The essays in this interdisciplinary collection draw on visual art, theatre, music, history and literature, in sacred and secular contexts, to explore the cultural fashioning of sexualities in early modern Italy. Approaching the topic from the point of view of both visual and auditory media, the essays demonstrate the role played by artistic production in fashioning, policing, and challenging early modern sexual boundaries.

Contents: Introduction: playing with boundaries, Melanie L. Marshall, Linda L. Carroll and Katherine A. McIver. Part I Performing Sexuality: Visual pleasures, sensual sounds: music, morality, and sexuality in paintings by Titian, Katherine A. McIver; 'Galeotto fu la metafora': language and sex in Boccaccio's Decameron, Catherine Baxter; 'Balla la mona e salta il babuino': performing obscenity in a musical dialogue, Paul Schleuse. Part II The Erotics of Religion: Sexuality and depictions of the female saint in medieval Tuscany, Catherine Lawless; Leonine lasciviousness and Luther, Anthony M. Cummings; The Roman Church and sexuality: some notes on prelates and regular clergy in sixteenth-seventeenth-century Italian courts, Flavio Rurale. Part III Images of Country Life, Realistic and Artistic: Tradition and gender transgression: the iconography of the shepherd couple in Venetian pastoral landscape during the sixteenth century, Christophe Brouard; '(El) ge sa bon laorare': female wealth, male competition, musical festivities, and the Venetian patriciate in Ruzante's pavan, Linda L. Carroll; 'Farò quel che mi piacerà': fictional women in villotta voice resistance, Melanie L. Marshall. Bibliography; Index.