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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Judith Bryce
Judith Bryce*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
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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.

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Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 54 , Issue 4-Part1 , Winter 2001 , pp. 1074 - 1107
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Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2001

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