Selected Letters

Deanna Shemek is Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she currently holds the Gary Licker Memorial Chair in Cowell College. She is author of Ladies Errant: Wayward Women and Social Order in Early Modern Italy (1998) and numerous other works on the Italian Renaissance. She co-directs the online project IDEA: Isabella d’Este Archive.

• Acknowledgments xiiiIntroduction 1Letters of Isabella d’Este1. 1479–1499: Letters 1–200 212. 1500–1509: Letters 201–420 1413. 1510–1519: Letters 421–608 3074. 1520–1529: Letters 609–748 4415. 1530–1539: Letters 749–830 535Weights, Measures, and Time 583Genealogical Tables 585Glossary of Names 593Abbreviations 647Bibliography 649Index 669

Deanna Shemek’s translation of 830 letters of Isabella d’Este does not disappoint. She has selected letters that demonstrate the variety of Isabella’s interests and document a life that was both long and extraordinarily dramatic. We see the marchioness evolve intellectually, politically and culturally, against the backdrop of a volatile political climate and a rapidly changing diplomatic scene, to become a shrewd political actor and an ever more discerning patron of the arts. Shemek has produced an epistolary voice for her subject that is a welljudged amalgam of dignified formality and colloquial ease. The translation captures just how well the marchioness communicated with a very large cast of correspondents and for a huge range of purposes. This collection provides rare insight into the social, cultural, and political world of the Italian Renaissance — as seen through one powerful woman’s eyes.Carolyn JamesAssociate Professor of Italian Studies, Monash University