Early Modern Habsburg Women: Transnational Contexts, Cultural Conflicts, Dynastic Continuities ed. by Anne J. Cruz and Maria Galli Stampino (review)

This excellent collection fully achieves its aim to place a spotlight on the social and political contributions of early modern Habsburg women who were born or married into the dynasty. The authors employ a wide range of source types, from letters and clothing to portraits and jewels, to analyse diverse political activities such as gift giving, patronage, epistolary networking, reproductive labour, household conduct, and courtly display. Collectively, the volume provides strong evidence of the extensive forms of influence of these women.

Anne J. Cruz’s Introduction emphasises the lack of consideration of such women in the current historiography, although since this collection’s publication in 2013, the scholarship has already increased in leaps and bounds. The volume’s focus on transnational and transcultural ties is foregrounded, as are clothing, letters, spaces, reproduction, and artworks as particular forms of power. While there is no explicit conceptualisation of the dynamics of gender and power, the collection’s primary aim is to reveal the wide variety and distinctive behaviours of such women as starting points for future discussions.

Part I, ‘Transnational and Transcultural Ties’, commences with a broad-ranging contribution by Joseph F. Patrouch that works effectively to set the scene for the studies to follow. He analyses the geographical distribution of Habsburg women from 1270 to 1720, demarcating a series of chronological phases that marked distinct roles of daughters in marrying out and thus expanding the dynasty across Europe. Maria Galli Stampino provides an important corrective to a largely critical historiography of the regency of Archduchess of Austria, Maria Maddalena, who married Cosimo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany. She argues that the Archduchess subtly adapted the liberal culture in Florence to her own goals, employing staged performances to project themes that she and her mother-in-law (co-regents after Cosimo’s death) embraced. Blythe Alice Raviola descriptively analyses the life of Margherita of Savoy-Gonzaga as a young girl in Savoy, in Mantua where she sought to protect her daughter’s position, and later as vicereine in Portugal, emphasising the utility of the transnational connections she forged through marriage and extensive correspondence, and the historiographical consequences of this tripartite life across different regions.

Magdalena S. Sánchez opens Part II, ‘Epistolary and Spatial Power’, with an absorbing analysis on the intimate correspondence of Catalina Micaela to her husband, Carole Emanuele I of Savoy, who delegated extensive authority to her in his absence. These reveal both strong opinions and a significant degree of emotional labour in her epistolary style. Vanessa de Cruz Medina then considers the vast epistolary networking of Ana Dorotea de la Concepción, illegitimate daughter of Rudolph II, who was placed in the Madrid convent of Descalzas Reales, from where a series of Habsburg women exercised considerable power and influence. These studies both suggest that letters produced effective and emotionally sustaining networks of power. Félix Labrador Arroyo examines royal women’s households over the sixteenth century as spaces of significant power that offered prestige, proximity, and status. He demonstrates the complex factional politics that needed to be continually regulated, and adjusted across the century.

In Part III, ‘Birthing Habsburgs’, María Cruz de Carlos Varona examines the visual and material culture of maternity, from votive images to fertility amulets, that permeated the court and placed pressure on its women to fulfil their reproductive duties. Two studies of the maternal authority developed by Mariana of Austria as regent for Carlos II of Spain provide the bridge to Part IV, ‘Visual and Sartorial Politics’. Firstly, Silvia Z. Mitchell reassesses the achievements of Mariana’s regency against an unfavourable historiography, situating her power within contemporary legal structures, appropriate cultural values, and her determined personality. Mercedes Llorente then analyses Mariana’s portraiture, in which she kept herself visibly present as a ruler depicted...