Ippolita Maria Sforza: The Renaissance Princess Who Linked Milan and Naples. Jeryldene M. Wood. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2020. xviii + 271 pp. $49.95

Chapters 7–9 provide backstories to King Ferrante's rise to power, her father's sudden illness and death, her anger and frustration in her marriage, and her fraught relationship with her brother. Wood, an art historian by training, describes in painterly detail the display of wealth deployed in each of these royal marriages—the richly embroidered clothing, the jewels, banquets, music, and dancing, and the apotropaic jousts and horse races (the rituals imitative of war). [...]chapter 15, “Insurrection,” depicts King Ferrante's discovery of the Neapolitan barons’ plot to remove him from the throne, followed by his arrest and public execution of the leading rebels.