Beyond Isabella and Beyond: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Early Modern Europe

In 1977 Joan Kelly-Gadol famously posed the question ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance?’ answering her own question in the negative.2 This chapter, an overview of the literature on art patronage by secular women in early modern Europe, argues that the past two-and-one half decades have seen a Renaissance, or, more properly, a Golden Age, of scholarly interest in female patrons in that broadly defined period. The dramatic expansion of interest in female patrons circa 1300-1800 is part of the greater project of historians and art historians to recover evidence for women’s agency in the past.3