This chapter addresses the question of Casulana’s development as a composer. Through historical network analysis, it presents evidence suggesting that Casulana was connected to Nicola Vicentino for a significant part of her life, and that it was through him she established her first networks. Their paths led them both to Vicenza, to Siena during the siege of 1554–55, as well as to Rome, Venice, Milan, and more indirectly to Munich and Paris. Moreover, their networks intersected on several occasions. These data provide substantial evidence to argue that Casulana and Vicentino were somehow personally connected. Vicentino, the leading theorist of chromaticism in the mid-sixteenth century, had many students, including several women, and he was clearly not an opponent of female instruction. His implicit musical philogyny lends significant plausibility to the hypothesis that he may have had Casulana as a student.

This chapter delves into Casulana’s family and marital history. It presents evidence that strongly supports the claim that Casulana was originally from Vicenza, and was born in the mid-1530s. She constructed her authorial name from the patronymic of her first Sienese husband, from whom she was separated in 1568, he living in Rome, she in the Veneto region. The name “Mezari” that appears in the sources at the end of her career was that of her second husband from Brescia, whom she likely married in Vicenza in 1579. Casulana probably married for the first time in the early 1550s and was in Siena with two small children during the violent siege that led to the fall of the Sienese Republic. Finally, this chapter places Casulana’s stay in Siena in the context of the currents of philogyny, female literary creativity, and exaltation of women’s heroism that characterized mid-sixteenth-century Sienese society.

We will turn now to two symbolic images: The allegory of Injustice in the Arena Chapel (Padua) by Giotto di Bondone (1303–1305) and the allegory of War in the Palazzo Pubblico (Siena) by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1338–1339). They are major milestones in the visualization of rape in European art, condemnatory representations intended for a public audience. Despite the extensive secondary literature on these sites, the representations of sexual violence have never been examined or compared to each other, even in specialist studies. They can potentially reconfigure our views of wartime rape before modernity.

The last of this generation of scholars outlived Cosimo (d. 1574) by a few years. A survey of the intellectual community of those years and beyond shows continuity and gradual change. New academies appear,includingthe Alterati and the Accademia della Crusca, which were also devoted to vernacular language and letters. The study of vernacular began to appear at universities, first Siena and then Pisa, as did some lectures in vernacular. The legacy of this generation extended to the successful construction of the narrative of the Renaissance itself.

Chapter 1 proposes to read the anecdote of Aristotle mounted by the courtesan Phyllis as relevant to the interaction of Latin academic practices and vernacular culture. By building on the idea that the taming of the philosopher stages the conflict between the ‘artificial’ culture of academic learning and concurrent ideas about Nature, I argue that some versions of the story (e.g, the Lai d’Aristote) relate to the medieval reflection on the ethical worth of the mother tongue. To this end, I compare the iconography of the mounted Aristotle to the depiction of Grammar, whose ‘bilingual’ status mirrors the ambiguous place that the vernacular holds vis-à-vis Latin in the age of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. The chapter then looks at other spaces (both textual and visual) for the translation of the philosophical ideals embodied by Aristotle. In different ways, both the novella tradition (e.g., Novellino and Decameron) and the visual display of civic values (e.g., the painted cycles of San Gimignano, Siena and Asciano) shed light on the ways in which the appropriation of Aristotle shaped the new vernacular societies while also being part of wider discussions about linguistic difference.

Although Florence was where Piero lived and where his fate would be decided, he was nevertheless sustained by an extensive web of patronal, as well as banking, relationships that stretched outside Florence into its dominion and beyond, providing Piero with support from clients and supporters that helped to sustain him in his exile with a high price on his head. Through his great-grandmother Contessina, Piero was already in close contact with his Bardi relations in the Mugello and with old feudal families in Pistoia and Siena, and his father took care to nurture his role as patron and boss by introducing him early on to these client networks and teaching him through his own example. Like Lorenzo, Piero was called ‘master of the workshop’ to describe his role as boss – even if neither enjoyed the success of Giovanni di Bicci and Cosimo as bankers. Piero was appointed head of the Medici Bank in Pisa in 1489 (aged seventeen) under the aegis of his manager Giovanni Cambi, and he enjoyed a close relationship with his cousin Nofri Tornabuoni, who became manager of the Medici Bank in Rome, both cities of strategic and cultural importance that must have contributed to his political experience if not to his banking skills.

Although Lorenzo had been planning Piero’s marriage to Alfonsina Orsini since the summer of 1486, he was unable to carry the plan forward until November, after the conclusion of the Barons’ War. He described it to Francesco Gonzaga the following March as a gift from Ferrante to Piero, ‘to whom it pleased him to give the daughter of the late illustrious Orsini knight’. With its huge dowry of 12,000 ducats, the marriage clearly represented a gesture of gratitude to Lorenzo for contributing to their victory in the war, in which the Orsini had played a crucial part in supporting Ferrante, not the pope. Virginio was Alfonsina’s guardian after the death of her father, Roberto, Count of Tagliacozzo and Alba, who had been a favourite condottiere of Ferrante’s. So the marriage served to confirm and consolidate the Medici’s bonds with both the Orsini and Ferrante – although initially risking the loss of his hard-won friendship with the pope.1

The fifteenth century was the golden age of civic canterino activity, and Florence was its heart. Though two other centers for which evidence survives, Siena and Perugia, are also treated in this chapter, what these documents make clear is that, although capable canterini could still emerge elsewhere in Italy, Florence was the source from which other cities recruited. The rich Florentine archives make it possible to construct a detailed and nuanced view of canterino activity in the city, which thrived in Medici palaces, artisan workshops, piazzas, and the civic government in the Palazzo Vecchio. This chapter explores the careers and poetry of the most famous canterini of the day, Niccolò cieco d’Arezzo, Antonio di Guido, and Cristoforo Fiorentino (called L’Altissimo), and their relationship to Piazza San Martino during its highpoint as a performance venue. This chapter also explores classical memory technique as it came to be appropriated by the Florentine canterini, evidence of which are four vernacular memory treatises that can be linked directly to these singers. The contents of these treatises are summarized and explained with reference to the surviving poetry of the canterini, and as a means to understanding how poetic and musical improvisation worked.

Considers interpretations of Virgil's fourth Eclogue as a prophecy of the birth of Christ, including treatments by Dante, Petrarch, Albertino Mussato and Coluccio Salutati.

Examines representations of the prophetic Sibyls in Italian fresco cycles of the Renaissance, with particular attention to examples from Siena, Florence, Rome and Bergamo.