This innovative volume of pre-modern cultural history offers the opportunity to compare the ways in which gender and status competition intersect across periods and places.

Equipped with the most refined tools of forensic eloquence, seething with outrage, Malvasia is at his best in challenging Vasari’s historical distortions and prejudices not only in connection with Francia, but also his disciples, Timoteo Viti (1469–1523), Lorenzo Costa (1460–1535), and Giovanni Maria Chiodarolo (1480–1530).

This pioneering volume is the first of its kind to bring together scholars of medieval Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought to discuss the popularization of philosophy in these three religious traditions of philosophy.