Katherine A. McIver is Professor of Art History at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA.

Contents: Introduction; Part I Overshadowed, Overlooked, Historical Invisibility: Hidden in plain sight: Varano and Sforza women of the Marche, Jennifer D. Webb; Pier Maria's legacy: (il)legitimacy, inheritance and rule of Parma's Rossi dynasty, Timothy McCall; Rediscovering the Villa Montalto and the patronage of Camilla Peritti, Kimberly L. Dennis. Part II Becoming Visible through Portraiture: Rewriting Lucrezia Borgia: propriety, magnificence and piety in portraits of a Renaissance duchess, Allyson Burgess Williams; A face in the crowd: identifying the Dogaressa at the Ospedale dei Crociferi, Mary E. Frank; Vittoria Colonna in Giorgio Vasari's Life of Properzia de' Rossi, Marjorie Och. Part III Spatial Visibility Reconstructed: Revisiting the Renaissance household, in theory and practice: locating wealthy women in 16th-century Verona, Alison A. Smith; An invisible enterprise: women and domestic architecture in early modern Italy, Katharine A. McIver. Part IV Sacred Invisibility Unveiled: Invisibilia per visibilia: Roman nuns, art patronage, and the construction of identity, Marilynn Dunn; The convent of Santa Maria della Sapienza: visual culture and women's religious experience in early modern Naples, Aislinn Loconte; Bibliography; Index.

By looking in a new way at works of art and acts of patronage, the volume restores to visibility some women who were previously invisible in the historical record, and offers a more nuanced understanding of the place of women and gender in early modern Italy.