Chapter 1. Introduction (Clucas and Testa) -- Chapter 2. Between Convent and Apothecary: Women authors inspired by Alessandro Piccolomini’s Natural Philosophy (Carinci) -- Chapter 3. Arcangela Tarabotti and the ‘missing years’ (1617–1643) (Medioli) -- Chapter 4. In and Out the Baroque Palace: Noblewomen and Urban Space in Seventeenth-Century Rome (Cavallo) -- Chapter 5. Three little-known portraits of Beatrice d’Este and Isabella d’Este as a commissioner of family portraits (Damianaki) -- Chapter 6. Medieval and Humanist Misogyny: Alberti’s translation of Walter Map (McLaughlin) -- Chapter 7. Philosophical Lives in the Renaissance (Sellars) -- Chapter 8. Giordano Bruno to Sir Philip Sidney: Two Dedicatory Letters (Gatti) -- Chapter 9. Mnemosine in London: the Art of Memory and Giordano Bruno’s Dialoghi Italiani (Clucas) -- Chapter 10. Celebration, commemoration and compensation. Rare and learned ladies in the Italian Academies (Everson) -- Chapter 11. Piero de’ Medici’s poems in the context of his life and letters (Brown) -- Chapter 12. The Afterlives of Ariosto’s characters: Rewriting the episode of Fiordispina in early modern Ovidian epistles (Aneolotti) -- Chapter 13. 1735: Machiavelli on the Index. The trial against the Marchese Bernardo del Grillo for possession of forbidden books (Fattori) -- Chapter 14. Per mantenere la bona unione et intelligenza che è e deve essere tra il Papa e quella Republica’: Interest of the state in Giovanfrancesco Peranda’s instruction to the Papal nuncio to Venice (Testa) -- Chapter 15. An Irreverent Confession in a Florentine Rustic Comedy (Richardson) -- Chapter 16. Bibliography of Letizia Panizza (Haskins).

This book brings together essays from a range of disciplines within Early Modern Italian Studies, which focus on research areas pioneered by the prestigious Italianist, Letizia Panizza. The essays cover numerous themes, mirroring Panizza's broad scholarly interests, and refusal of artificial disciplinary separations. Contributions come from the fields of women's history, cultural history, intellectual history, political philosophy, and art history. They span from Giordano Bruno and the Renaissance interest in the lives of classical philosophers to the poetry of women in the Italian academies, representations of women in Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and the poetry of Piero de Medici. The volume ends with essays on religious parody, libertinism, and controversial political writings. This book presents original new work by leading scholars in the intellectual, cultural and literary history of early modern Italy and is aimed at scholars of intellectual history, history of philosophy, literary history, women’s studies and Italian history.