Caterina Sforza and the Art of Appearances

Winner, CAA Millard Meiss Publication Fund Grant 'Caterina Sforza remains a little understood character. This book provides a very rounded account of her life, dispelling or unravelling the many myths that have grown up around her without removing the fascination of her life. De Vries's book allows us to see Caterina in multiple contexts, analysing architecture, material culture as well as her spiritual and humanist patronage. This is a detailed, evocative study that is also a pleasure to read.' Evelyn Welch, Queen Mary University of London, UK '... this book is a well-written and useful contribution to the field of Renaissance studies, not only because it makes available an up-to-date account of Caterina Sforza for the English-speaking world, but also because it sheds much light on Renaissance production and consumption of serially manufactured goods, and therewith on the kind of material culture that, in the end, was much more widespread than the few paintings by famous artists that art history has focused on for such a long time.' Sehepunkte 'This is an interesting and persuasive book that throws light on the central importance of luxury goods in the construction of nobility and the pursuit of status in early modern Europe. De Vries's very welcome analysis of Caterina Sforza's cultural self-fashioning whets our appetite for a new assessment of her unusually autonomous political role in a very troubled period of Italian history.' Parergon