Introduction; Part I. Envisioning Women's Lives: 1. Regarding women in sacred space Adrian Randolph; 2. Imaginative conceptions in Renaissance Italy Jacqueline Marie Musacchio; 3. Pedagogical prints: moralizing broadsheets and wayward women in Counter Reformation Italy Sara F. Matthews Grieco; Part II. Creative Careers: Women as Artists and Patrons: 4. Taking part: Benedictine nuns as patrons of art and architecture Mary-Ann Winkelmes; 5. Lavinia Fontana and female life cycle experience in late sixteenth-century Bologna Caroline P. Murphy; 6. 'Virgo-non sterilis ...': nuns as artists in seventeenth-century Rome Franca Trinchieri Camiz; Part III. Female Bodies in the Language of Art: 7. Disrobing the virgin: the Madonna Lactans in fifteenth-century Florentine art Megan Holmes; 8. Donna/Dono: Chivalry and adulterous exchange in the Quattrocento Chad Coerver; 9. Idol or ideal? The power and potency of female public sculpture Geraldine A. Johnson; Notes; Index.