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.

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.