Style in the Art Theory of Early Modern Italy

cessfuUy manoeuvres her way through a patriarchal cukure, it addresses the con- cerns of contemporary readers.Though ukimately not a great painter, AlessandraCecchi is an enterprising young woman who creatively negotiates a lite between the available institutions of marriage and the convent.A popular audience is unlikely to object to the anachronistic focus on self-expression and sexual fulfil- ment.It is easy to imagine this novel accompanying (especially female) travellers to Florence, as George Eliot's Romola once did-but these two portraits of Savonarola's Florence could not be more different or more reflective of the cultures that produced them.