winter 2001 , pp. 1074 - 1107
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ady, Cecilia M. 1913. Pius II: (Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini) the Humanist Pope. London.Google Scholar
Barr, Cyrilla. 1988. The Monophonic Lauda and the Lay Religious Confraternities of Tuscany and Umbria in the Late Middle Ages. Kalamazoo.Google Scholar
Becker, Marvin B. 1988. Civility and Society in Western Europe, 1300-1600. Bloomington, IN.Google Scholar
Blackburn, Bonnie J. 1996. “Binchois tout Seul?” Early Music 24: 184–85.Google Scholar
Jane, Bowers, and Judith Tick, eds. 1986. Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950. London.Google Scholar
Brown, Alison. 1979. Bartolomeo Scala 1430-1497 Chancellor of Florence. The Humanist as Bureaucrat. Princeton.Google Scholar
Brown, Howard Mayer. 1986. “Women Singers and Women's Songs in Fifteenth-Century Italy.” In Bowers and Tick, eds. 62-89. London.Google Scholar
Bryce, Judith. Forthcoming. “Reconsidering Women's Literacy in Quattrocento Florence.” In At the Margins: Minority Groups in Pre-Modern Italy, ed. Stephen J. Milner. Minneapolis.Google Scholar
Buser, B. 1879. Die Beziehungen derMediceer zu Frankreich wdhrend der Jahre 1434-1494. Leipzig.Google Scholar
Carew-Reid, Nicole. 1995. Les Fetes florentines au temps de Lorenzo il Magnifico. Florence.Google Scholar
Carlson, Marvin. 1996. Performance: A Critical Introduction. New York.Google Scholar
Castellani, Francesco di Matteo. 1992. Ricordanze ‘A’ (1436-1459). Ed. Giovanni Ciappelli. Florence.Google Scholar
Castellani, Francesco di Matteo. 1995. Quaternuccio egiornale ‘B’ (1459-1485). Ed. Giovanni Ciappelli. Florence.Google Scholar
Cavalca, Domenico. 1837. IIpungilingua. Ed. G. Bottari. Milan.Google Scholar
Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music, 1400-1550. 1975-88. 5 vols. Neuhausen-Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Chabot, Isabelle. 1986. “Sola, donna, non gir mai': le solitudini femminili nel Tre-Quattrocento.” Memoria. Rivista di storia delle donne 3: 7–24.Google Scholar
Chastellain, Georges. 1991. Chronique: les fragments du Livre TV revels par l’Additional Manuscript 54156 de la British Library. Ed. Jean-Claude Delclos. Geneva.Google Scholar
Christine de Pizan, , 1886-96. CEevres poetiques de Christine de Pisan. Ed. Maurice Roy. 3 vols. Paris.Google Scholar
Ciappelli, Giovanni. 1997. Carnevale e Quaresima: comportamenti sociali e cultura a Firenze nel Rinascimento. Rome.Google Scholar
Cohn, Samuel K., Jr. 1981. “Donne in piazza e donne in tribunale a Firenze nel Rinascimento.” Studi storici 3: 515-33.Google Scholar
D'Accone, Frank A. 1961. “The Singers of San Giovanni in Florence during the 15 th Century.” Journal of the American MusicologicalSociety 14: 307–58.Google Scholar
D'Accone, Frank A. 1992. “Lorenzo the Magnificent and Music.” In Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo, ed. G. C. Garfagnini, 259-290. Florence.Google Scholar
Dati, Gregorio. 1902. L'istoria di Firenze di Gregorio Dati dal 1380 al 1405. Ed. Luigi Pratesi. Norcia.Google Scholar
Dei, Benedetto. 1984. La cronica dall'anno 1400 all'anno 1500. Ed. Roberto Barducci. Florence.Google Scholar
Del Corazza, Bartolommeo di Michele. 1894. “Diario fiorentino di Bartolommeo di Michele Del Corazza. Anni 1405-1438.” Ed. G. O. Corazzini, Archivio storico italiano, 5th ser., 14: 233–98.Google Scholar
Del Lungo, Isidoro. 1923. Gli amori del magnifico Lorenzo. Bologna.Google Scholar
de Roover, Raymond. 1966. The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397-1494. New York.Google Scholar
Fabbri, Lorenzo. 1991. Alleanza matrimonial* epatriziato nella Firenze del ‘400: studio sulla famiglia Strozzi. Florence.Google Scholar
Fallows, David. 1989. “French as a Courtly Language in Fifteenth-Century Italy: The Musical Evidence.” Renaissance Studies 3: 429–41.Google Scholar
Fallows, David. 1993. “Polyphonic Song in the Florence of Lorenzo's Youth, Ossia: the Provenance of the Manuscript Berlin 78.C.28: Naples or Florence?” In La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico, ed. Piero Gargiulo, 47-61. Florence.Google Scholar
Flamini, Francesco. 1891. La lirica toscana del Rinascimento anteriore ai tempi del Magnifico. Pisa. (Facs. rpt., Florence, 1977.)Google Scholar
Franceschini, Gino. 1970. I Montefeltro. Varese.Google Scholar
Franko, Mark. 1986. The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography (c. 1416-1589). Birmingham, Alabama.Google Scholar
Fubini, Riccardo. 1992.“In margine all'edizione delle ‘Lettere’ di Lorenzo de’ Medici, I: La visita a Firenze del duca di Milano nel 1471, II: L'ambasciata a Roma di Alamanno Rinuccini nel 1476.” In Lorenzo de’ Medici. Studi, ed. G. C. Garfagnini, 167-232. Florence.Google Scholar
Gargiulo, Piero. 1993.“Leggiadri passi con intellecto attento': Lorenzo teorico di basse danze.” In Gargiulo, ed., 249-55. Florence.Google Scholar
Gargiulo, Piero, ed. 1993. La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico. Florence.Google Scholar
Giacomelli, Gabriele. 1993.“Nuove giunte alia biografia di Antonio Squarcialupi: i viaggi, l'impiego, le esecuzioni.” In Gargiulo ed., 257-73. Florence.Google Scholar
Gill, Meredith J. 1996. “'Where the Danger was Greatest': A Gallic Legacy in Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome.” Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 59: 498–522.Google Scholar
Giusto d'Anghiari. Memorie, 1437-1482. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, II. II. 127.Google Scholar
Gregorovius, Ferdinand. 1900-02. History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages. Trans. Annie Hamilton. 8 vols. Second revised ed. London.Google Scholar
Hanna, Judith Lynne. 1988. Dance, Sex and Gender: Signs of Identity, Dominance, Defiance and Desire. Chicago and London.Google Scholar
Hatfield, Rab. 1970. “Some Unknown Descriptions of the Medici Palace in 1459.” Art Bulletin 52: 234–49.Google Scholar
Heartz, Daniel. 1967. “A 15th-Century Ballo: Roti Bouilli Joyeux.” In Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music. A Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. Jan LaRue, et al., 359-75. London.Google Scholar
Herlihy, David. 1977. “Deaths, Marriages, Births and the Tuscan Economy (ca. 1300-1550).” In Population Patterns in the Past, ed. Ronald Demos Lee in collaboration with Richard A. Easterlin, et al., 135-64. New York and London.Google Scholar
Hughes, Diane Owen. 1983. “Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy.” In Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. John Bossy, 69-99. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1985. This Sex Which Is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke. Ithaca.Google Scholar
Jones, Lewis. 1997. “Fourteenth- and Fifteenth- Century Keyboard Music”, in Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music, ed. Tess Knighton and David Fallows, 131-34. Oxford, New York.Google Scholar
Kemp, Walter H. 1979. “Deuil angoisseus’ and ‘Dulongesux'.” Early Music 7: 520-21.Google Scholar
Kent, F. W. 1983. “A Proposal by Savonarola for the Self-Reform of Florentine Women (March 1496).” Memorie Domenicane 14: 335–41.Google Scholar
Kent, F. W. 1995. “Lorenzo de’ Medici, Madonna Scolastica Rondinelli e la politica di mecenatismo architertonico nel convento delle Murate a Firenze (1471-72).” In Arte, committenza ed economia a Roma e nelle corti del Rinascimento (1420-1530), ed. Arnold Esch and Christoph Luitpold Frommel, 353-82. Turin.Google Scholar
Kuehn, Thomas. 1991. Law, Family and Women. Toward A Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy. Chicago and London.Google Scholar
Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. 1984. “Le chiavi fiorentine di Barbablu; Papprendimento della lettura a Firenze nel XV secolo.” Quaderni storici 57.3: 765–92.Google Scholar
Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. 1985. Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago.Google Scholar
Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. 1990. La Maison et le nom. Strategies et rituels dans Vltalie de la Renaissance. Paris.Google Scholar
Koskoff, Ellen, ed. 1987. Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective. New York.Google Scholar
Kovesi Killerby, Catherine. 1994. “Practical Problems in the Enforcement of Italian Sumptuary Law, 1200-1500.” In Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, ed. T. Dean and K. J. P. Lowe, 99-120. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Levantini-Pieroni, G. 1888. Lucrezia Tornabuoni, donna di Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici. Florence.Google Scholar
Litterick, Louise. 1980. “Performing Franco-Netherlandish Secular Music of the Late 15 th Century. Texted and Untexted Parts in the Sources.” Early Music 8: 474–85.Google Scholar
Lowe, K. J. P. 1990. “Female Strategies for Success in a Male-Ordered World: The Benedictine Convent of Le Murate in Florence in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries.” In Women in the Church. Papers Read at the 1989 Summer Meeting and the 1990 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. W. J. Sheils and Diana Wood, 209-21. London.Google Scholar
Lubkin, Gregory. 1994. A Renaissance Court: Milan under Galeazzo Maria Sforza. Berkeley.Google Scholar
Macey, Patrick. 1996. “Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Musical Patronage in Milan: Compere, Weerbeke and Josquin.” Early Music History 15: 147-212.Google Scholar
Magnani, Rachele. 1910. Relazioniprivate tra la Corte sforzesca di Milano e casa Medici, 1450-1500. Milan.Google Scholar
Maguire, Yvonne. 1927. The Women of the Medici. London.Google Scholar
Mallett, Michael. 1969. The Borgias. The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Dynasty. London.Google Scholar
Mantini, Silvia. 1995. Lo spazio sacro della Firenze medicea. Trasformazioni urbane e cerimoniali pubblici tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento. Florence.Google Scholar
Martelli, Mario. 1980. “Nota a Naldo Naldi, Elegiarum, I 26 54.” Interpres 3: 245–54.Google Scholar
Martelli, Mario. 1994. “Lucrezia Tornabuoni.” In Les Femmes (crivains en Italie au Moyen Age eta la Renaissance, ed. Georges Ulysse, 51-86. Aix-en-Provence.Google Scholar
Mazzi, Maria Serena. 1984. “II mondo della prostituzione nella Firenze tardo medievale.” Ricerche storiche 14.2-3: 337-63.Google Scholar
McGee, Timothy J. 1988. “Dancing Masters and the Medici Court in the 15th Century.” Studi musicali 17: 201–24.Google Scholar
McGee, Timothy J. 1999. “Dinner Music for the Florenrine Signoria, 1350-1450.” Speculum 74: 95–114.Google Scholar
McNay, Lois. 1992. Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Medici, Lorenzo de'. 1991. Comento de’ miei sonetti. Ed. Tiziano Zanato. Florence.Google Scholar
Moranti, Maria. 1986. “Organizzazione della Biblioteca di Federico da Montefeltro.” In Federico da Montefeltro. Lo stato, le arti, la cultura, ed. G. Cerboni Baiardi, Giorgio Chittolini, and Piero Floriani. La cultura, 19-49. Rome.Google Scholar
Morelli, Giovanni di Iacopo. 1770-1789. “Ricordi di Giovanni Morelli.” In Delizie degli eruditi toscani, ed. Ildefonso di San Luigi, vol. 19. Florence.Google Scholar
Morelli, Giovanni di Pagolo. 1986. “Ricordi.” In Mercanti scrittori. Ricordi nella Firenze tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. Vittore Branca. 101-339. Milan.Google Scholar
Mulvey, Laura. 1989. Visual and Other Pleasures. Basingstoke.Google Scholar
Neuls-Bates, Carol, ed. 1982. Women in Music. An Anthology of Source Readings from the Middle Ages to the Present. New York.Google Scholar
Nuti, G. “Battista Cicala.” I960-. In Dizionario biograftco degli italiani, 25: 293–97. Rome.Google Scholar
Padovan, M. 1987. “La danza nelle corti italiane del XV secolo: arte figurativa e fonti storiche.” In Mesura et arte del danzare. Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro e la danza nelle corti italiane del XVsecolo, ed. Patrizia Castelli, Maurizio Mingardi and Maurizio Padovan, 59-112. Pesaro.Google Scholar
Padovan, M. 1992. “Lorenzo de’ Medici e la danza.” Rinascimento 32: 247–52.Google Scholar
Parenti, Marco. 1996. Lettere. Ed. Maria Marrese. Florence.Google Scholar
Parigi, Luigi. 1954. Laurentiana. Lorenzo dei Medici cultore della musica. Florence.Google Scholar
Partner, Peter. 1960. “Tiberto Brandolini.” In Dizionario biograftco degli italiani, 14:43-47. Rome.Google Scholar
Pendle, Karen, ed. 1991. Women and Music. A History. Bloomington, IN.Google Scholar
Perini, Davide A. 1917. Un emulo di Fra Girolamo Savonarola: Fra Mariano da Genazzano. Rome.Google Scholar
Perrens, F.-T. 1892. The History of Florence. Trans. H. Lynch. London.Google Scholar
Pesenti, G. 1925. “Alessandra Scala, una figurina della Rinascenza fiorentina.” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 85: 241–67.Google Scholar
Piccolomini, Enea Silvio (Pope Pius II). 1984. / Commentarii. Ed. Luigi Totaro. 2 vols. Milan.Google Scholar
Pieraccini, Gaetano. 1924-25. La stirpe de’ Medici di Cafaggiolo. 3 vols. Florence.Google Scholar
Prizer, William F. 1989. “Music at the Court of the Sforza: The Birth and Death of a Musical Centre.” Musica Disciplina 43: 141–93.Google Scholar
Prizer, William F. 1991. “Games of Venus: Secular Vocal Music in the Late Quattrocento and Early Cinquecento.” Journal of Musicology 9: 3–56.Google Scholar
Rehm, Wolfgang. 1957. Die Chansons von Gilles Binchois (1400-1460). Mainz.Google Scholar
Rochon, Andre. 1963. Lajeunesse de Laurent de Medicis (1449-1478). Paris.Google Scholar
Rocke, Michael. 1996. Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence. New York, Oxford.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Elaine G. 1988. “The Position of Women in Renaissance Florence: Neither Autonomy nor Subjection.” In Florence and Italy: Renaissance Studies in Honour ofNicolai Rubinstein, ed. Peter Denley and Caroline Elam, 369-81. London.Google Scholar
Rossi, V. 1893. L'indole e gli studi di Giovanni di Cosimo de’ Medici. Notizie e documenti. Rome.Google Scholar
Rossi, V. 1895. Un hallo a Firenze nel 1459- Bergamo.Google Scholar
Rucellai, Giovanni. 1960. Giovanni Rucellai e il suo zibaldone. 1: Il zibaldone quaresimale. Ed. A. Perosa. London.Google Scholar
Rubin, Gayle. 1975. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex”, in Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter, 157-210. New York.Google Scholar
Santoro, Caterina. 1968. Gli Sforza. Varese.Google Scholar
Shemek, Deanna. 1998. Ladies Errant, Wayward Women and Social Order in Early Modern Italy. Durham and London.Google Scholar
Smith, A. William, ed. and trans. 1995. Fifteenth-Century Dance and Music. Twelve Transcribed Italian Treatises and Collections in the Tradition of Domenico da Piacenza. 2 vols. (Vol. 1. Treatises and Music, Fifteenth-Century Dance Treatises and Music; Vol. 2: Choreographic Descriptions with Concordances of Variants.) Stuyvesant, NY.Google Scholar
Southern, Eileen. 1985. “A Prima Ballerina of the Fifteenth Century”, in Music and Context. Essays for John M. Ward, ed. Anne Dhu Shapiro, 183-97. Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Sparti, Barbara, ed. and trans. 1993. Guglielmo Ebreo ofPesaro. De Pratica seu arte tripudii. On the Practice or Art of Dancing. Oxford.Google Scholar
Strohm, Reinhard. 1985. Music in Late Medieval Bruges. Oxford.Google Scholar
Strocchia, Sharon T. 1999. “Learning the Virtues: Convent Schools and Female Culture in Renaissance Florence.” In Women's Education in Early Modern Europe: A History, 1500-1800, ed. Barbara J. Whitehead, 3-46. New York.Google Scholar
Strozzi, Alessandra. 1877. Lettere di una gentildonna fiorentina del secolo XV at figliuoli esuli. Ed. Cesare Guasti. Florence.Google Scholar
Thomas, Helen, ed. 1993. Dance, Gender and Culture. London.Google Scholar
Tornabuoni, Lucrezia. 1978.1poemetti sacri di Lucrezia Tornabuoni. Ed. Fulvio Pezzarossa. Florence.Google Scholar
Tornabuoni, Lucrezia. 1992. La istoria della casta Susanna. Ed. Paolo Orvieto. Bergamo.Google Scholar
Tornabuoni, Lucrezia. 1993. Lettere. Ed. Patrizia Salvadori. Florence.Google Scholar
Trexler, Richard C., ed. 1978. The Libro Cerimoniale of the Florentine Republic by Francesco Filarete andAngelo Manfredi. Introduction and Text. Geneva.Google Scholar
Trexler, Richard C.. 1980. Public Life in Renaissance Florence. Ithaca and London.Google Scholar
Trexler, Richard C.. 1981. “La Prostitution florentine au XVe siecle: patronages et clienteles.” Annates E. S. C. 36: 938-1015.Google Scholar
Veronese, Alessandra. 1990. “Una societas ebraico-cristiana In docendo tripudiare sonare ac cantare nella Firenze del Quattrocento.” In Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro e la danza nelle corti italiane del XVsecolo. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Pesaro 16/18 luglio 1987, ed. Maurizio Padovan, 51-57. Pisa.Google Scholar
Vespasiano da Bisticci. 1970-1976. Le vite. Ed. Aulo Greco. 2 vols. Florence.Google Scholar
Volpi, G. 1902. Lefeste di Firenze del 1459. Notizia di un poemetto del secolo XV. Pistoia.Google Scholar
Vespasiano da Bisticci, , ed. 1907. “Ricordi di Firenze dell'anno MCCCCLIX di autore anonimo” in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. 27, pt. 1. Citta di Castello.Google Scholar
Warmington, Flynn. 1993. “The Missing Link: The Scribe of the Berlin Chansonnier in Florence”, in La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico, ed. P. Gargiulo, 63-68. Florence.Google Scholar
Welch, Evelyn S. 1993. “Sight, Sound and Ceremony in the Chapel of Galeazzo Maria Sforza.” Early Music History 12: 151–90.Google Scholar
Willard, Charity Cannon. 1984. Christine de Pizan. Her Life and Works. New York.Google Scholar
Wilson, Blake. 1992. Music and Merchants. The Laudesi Companies of Republican Florence. Oxford.Google Scholar