Valeria Finucci is Professor of Italian and Theater Studies and Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Duke University.
A complex and nuanced interpretation of the rise of medical science
in late Renaissance Italy. Finucci uses the life and
experiences of Vincenzo Gonzaga as a connecting thread to allow her
to weave together histories of early modern medicine, sexuality,
and culture. In four elegantly written chapters, she explores how
the drive toward pleasure, beauty, and perfection, as well as the
desire for collecting and understanding the new and the 'exotic,'
inspired both famous and lesser-known doctors, academics,
pharmacists, and nobles to explore the body and search for new
knowledge. -- Giovanna Benadusi, author of A Provincial Elite in
Early Modern Tuscany
It is no longer news that the body has a history. What
Finucci offers, however, in this fascinating account of one
prince's body and its diseases, is a revealing microhistory of the
noted early modern Italian would-be warrior, lover, and obsessive
collector Vincenzo Gonzaga. Chronicling his exploits and his
suffering, his illnesses and his diseases, Finucci opens a window
on a physical and mental world that is both almost forgotten and
yet somehow still with us. Informed by theory, not driven by it,
this is a book than swings from the arcane to the profound and to
the quotidian with the sure hand of a master storyteller and
scholar. -- Guido Ruggiero, author of The Renaissance in
Italy
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