Crafting a Legacy

The women whose lives and artistic patronage are explored in this volume provide a rich and representative sample of the diverse models of female authority in some of the most prominent early modern European courts.  The collection offers a wide-ranging analysis of the intricate relationship between art and power, and the special relationships women in power forged with certain artists, which often transcended the practical and economic aspects of patronage. From sovereigns such as Elizabeth I and Isabel Clara Eugenia, to consorts such as Claude de France or Leonor de Toledo, and governors and regents such as Mary of Hungary and Catherine of Austria, these female patrons used their patronage not only to craft their own identities as powerful, political figures , but also to launch major artistic projects that went beyond the aesthetic considerations, addressing critical political, dynastic, spiritual, and representational concerns and often having a decisive impact on the artists’ careers.

These studies demonstrate that women’s art patronage of painters, sculptors or architects was not merely a question of mutual support, but also a dynamic force that influenced identity and power, and left an important and enduring imprint on European history. 

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Notes on the Editor and Contributors

Introduction
Women Who Commissioned the Renaissance: Artists and Their Female Patrons
Noelia García Pérez

Part I. Framing power: Forging Female Authority through Artistic Patronage

Women, Both Earthly and Divine, and Their Patronage of Painters in Early-Modern Europe
M. J. Rodríguez-Salgado

Artists in the Service of Catherine of Austria: Patronage, Dynastic Identity and Matrilineality
Melania Soler Moratón

Artists and Female Patrons in the Orbit of François I: Claude de France in the Age of Louise de Savoie
Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier

Eleonora di Toledo, Patron of Agnolo Bronzino: The Untold Story of the Fake Leonardos
Bruce Edelstein

Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo on the Quirinal
Marjorie Och

Part II. Shaping Sovereignty. Defining the Role of Artists in Defining Female Power in the Early Modern Europe

Bernard van Orley, peintre de Marguerite d’Autriche et de Marie de Hongrie. L’art au service du pouvoir ou le pouvoir au service de l’art
Véronique Bücken

Infanta, Sovereign and Saint: The Artists Who Created the Image of Archduchess Isabel Clara Eugenia
Noelia García Pérez

Catherine of Aragon, Mary Tudor, and the Recruitment of Susanna Horenbout and Levina Teerlinc
Emma Cahill Marrón

Anne of Cleves and Tudor Court Artists
Valerie Schutte

The ‘Queens Limner’: Nicholas Hilliard and Elizabeth I
Elizabeth Goldring