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

JH Bryce

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

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.
Translated title of the contributionPerforming for Strangers: Women, Dance, and Music in Quattrocento Florence
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1074 - 1107
Number of pages34
JournalRenaissance Quarterly
Volume54 (4, 1)
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2001

Bibliographical note

Publisher: Renaissance Society of America
Other identifier: Winter
Other: Selected as article of the month, February 2002, by the US Medieval Feminist Index

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