Offering an in-depth synthesis of recent scholarship in the field, this book presents a reconstruction of the Renaissance in Italy as both a social and a gendered experience. Successive chapters explore this theme in the context of work, law, politics, and notion of the state; and as expressed in Renaissance concepts of honour, representational art, medicine and magic, sexual practices, religious organization and spirituality. Introductory and concluding chapters on the historiography of Italian social and gender history draw these specific studies together. Contributing to the volume are: Samuel Kline Cohn, Jr., Thomas Kuehn, Diane Owen Hughes, Stanley Chojnacki, Sharon Stocchia, Karen-edis Barzman, Katherine Park, Michael Rocke, Gabriella Zarri and Daniel Bornstein.