Readers of Leonie Frieda’s new book will quickly learn that if they have young girls in their lives, they should not call them “Princess.” Contrary to the myth of “happily ever after,” in the Renaissance, what most royal girls could expect was an arranged marriage in their early teens. A girl would leave home to move in with her husband’s family, often never seeing natal family members again. Seldom a handsome prince, the groom was most likely someone she had not met, who probably kept a mistress. The bride may have received some nice clothes and jewels, but her primary purpose was childbearing, which brought with it high infant mortality and even her own early death. Alternatively, some royal and noble girls entered convents, often against their will. Frieda’s Deadly Sisterhood traces the often intertwined lives of some Italian princesses of the 15th and early-16th centuries whose experiences largely reflect this reality. Occasionally a few women transcended gender norms.

Having composed a biography of Catherine de’ Medici, Frieda has already negotiated the thorny terrain of describing someone lambasted in her own day and thereafter. A contemporary reader expects biography to be factual. But in antiquity and in the Renaissance, life-writing was exemplary: embellishing facts (for good or ill) aided in proving the author’s point about his subject. It is not necessarily the lack of evidence, but the conventions of the biographical genre that create problems. Women were cast as saints or sinners, leaving little room for complexity or gray areas. This presents particular difficulties for all who now try to weigh the evidence for a more balanced approach, including the rather humdrum everyday life that most women led. The biographies of saintly women, moreover, tend to emphasize restraint and otherworldliness, not necessarily the stuff of great drama. Women who were doers, on the other hand, like Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici, were generally treated negatively by their contemporaries. Susan Bordo’s recent The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England’s Most Famous Queen confronts this issue directly, stating emphatically: “Women crave power, hell yes! … Deal with it.”

Frieda has taken on an ambitious project, treating women of the Aragona, Borgia, Este, Gonzaga, Medici, della Rovere, and Sforza families during a tumultuous period of shifting alliances and rulers, French invasions of the Italian peninsula, and almost constant warfare. Some women, like Lucrezia Borgia and Isabella d’Este, are well known, while others are less familiar, but no less interesting. Caterina Sforza perfectly embodies the connections Frieda delineates, born into one house, and married into three others. But the menfolk remain largely the protagonists, as we learn about how the women react to being married off, to being left holding the fort when husbands go off to war, or to widowhood or exile. 

Frieda has consulted letters, especially those exchanged between women, ambassadors’ reports, and other primary documents, as well as older biographies; she describes her sources at the end for those who wish to explore further. This is commendable. If you relished the televised Tudor and Borgia series, then enjoy this book — with its operatic plots and subplots (“Desperate Housewives of Renaissance Italy”?) and fascinating details of clothing, surroundings and pastimes. Let me add just a few caveats. Be aware of how these women’s lives happened in public. Life at court was a constant performance, whether played in person or by letter. Letters, like biographies, cannot be taken at face value. Women’s writing about clothing, for example, should not be trivialized. Appearance was everything. First, Renaissance ideology likened women’s outward beauty to their inner virtue, meaning their chastity. To be anything but beautiful risked one’s reputation. Second, princely splendor was expected. Significant in ambassadorial reports are comments on what people of both sexes wore and exchanged as gifts. When sisters (Isabella d’Este Gonzaga and Beatrice d’Este Sforza) or sisters-in-law (Lucrezia Borgia d’Este and Isabella d’Este Gonzaga) visited one another’s courts, appearances might also signal the situations of their respective states, as jewelry was regularly pawned to raise money for war debts. If this seems inconsequential today, recall the attention paid to what Michelle Obama wore on the state visit to France and the press-invented “fashion showdown” with Carla Bruni.

While many of the women Frieda writes about were related (Sisterhood), one should not make assumptions about what that meant (Deadly?). Rivalry (between people, cities, languages, art forms and media) was a fundamental Renaissance paradigm and the courts where these women lived provided ideal arenas for competition, as courtiers of both sexes vied for favors with those in power. Occasionally Frieda isolates competition between individual women, without developing this broader context. Pitting one woman against another is a great strategy to marginalize their conflict. Women were not judged by the same standards as men. Frieda’s repeated derogatory comments about Isabella d’Este’s art collecting serve no real purpose: she was no greedier than her male counterparts. Nevertheless, readers will find parallels here for issues that women continue to face today. 

For a book that is so beautifully produced, it unfortunately contains a number of editorial mishaps. The illustrations, while of good quality, are accompanied only by quips. Some purported portraits are misidentified. Mining the visual evidence for additional insights into what Renaissance elite women confronted might have added to Frieda’s argument. Frieda attempts to demonstrate how a group of elite women participated in the power struggles that consumed the Italian peninsula during the Renaissance. The result is uneven: she succeeds in changing perceptions of some, but too often uncritically reiterates the gratuitously salacious tales concerning others. 

Sheila ffolliott,
Professor Emerita of Art History at George Mason University, is President of
the Sixteenth Century Society and a Trustee of the Medici Archive Project.  Her publications explore art patronage and
collecting by Renaissance women, in particular Catherine de’ Medici, as well as
16^th- and 17^th-century women artists.

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