This is the first dedicated study of the musical patronage of Roman baronial families in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Patronage – the support of a person or institution and their work by a patron – in Renaissance society was the basis of a complex network of familial and political relationships between clients and patrons, whose ideas, values, and norms of behavior were shared with the collective. Bringing to light new archival documentation, this book examines the intricate network of patronage interrelationships in Rome. Unlike other Italian cities where political control was monocentric and exercised by single rulers, sources of patronage in Rome comprised a multiplicity of courts and potential patrons, which included the pope, high prelates, nobles and foreign diplomats. Morucci uses archival records, and the correspondence of the Orsini and Colonna families in particular, to investigate the local activity and circulation of musicians and the cultivation of music within the broader civic network of Roman aristocratic families over the period. The author also shows that the familial union of the Medici and Orsini families established a bidirectional network for artistic exchange outside of the Eternal City, and that the Orsini-Colonna circle represented a musical bridge between Naples, Rome, and Florence.

This volume explores the concept of magnificence as a social construction in seventeenth-century Europe.

This volume consists of original papers first read at King's College, Cambridge, in 1979 at an international conference on medieval and Renaissance music. The contributors are distinguished in a wide variety of musicological interests but all are concerned in one way or another with pursuing the most urgent and promising directions for research in early music history. The result, far from being merely a further collection of essays applying well-tried approaches to familiar material, constantly seeks to expand the scope of musicology itself, and many of the contributions arc inter-disciplinary in method. The four main topics of the conference were carefully chosen, with some editorial control exercised for each session. This is reflected in four sections of closely related papers in the book. Two of these are concerned with the patronage of music: by the Church in fifteenth-century England, Italy and France, and in a broader context in Italy from 1450 to 1550. A group of essays on sixteenth-century instrumental music separates these, and the book concludes with five papers on theories of filiation as applied to music sources from the tenth to the sixteenth century.

This second volume in the groundbreaking Illuminating Women Artists series delves into the stirring life and work of the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. The life of Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–after 1654) was as exceptional as her paintings. She was a child prodigy, raised without a mother by her artist father, a follower of Caravaggio. Although she learned to paint under her father, she became an artist against his wishes. Later, as she moved between Florence, Rome, Venice, Naples, and London, her artistic style evolved, but throughout her career she specialized in large-scale, powerful, nuanced portrayals of women. This book highlights Gentileschi’s enterprising and original engagement with emerging feminist notions of the value and dignity of womanhood. Sheila Barker’s cutting-edge scholarship in Artemisia Gentileschi clears a pathway for all audiences to appreciate the artist’s pictorial intelligence, as well as her achievement of a remarkably lucrative and high-profile career at a time when few women were artists. Bringing to light newly attributed paintings and archival discoveries, this is the first biography to be written by an authority on Gentileschi since 1999. The volume is beautifully illustrated, and Barker weaves this extraordinary story with in-depth discussions of key artworks, such as Susanna and the Elders (1610), Judith Beheading Holofernes (c.1619–20), and Lot and His Daughters (1640–45). Also included is the J. Paul Getty Museum’s recent acquisition, Lucretia (c.1635–45). Through such works, Barker explores the evolution of Gentileschi’s expressive goals and techniques.

A comprehensive examination of the musical productions and festivals sponsored by the Barberini family in 17th century Rome. This work discuses what work was written under their patronage, why it was commissioned and how it related to the religious, political and aesthetic programme of the family.

Winner of the 2011 Bainton Prize for Reference Works A Companion to Early Modern Rome, 1492-1692, edited by Pamela M. Jones, Barbara Wisch, and Simon Ditchfield, is a unique multidisciplinary study offering innovative analyses of a wide range of topics. The 30 chapters critique past and recent scholarship and identify new avenues for research.

This book considers music and space as fundamental elements in the performance of identity in early modern Rome. Rome's unique milieu offers an exceptionally wide array of musical spaces and practices to be explored from an interdisciplinary perspective.