The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici. Konrad EisenbichlerThe Spinelli of Florence: Fortunes of a Renaissance Merchant Family. Philip Jacks , William Caffero
means of her massively detailed dissection of the wills. The same is true of her account of women's tendency to direct their pious bequests more to individual persons than men did, consistent with her overall emphasis on women's more extensive and varied social networks, and of her reconstruction of women's widespread membership in and benefactions to minor confraternities (the scuole piccole). The exception to this method is her strong assertion of women's busy participation in public life, where evidence from wills of their acquaintanceships throughout the city is supplemented by evidence of their presence in, or at least at, Venice's festivities and, relying on the biography of the saintly Maria da Venezia, of their free and confident participation in the commercial life of the streets. The detailed accounts of the will data can be heavy going, and some of Guzzetti's interpretations of it are presented as more conclusive than seems warranted. But her punctiliously systematic excavation of the intentions and relationships conveyed in the wills is what gives her overall argument its force and makes Venezianische Vermdchtnisse a major contribution to the study of women in Venice and Italy. STANLEY CHOJNACKI University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill