Art, Gender and Religious Devotion in Grand Ducal Tuscany

Positing Medici women’s patronage as a network of devotional, entrepreneurial and cultural activities that depended on seeing and being seen, Alice Sanger focuses on the intersection of the visual and the sacred at the Medici court of the later sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries. By examining the religious dimensions of the Medici grand duchesses' art patronage and collecting activities alongside their visually resonant devotional and public acts, this book adds a new dimension to the current scholarship on women’s patronage in early modern Italy.