oa History Rewritten: Francesco Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia and Fiammetta Frescobaldi

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In the context of Renaissance Florence, rich in female writers, Fiammetta Frescobaldi (1523-1586), a Dominican nun in the convent of San Jacopo di Ripoli, stands out for the choice and variety of subjects that she studied and introduced to the sisters of her convent. Her works include a rewriting of Francesco Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia. She did not simply offer a resumé of that work, but she intervened at lexical and syntactical levels, rendering Guicciardini’s highly complex rhetorical account in shorter sentences and a more accessible linguistic idiom. Her primary audience consisted of her conventual sisters, many of whom belonged to the most important Florentine families. She issued her works for their benefit as high-quality manuscript volumes, which imitated the conventions of printed books. As such, her works, released in a domestic setting, emulated publication in the wider world.