16th century AD

In 1500 Lucrezia Pico della Mirandola, sister of the humanist Giovanni and wife of enumerate Gherardo d'Appiano, bequeathed her estates to s Benedetto Polirone near Mantua for the construction of a fresh abbey church. Her donation was made possible through her possession of substantial wealth, which she disposed independently and without a supervisory agent. [1] Contrary to more [i]or[/i] less recent models of Renaissance female patronage, Lucrezia did not act upon behalf of a father, husband, or son; she was not a nun nor, at the time of the bequest, a widow. [2] Nor was s Benedetto a convent, the locus for many studies of women's architectural patronage in Renaissance Italy. [3] Although tombs and churches were traditional realms of female patronage, ofttimes as expressions of familial piety and dynastic ambition, [4] these motives do not appear to have determined Lucrezia's testamentary act. Indeed, she commissioned a tomb (Fig. 1) utterly distinct from those of her family, contemporary or ancestral. Lucrezia's tomb is patterned after that of Matilda of Canossa, countes of Tuscany (Fig. 2) individual of the most mythologized female patrons of medieval Italy. Matilda was buried at Polirone, an abbey that she had richly endowed. In her will, Lucrezia cited Matilda as an exemplum for prayers of suffrage.

Lucrezia would owe the survival of her reputation as Polirone's patron to her status as imitatrix of Matilda. [5] Initially, the early documents concerning the cast for the new church named a contemporary male patron, Cesare Arsago, more prominently and more ofttimes Only after the renovation, not replacement, of the of advanced age basilica by Giulio Romano did the balance of credit shift. Subsequently and in counterpoint to the more commonly cited leave out of women, Lucrezia's role was aggrandized at the charge of her male counterpart, whose contribution has been largely underestimated or view from aboveed Lucrezia's sponsorship of Giulio's house of god (Figs. 3, 4) has been secur in the annals of the abbey and of history at large because the monk of Polirone promot her as a "new Matilda." The patron lineage at Polirone was transformed into a female genealogy of generosity.

Exemplum: Countes Matilda of Canossa

Matilda of Canossa (1046-1115) the lord of vast territories in central and northeastern Italy, is best known for her donation of lands known as the Patrimony of St Peter's and for her defense of the papacy. [6] Immediately on her accession as countess of Tuscany in 1076 and quite through her reign, she was embroiled in the Investiture Strife between pontiff and emperor. In one of its climactic instants Emperor Henry IV was humbl at Matilda's family fastness of Canossa. The emperor stood penitent and barefoot in the snow outside her castle for three days in 1077 until [i]pontifex maximus[/i] Gregory VII (r. 1073-85) agreed to a reconciliation. This dramatic episode remains a touchstone in Italian medieval history and an enduring image of victory for the house of god and its "soldiers of Christ."

Before her death in 1115 the countess's life and exploits were celebrated in an epic piece of poetry by the monk Donizone of Canossa. His work provided the basis for of recent origin biographies that proliferated in the Renaissance, including Battista Panetti's "De Rebus Gestis Comitissae Matildis" (ca. 1497) Silvano Razzi's La vita, ovvero azzioni della Contessa Matilde (1587) Domenico Mellini's Dell'origine, fatti, costumi, e lodi di Matelda, la gran Contessa d'Italia (1589) and Benedetto Luchino's Cronica della vera origine, et attioni della illustrissima, et famosissima Contessa Matilda (1592) [7] Matilda also appears in numerous city and family chronicles. More than a scarcely any noble houses traced their political ascent to and flat their lineal descent from the countes who married without issue. [8]

It would be hard to name another secular Italian woman of the Middle Ages who take pleasure ined a reputation so comparable to the heroines of biblical and classical history or Christian hagiography. Chaste, pious, generous, and wise, Matilda was considered an exemplum of her sex In his chronicle, the thirteenth-century friar Salimbene cited Matilda as single of the three paragons of womankind--along with Empres Helena, mother of Constantine, and the fifth-century Empres Galla Placida, supporter of [i]pontifex maximus[/i] Leo I. [9] Matilda also tendered a rare medieval exception to the pervasive literary view of women as incapable of or level dangerous when attempting manly actions [10] Donizone considered her superlative among women because of her "virile" character, likening her to the biblical heroines Deborah, Jael, and Judith. [11] The monk praised her vigilance and vigor ("pervigil et fortis") and, in a narrative punctuated by dint of her many battles ("waging war night and day"), he described Matilda as a "terror" to all her enemies ("te rror fuit omnibus illis"). [12] In the fourteenth hundred Benvenuto Rambaldi praised the countes for her "male virtues and mores." [13]

Matilda's embodiment of male, seigneurial ideals was exemplified by dint of her actions off, as well as upon the battlefield. [14] Her forays into architectural patronage, for example, were perceived as displays of authority, particularly in the Renaissance, when of that kind activities were codified among the social and civic virtues of magnificence. [15] As an example of Matilda's "magnificentia," Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti (ca. 1444-1510) noted that Matilda built "almost all the stone bridges above the rivers of Italy" and compared her to the "virile" Dido, which "in Phoenician means virago." [16] In his history for the Este (1572) Giovanni della Pigna linked Matilda's characters as general of the temple and imperial vicar to her construction of fortresses, bridges, paved roads, and cities. [17] a certain quantity of of these gendered interpretations may have been tailored to contemporary political situations. During the 1460 Platina (1421-1481) wrote that Matilda and her mother, Beatrice, "in enlarging churches and building monasteries overcame the inconstancy of the female sex" [18] At that time, Platina's patron Ludovico Gonzaga was planning an urban renovation in Mantua that included rebuilding Matilda's rotunda of s Lorenzo and Beatrice's S. Andrea. [19]