Women's Patronage and Gendered Cultural Networks in Early Modern Europe: Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany. Adelina Modesti. Visual Culture in Early Modernity. New York: Routledge, 2020. xxx + 298 pp. $155

Based on the grand duchess's personal account books, chapter 2 elucidates her relationships with and care for her ladies-in-waiting, while the third chapter explores her female social network. The ninth chapter studies the grand duchess's patronage of domestic architecture and interior decoration, focusing on the suburban Villa del Poggio Imperiale, site of her female court and salon. Modesti further indicates the matrilineal communication of the practice of matronage from Vittoria della Rovere's guardians through the grand duchess herself to her granddaughter, the last Medici, Anna Maria Luisa, who bequeathed her extensive art collection to Florence, resulting in the Uffizi and Pitti galleries.