Langdon, Gabrielle

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Langdon, Gabrielle

PERSONAL:

Education: University of Michigan, Ph.D., 1992.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Kilcandra Cottage, Kilmacurra, Redcross, County Wicklow, Republic of Ireland. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Independent scholar and writer. Worked as a curator and taught Renaissance art history in Europe and North America.

AWARDS, HONORS:

American Association of Italian Studies Book Prize, 2006.

WRITINGS:

Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal from the Court of Duke Cosimo I, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, edited by Sheryl Reiss and David Wilkins, Truman State University Press, 2001; The Cultural World of Eleonora di Toledo: Duchess of Florence and Siena, edited by Konrad Eisenbichler, Ashgate Publishing, 2004. Also contributor to journals, including Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte, Revue d'art canadienne, Quaderni d'Italianista, and College Art Association Exhibition Reviews.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gabrielle Langdon is an independent scholar and former curator who has taught Renaissance art history in Europe, the United States, and Canada. Her debut book, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal from the Court of Duke Cosimo I, was published in 2006. The book explores female portraiture of the sixteenth-century Florentine court of Duke Cosimo de' Medici and his wife, Duchess Eleonora di Toledo. The portraits are of various Medici women (including Cosimo's mother, Maria Salviati; his wife; his daughters, Bia, Maria, Lucrezia, and Isabella; and his two wards, Giulia d'Alessandro de' Medici and Eleonora "Dianora" di Toledo), all of which were painted by well-known Renaissance painters such as Agnolo Bronzini, Jacopo Pontormo, and Alessandro Allori. Through this book, the author "hopes to correct myths, rumors, and outright errors that have arisen around both the portraits and the women, as well as to illuminate the function these portraits played in Cosimo's quest to appropriate to himself and his court the accoutrements of royalty," Karen Christianson explained in her review of the book for Canadian Journal of History. To make her case, Langdon relies on archival sources, including letters, diaries, chronicles, and secret ambassadorial briefs, as well as treatises on artistic practice and on social relationships and behavior.

The seven-chapter book is well illustrated, containing sixty-five black-and-white and sixteen color plates. It also has three appendices—a genealogical table of the Medici family, samples of Bronzino's sonnets, and poetry written by Bernardino Antinori to Eleonora di Pietro de' Medici—and an extensive bibliography.

Some critics praised the book, including Christianson, who felt that "Langdon has written an enlightening and well-argued book that will interest students and advanced scholars alike. The book's scholarly apparatus is particularly helpful, with informative notes, a bibliography, and a comprehensive and useful index." And Allison Levy, in her review of the book for Renaissance Quarterly, remarked that the book "makes an important contribution to the study of female portraiture. Determined to see through the exploitations of Cosimo's court, she presents a new picture of Medici women, reminding the reader-viewer of the many faces of court portraiture."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Canadian Journal of History, March 22, 2007, Karen Christianson, review of Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal from the Court of Duke Cosimo I.

Reference & Research Book News, November 1, 2006, review of Medici Women.

Renaissance Quarterly, June 22, 2007, Allison Levy, review of Medici Women, p. 533.