The Prince's Body: Vincenzo Gonzaga and Renaissance Medicine (I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History)

Defining the proper female body, seeking elective surgery for beauty, enjoying lavish spa treatments, and combating impotence might seem like today’s celebrity infatuations. However, these preoccupations were very much alive in the early modern period. Valeria Finucci recounts the story of a well-known patron of arts and music in Renaissance Italy, Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua (1562–1612), to examine the culture, fears, and captivations of his times. Using four notorious moments in Vincenzo’s life, Finucci explores changing concepts of sexuality, reproduction, beauty, and aging. The first was Vincenzo’s inability to consummate his earliest marriage and subsequent medical inquiry, which elucidates new concepts of female anatomy. Second, Vincenzo’s interactions with Bolognese doctor Gaspare Tagliacozzi, the “father of plastic surgery,” illuminate contemporary fascinations with elective procedures. Vincenzo’s use of thermal spas explores the proliferation of holistic, noninvasive therapies to manage pain, detoxify, and rehabilitate what the medicine of the time could not address. And finally, Vincenzo’s search for a cure for impotence later in life analyzes masculinity and aging. By examining letters, doctors’ advice, reports, receipts, and travelogues, together with (and against) medical, herbal, theological, even legal publications of the period, Finucci describes an early modern cultural history of the pathology of human reproduction, the physiology of aging, and the science of rejuvenation as they affected a prince with a large ego and an even larger purse. In doing so, she deftly marries salacious tales with historical analysis to tell a broader story of Italian Renaissance cultural adjustments and obsessions. "This book is part of the current debate among historians of medicine, cultural studies theorists, gender and sexuality scholars, and literary critics regarding key interrelated preoccupations of the early modern period (or indeed of any period): sexuality, reproduction, beauty, and aging. The author uses as her guide four notorious moments in the life of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua (1562-1612), a well-known patron of arts and music in Renaissance Italy. By examining documents in the Gonzaga and Medici archives ... letters, doctors' advice, reports, receipts, travelogues ... together with (and against) medical, herbal, theological, even legal publications of the period, she fleshes out an early modern cultural history of the pathology of human reproduction, the physiology of aging, and the science of rejuvenation as they impacted a prince with a large ego and an even larger purse. The questions addressed are wide-ranging: How did the discovery of new body parts translate into political empowerment? What specific physiological issues impacted couples' reproductive agendas? When did the worshipping of beauty motivate radical experimentations with aesthetic surgery?" ... Provided by publisher Conents 6 List of Illustrations 8 Introduction: Staging the Body 12 1. The Virgin Cure: Manual Exams and Early Modern Surgeons 39 2. The Aesthetic Cure: Skin Disease, Noses, and the Invention of Plastic Surgery 73 3. The Comfort Cure: Managing Pain and Catarrh at the Spa 107 4. The Sexual Cure: Searching for a Viagra in the New World 132 Epilogue: Unwrapping the Body 161 Notes 168 Selected Bibliography 248 Acknowledgments 274 Index 278

Using four notorious moments in the life of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, Valeria Finucci explores changing early modern concepts of sexuality, reproduction, beauty, and aging. She deftly marries salacious tales with historical analysis to tell a broader story of Italian Renaissance cultural adjustments and obsessions.