The Renaissance was a rebirth of interest in classical Greek and Roman culture, submerged in the rise of medieval Christianity. Historians, responding to the magic of names such as da Vinci and Michelangelo, inserted this concept between medieval and modern eras, artificially extending it to social and economic developments.

While Lorenzo de’ Medici fostered the creativity of classicising artists, writers and thinkers, his sister Nannina reflected bitterly, after a fight with her father-in-law: ‘Don’t be born a woman in Florence, if you want your own way.’

Arguably one overarching lesson of history is that the best time to be born a woman will be tomorrow. As always, and everywhere, women’s experience in the Renaissance depended upon the regulation of their sexuality, their economic and political roles, their education and the expectations of their culture.

Elite women in court societies, who could inherit wealth and a measure of power, received classical educations, contributed to literature and became patrons of the arts. In the oppressively patriarchal Republic of Florence, the exclusion of women from public life and spaces, combined with an obsession with protecting the purity of the male bloodline, could make them virtual prisoners in their own houses. Classical culture emphasised human experience and large, eminent lineages like that of the Medici were communities in which women could enjoy influence, thanks to the love and respect of enlightened menfolk. But a French traveller in 1610 marvelled that Florentine women ‘see the world only from the small openings in their windows’. Women were not infrequently injured falling out of windows, perhaps in an effort to extend their horizons.