Overview

Concentrating largely on the 'middle ranks' of society in Renaissance Italy - artisans, merchants, and professionals such as bankers and lawyers - this book focuses on new social subjects, new documents and unusual objects. Using innovative methods of inquiry and interdisciplinary analytical tools, contributors explore a little-known but pervasive erotic culture in which sexually explicit artefacts, games and gestures were considered essential to a number of rituals and social occasions. At the same time, they demonstrate how a burgeoning market for erotica, along with a cultural tradition of allusion and innuendo, played an increasingly important role in the Italian peninsula between the fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This volume fills some pervasive lacunae in both Renaissance studies and the history of sexuality through a series of critical engagements with material culture and social custom. It reflects recent scholarly interest in interdisciplinary areas such as the material Renaissance, visual communications, urban sociability in the domestic context, and court records regarding marital disputes.

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9780754662143

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Reviews

'Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy is a wonderful book: original, engaging, well-written and well-researched. An interdisciplinary volume, it will appeal to a broad range of scholars not only in the field of Renaissance studies, but also in the history of sexuality.' Diane Wolfthal, Rice University, USA 'Ashgate, a press remarkable for the high seriousness of its scholarly publications, has with Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy and Sex Acts in early Modern Italy stormed the citadel of all who blindly refuse to acknowledge that the Italian Renaissance in its maturity was driven as much by sex as by religion and politics. Both should compulsorily be read by every intending student of art history.' Brian Sewell, London Evening Standard 'This is a book chockfull of stimulating tidbits, fascinating perspectives, innovative analogies, and smart cultural takes. Some of the essays, such as Cristellon's on shifting marriage conventions and civic laws in Venice or Matthews-Grieco's on the two-tiered markets for erotic paintings, are so brilliantly executed and finely argued that they should become required readings in any course on early modern social and material culture.' American Historical Review '... this volume provides an engaging, interdisciplinary look at a hitherto all-too-concealed area of Renaissance Italian Culture.' Sixteenth Century Journal 'This collection of essays brings together new research on various aspects of sexuality in Italian Renaissance culture, including some fascinating, unexpected (and sometimes very funny) primary source material.' English Historical Review 'This immensely valuable collection pioneers ways of reading both visual and textual erotic materials from the early modern era ... Each essay is the result of patient, careful, accurate scholarship and many hours working through original and documentary sources. It moves decisively away from body-fixated discourse and opens up the fascinating diversity of sexual representations to serious cultural enquiry. Elegantly written, meticulously present ... important in so many ways.' Seventeenth Century News

'Ashgate, a press remarkable for the high seriousness of its scholarly publications, has with Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy and Sex Acts in early Modern Italy stormed the citadel of all who blindly refuse to acknowledge that the Italian Renaissance in its maturity was driven as much by sex as by religion and politics. Both should compulsorily be read by every intending student of art history.' Brian Sewell, London Evening Standard

Author Information

Sara F. Matthews-Grieco is Professor of History and Co-ordinator of Women's & Gender Studies at Syracuse University in Florence, Italy.

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