Power, gender, and representation in the Italian Renaissance court: The cultural patronage of Caterina Sforza (1463--1509)

This dissertation brings the insights of gender studies to bear on art history to examine the significance of gender, symbolic practice, and power in Italian Renaissance court culture. It focuses on the largely unexplored area of Caterina Sforza's (1463--1509) cultural patronage, which included commissions of architecture and the decoration of chapels and palaces as well as the sponsoring of intellectual and spiritual endeavors. In the Renaissance period, patronage was an important symbolic means by which rulers could establish authority and aspire to the ideals of magnificence and splendor. This dissertation demonstrates how Sforza constructed a strong public image using cultural patronage as a means of presentation to further her own political needs within the Riario court of fifteenth-century Italy. It explores her self-fashioning in four major areas: portraiture; civic, domestic, and military architecture; the maintenance of a splendid persona through both material and intellectual means; and religious patronage. The study argues that Sforza manipulated the symbolic meanings of wife, mother, regent/ruler, and widow to negotiate successfully the masculine and feminine realms of power at play in Renaissance court culture.;The dissertation discusses the extant artifacts, contemporary documents, including biographies, chronicles, letters, and official records, and period treatises to provide the social and political context necessary to understand Caterina Sforza's cultural patronage. The analysis demonstrates that Sforza and noble women like her were active participants, not bystanders, in the cultural practices that were so important to the power negotiations of the Renaissance court. Furthermore, it provides a study of the cultural practices of a newly-established dynasty, namely the Riario of Imola and Forli.