Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence / Brucker, Gene

This compelling account of a wronged woman in Renaissance Florence, first published in 1986, is a fascinating view of Florentine society and its attitudes on love, marriage, class, and gender. Lusanna was a beautiful woman from a middle-class background who, in 1455, brought suit against Giovanni, her aristocratic lover, when she learned he had contracted to marry a woman of his own class. Blending scholarship with insightful narrative, the book portrays an extraordinary woman who challenged the unwritten codes and barriers of the social hierarchy and dared to seek a measure of personal independence in a male-dominated world.