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Patricia F. Cholakian and Rouben C. Cholakian. Marguerite de Navarre: Mother of the Renaissance. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. xix + 412 pp.; ill.; maps. ISBN 0-231-13412-6 (cl).
Anthony F. D'Elia. The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. viii + 262 pp. ISBN 0-674-1552-5 (cl).
Margaret King. Humanism, Venice and Women: Essays on the Italian Renaissance. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. ix + 350 pp. ISBN 0-86078-932-2 (cl).
Caroline Murphy. The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice della Rovere. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. xvii + 359 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-19-518268-5 (cl).
Gaia Servadio. Renaissance Woman. London: I. B. Taurus & Co. Ltd, 2005. xii + 274 pp.; ill. ISBN 1-85043-421-2 (cl).
Joan Kelly's influential article "Did Women Have a Renaissance?" published nearly thirty years ago, challenged the assertion by nineteenth-century historian Jacob Burckhardt, oft-repeated by those that followed him, that women achieved equality with men during the Italian Renaissance. Kelly concluded instead that female opportunities and cultural status in fact declined in the period.1 Building on the criticisms of Kelly and others, new epistemologies have prompted scholars to ponder whether anyone "had" a Renaissance, and if so, if it merited further scholarly attention.2 Yet the five books considered here continue to consciously deploy the terminology of the Renaissance in order to grapple with the intersections of humanism, feminism, politics, patronage, gender, and culture in Italy and Europe during the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. They attest to a sustained interest in questions of women, power, and creativity across a wide spectrum, from academic monographs to biographies and popular works. According to these authors, at least some women experienced the Renaissance, although in notably different ways than their male counterparts-with choices and challenges unique to their gender. Yet these same women, and others, were also "had" by or became victims of Renaissance ideology.
The substantial thread of humanist thought that has run through Margaret King's distinguished scholarly career is traced in Humanism, Venice and Women, a collection of her essays dating from 1975 to 2003. Although women and gender are not the primary focus of many of her earlier essays, these works do testify to the centrality of the family in humanist discourse. As she observes, Venetian humanists Giovanni...