Art, and Female Patronage in Early Modern Florence. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Helen Mirren, is deeply concerned about the boundary between private family life and public persona in the period immediately following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. In seeking to protect the privacy of her family and especially that of her grandsons, to allow them to grieve in private, she inadvertently projects an uncaring public persona. It falls to the newly elected prime minister, Tony Blair, in collaboration with the Queen's long-suffering secretary, to persuade Her Majesty to pursue a different course of action and thus placate the mass public. Whatever the fairness of this representation, the Queen, while clearly in command of her role as head of state, is portrayed as a leader no longer in command of her public image and even unable to comprehend its importance. I'm tempted to recommend that Frears's Queen acquaint herself with the sophisticated communication tactics of other female rulers by reading Kelley Harness's Echoes of Women's Voices. Whether wives, widows, or nuns, early modern Italian noblewomen were adept at using patronage to shap