W O M E N  W H O  R U L E D,
U - M  M U S E U M  O F  A R T,  T H R O U G H  M A Y  5

By Shiri Bilik

Through a modern perspective, Eleonora of Toledo's marriage to Cosimo I di' Medici in 1549 can seem like nothing more than a political maneuver. Wanting to gain a link with the Spanish ruling class that controlled Florence at the time, Cosimo married Eleonora, the daughter of the Spanish viceroy of Naples. Through their union, he hoped, among other things, to gain enough influence to have Spanish soldiers withdrawn from Florence.

"Ruling is very complicated at this time," says University of Michigan history professor Diane Hughes. "You ruled through a game of alliance, playing all your familial cards." Most likely, the woman staring back from this painting had little choice about her marriage. Yet, through her status as a Spaniard and the mother of Cosimo's heirs, Eleonora would help to establish the legitimacy of the legendary Medici line. "In that sense," Hughes says, "women were always a lot more powerful than they get credit for."

The role of women in the aristocratic world of Renaissance Europe is the inspiration behind the Feb. 17-May 5 U-M Museum of Art exhibition Women Who Ruled: Queens, Goddesses, Amazons, 1500-1650. The exhibition, sponsored by the Ford Motor Company, focuses on an era during which a number of women, including Elizabeth I of England, Mary Stuart of Scotland, and Catherine de' Medici of France, ruled states and kingdoms.

'Eleonora of Toledo and her son,' Agnolo Bronzino, oil on panel, Detroit Institute of Arts.

Eleonora of Toledo and her son (ca. 1545) by the painter Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572), on loan from the Detroit Institute of Arts, is one of the featured works in the exhibition. The painting is the first known, state-commissioned painting to include the ruler's heir. Eleonora is portrayed first and foremost as a mother, Hughes suspects, because the Medicis desperately needed male heirs after Cosimo's predecessor died childless after having been marred by sexual scandal.

"What Cosimo is saying by letting the Bronzino portrait be done this way is that she brings a kind of stability without which the regime could not exist," Hughes says.

Eleonora eventually gave Cosimo eight surviving sons and daughters, but she was more than just an obedient wife. Cosimo named her regent in his absence, and she was said to have been a shrewd businesswoman. "She was a player," Hughes says. "People knew you get to her husband through her."

Cosimo indulged his wife's more lavish tastes: She was a gambler and an avid traveler, and employed no fewer than 10 gold and silver weavers, who crafted works of art as intricate as her painted dress.

With Eleonora's connections and the recaptured respectability of his family name, Medici eventually went on to create an Italian state in Florence. "He created a state, but he created it with her," Hughes says. "Nobody acts independently in the game of politics."

Annette Dixon, the inspirer and curator of the exhibition, says she and her staff examined thousands of works "to pin down the hundred or so that make up the exhibit," With the participation of the Women's Studies Department, the idea for the exhibition grew into a Winter '02 Gender and Power Theme Semester (Web site at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/women/themesemester/), which includes many courses, lectures, films and an upcoming book commemorating the exhibition.