“All the Many and Varied Remedies and Secrets”: Sexual Practices

Early Modern Women:
An Interdisciplinary Journal
2010, vol. 5
“All the Many and Varied Remedies and Secrets”:
Sexual Practices and Reproductive Knowledge in the
Renaissance
Brian Sandberg
M
aria de’ Medici was pregnant with her second child in 1602 when
she wrote: “I hope, with God’s help, that I have already passed
through the most dangerous part of my pregnancy, and entering into the
sixth month, I will bring it to term with the happy issue that you and all
my good friends desire of me.”1 Maria de’ Medici frequently discusses
issues of sexuality and reproduction in her correspondence, which can be
usefully examined in comparison with letters written by female members
of the Medici family and their agents. This extensive body of manuscript
correspondence, housed at the Archivio di Stato di Firenze and partially
analyzed by the Medici Archive Project2 research team, allows this essay
to contribute new perspectives to an already extensive literature on gender
and sexuality in Renaissance Italy and France.3 Exploring noblewomen’s
communication in Medici correspondence of the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries offers a fascinating glimpse into early modern women’s own conceptions and practices of sexuality.4
Contemporary understandings of bodies and health shaped
Renaissance women’s attitudes toward sexuality and their sexual practices.5
By the mid-sixteenth century, the Florentine-based Medici dynasty was a
key provider of medicine to princely courts throughout Europe because of
its exceptional botanical gardens and its extensive trading networks, which
gave family members special access to rare medicines.6 Medici princesses at
various courts shared information about sexuality and reproduction, draw-
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ing on Renaissance medical treatises and texts available in Florence.7 These
noblewomen regularly acted as repositories of reproductive knowledge
and medical advice, routinely recommending specific doctors to family
members.8 Medici women sometimes contemplated bodily health in relationship to passionate love and sexual desire, especially during exchanges
concerning courtship and marriage negotiations.
Discussions of sexuality emerged most explicitly in Medici correspondence concerning procreative sexuality and marital relations. Sixteenthcentury social and religious norms encouraged early modern married
couples to engage frequently in sexual intercourse in order to reproduce.9
Young noblewomen experienced great familial and social pressure to get
pregnant as soon as possible following marriage, except in cases of the
marriage of an adolescent or a widow. Medici women worried about news
that married relatives were not sleeping together, sometimes noting the frequency of a husband’s visits to his wife’s bedchamber. Medici agents were
anxious when reports from the Spanish court indicated that king Felipe
III was not sleeping with his wife, Élisabeth de Bourbon, who was one of
Maria de’ Medici’s daughters.10 Dynastic concerns about reproduction thus
routinely prompted frank discussions of sexuality among female members
of the Renaissance ruling families.
Medici correspondence reveals a wide variety of sexual equipment
that was deployed to assist married couples in performing intercourse
and achieving pregnancy. Portraits of married partners were hung near
beds to focus the lovers’ thoughts. Eleonora de’ Medici, for example, had
a portrait of her new husband hung by her bedside in 1584.11 Tapestries
and paintings depicting sacred and secular stories of faithful love, feminine virtue, and fertile marriage often decorated Florentine bedrooms.12 A
tapestry cycle depicting the story of Tobias was intended for the bedroom
of Eleonora de Toledo in Palazzo Medici in the 1540s.13 Erotic paintings
and frescos of nude women and sensual lovemaking subjects adorned the
walls of some bedchambers, intended to inspire sexual activity.14 “Most
Renaissance erotica adopted subjects from the literature of classical
mythology,” Bette Talvacchia explains, indicating that “legends concerning
the loves of the heroes, stories of the Olympian deities’ entangled affairs,
and the amorous exploits of Jupiter in particular provided numerous pos-
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“All the Many and Varied Remedies and Secrets”
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sibilities for descriptions of erotic situations.”15 Noblewomen used special
perfumes to enhance the pleasure of their bedrooms.16 Elaborate beds
with canopies and coverings were given to brides, to create sensual spaces
for lovemaking. Élisabeth de Bourbon received a fantastic jewel-studded
bed from her relatives at the Medici court in 1624, presumably for this
purpose.17 Princesses’ beds often displayed sensual imagery, such as one
set of tapestry bed hangings that included depictions of fruit and flowers,
which may have symbolized fecundity.18 Erotic prints and drawings of
satyrs and sexual positions could provide intimate arousal in bed during
foreplay.19 When married partners were apart, love letters could be used to
fan the flames of desire and prepare for sexual relations when the couple
was reunited.20
The sexual ability and fertility of princely women was constantly
evaluated by courtiers and their correspondents. Letters by these women
frequently reported rumors of noblewomen’s supposed pregnancies at
other princely courts.21 Cristina di Lorena offered Caterina de’ Medici,
duchess of Mantua, advice on determining if she were pregnant, indicating
that “if your courses have not come, you can believe that you are pregnant,
I believe, since you have always had a very regular period.”22 Caterina was
to use a special belt and a stone that Cristina had sent her to assist her
pregnancy. Medici communications were filled with reports of births, giftgiving, baptisms, and god-parenting. Each princely court across Europe
organized lavish ceremonies after a successful birth to celebrate the ruling
family’s solidity and to publicize their dynasty’s preservation through the
prospects of inheritance and marriage alliance.
Medici women exhibited great concern about pregnancies, providing
health advice for expecting mothers in the family. Fears of miscarriages
prompted discussions of health, midwives, and the complications of childbirth. Caterina de’ Medici, duchess of Mantua, was instructed “not to eat
too much,” but to have bleedings “for a certain time when pregnant to stay
healthy.”23 The birth of Louis XIII in September 1601, a mere nine months
after Maria de’ Medici’s marriage to the French king Henri IV, confirmed
her fecundity and the fertility of her lineage. Maria de’ Medici spent most
of the first decade of the seventeenth century in successive pregnancies,
giving birth to six children in nine years. Medici agents at the Bourbon
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royal court in France routinely reported on Maria de’ Medici’s pregnancies,
providing detailed accounts to her Florentine relatives.24
In a context where fertility was so critical, impotency represented
a serious problem for any married couple that failed to produce a child
quickly. When married princely couples experienced sexual problems,
Medici women and their agents discussed impotency cures and fertility
enhancements. Giovanni de’ Medici reported that Leonor de Guzmán,
countess of Uceda, had asked “with much familiarity and secrecy if I know
whether, among all the many and varied remedies and secrets of the Most
Serene Prince [Ferdinando I de’ Medici], there is something that treats or
alleviates sterility, or that augments the faculty to reproduce, either in men
or women.”25 Giovanni, who was at the court of the Spanish Netherlands
in Brussels, asked a Medici official in Florence to send him an appropriate
remedy as soon as possible. Women at the Medici court, such as Cristina di
Lorena, often fulfilled such requests by sending medicines, ointments, and
preparations to their correspondents. The failure of intercourse in noblemen’s sexual encounters with their wives or extramarital partners could
have serious political repercussions. For example, Giangiacomo Medici di
Marignano had lost a testicle when he was wounded by an arquebus shot,
and there were rumors that he was impotent as a result.26 Such reports
could greatly damage a nobleman’s prospects of marriage. As Vincenzo I
Gonzaga courted one of the daughters of Francesco I de’ Medici, the grand
duke worried that “according to certain voices from the Farnese, the prince
[Vincenzo] is impotent,” so he hesitated to sign a marriage contract with
Vincenzo’s father, the duke of Mantua, “if we are not first satisfied about
his potency, and thus there should be a test in Venice.”27 A test was subsequently administered, and it apparently satisfied Francesco I, who soon
signed the contract for Vincenzo’s marriage to Eleonora de’ Medici.
Love affairs and illicit sexuality within their families caused great
concern for Medici women, who took great care to protect the reputations of their households. Their correspondence included ample discussion of prostitutes and courtesans, especially in Rome. Warnings about
Giovanni de’ Medici’s extramarital sexual relationship with a woman
reached Caterina de’ Medici, duchess of Mantua, as he prepared to visit
the Mantuan court. The duchess wrote that: “I heard that the Signor D.
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Giovanni [de’ Medici] is coming here for Carnival, and is bringing that
woman of his with him, and as much as the first part of this decision is
pleasing to me, the second part annoys me. . . . I consider that woman only
as a whore.”28 Married noblemen’s affairs provoked dangerous jealousies
and political concerns about illegitimate children.29 Noblewomen’s affairs
could be especially troubling, since some noblemen responded with violence to such challenges to their control over women’s sexuality. Pietro di
Cosimo I de’ Medici murdered his wife Eleonora di Garcia de Toledo in
1576, brutally punishing her adultery and hunting down her lover.30
The detailed discussions of sexuality in Medici women’s letters demonstrate that early modern noblewomen were attentive to a wide array
of reproductive health issues. These women exchanged intimate sexual
information and reproductive knowledge, providing crucial advice and
counsel for their families as they shared “many and varied remedies and
secrets.” Renaissance noblewomen such as the Medici princesses thus
played important roles in communicating sexual practices and in diffusing
reproductive knowledge among elites in early modern Europe.
Notes
1. The original reads: “[ J’]espere Dieu aydant que ayant desja passé le temps le
plus dangereux de ma grossesse & entrant comme je faiz au sixiesme mois je l’acheveray
avec lheureuse issue que vous & tous mes bons amys me desirent.” Maria de’ Medici
to Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 26 July 1602, MdP 4729, f˚ 52.
Research for this article was made possible by the generous funding of the National
Endowment for the Humanities and the support of the Medici Archive Project. Any
views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not
necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
2. Research for this essay relies on manuscript sources consulted directly in
Mediceo del Principato [hereafter, MdP] collection of the Archivio di Stato di Firenze
[hereafter, ASF] and on extracts from additional manuscript sources from the same
archive, compiled in the Medici Archive Project [hereafter, MAP] Database, available
online at www.medici.org. This article has benefited greatly from the collaborative
research approach of the Medici Archive Project, and particularly from the comments and
advice of Sheila Barker, an expert on the history of medicine who has consulted many of
the same volumes in the ASF.
3. Thomas V. Cohen, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2004); Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., Women in the Streets: Essays on Sex and
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Power in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Guido
Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1989); Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon
Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1987), 77–110; Natalie Zemon Davis, “Women on Top,” in Society and Culture in Early
Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 124–51; Joan Kelly, “Early
Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes, 1400–1789,” Signs 8 (Autumn 1982):
4–28.
4. Instead of focusing on the rich polemical works concerning the querelle des
femmes or the normative literature concerning women’s bodies, this study examines
Medici feminine correspondence in the MdP collection of the ASF.
5. Susan Broomhall, Women’s Medical Work in Early Modern France
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Marie-Hélène Huet, “Monstrous
Medicine,” in Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe, ed. Laura
Lunger Knoppers and Joan B. Landes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 127–47;
Wendy Perkins, Midwifery and Medicine in Early Modern France: Louise Bourgeois
(Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996).
6. For an example of medicines delivered by Medici women to other princely
courts, see Alof Wignacourt to Cristina di Lorena, Malta, 7 January 1619, ASF, MdP
4179, n.p. [c. f˚ 21]. On early modern botanical gardens and medicines, see Guido Moggi,
“Storia delle Collezioni: Botaniche de Museo,” in Il Museo di Storia Naturale dell’Università
di Firenze: Le Collezioni Botaniche / The Museum of Natural History of the University of
Florence: The Botanical Collections (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2009), 2: 3–57;
Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World, ed. Londa
Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
7. Sheila Barker, “Women’s Authority in Medical Matters at the Courts of Early
Modern Italy,” research paper presented at Renaissance Society of America conference,
Chicago, 2008, to be published in a forthcoming collective volume by the Medici Archive
Project.
8. Maria de’ Medici, queen of France, presented the doctors Montalto and
Guidi, who had served as her personal physicians at the Bourbon court, to Ferdinando
I de’ Medici. Maria de’ Medici to Ferdinando I de’ Medici, n.d., ASF, MdP 4729, f˚ 122;
Maria de’ Medici to Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Fontainebleau, 12 November 1604, MdP
4729 f° 134. On the Medici women, see Le donne Medici nel sistema europeo delle corti,
XVI–XVIII secolo. Atti del convegno internazionale, ed. Giulia Calvi and Riccardo Spinelli
(Firenze - San Domenico di Fiesole, 6–8 ottobre 2005), 2 vols. (Florence: Polistampa, 2008).
9. Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History
from Antiquity to Early Modern Europe, ed. Valeria Finucci and Kevin Brownlee (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2001); Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of
Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
10. Insert, MdP 4949, f˚ 910, in MAP Database, 7933. Eleonora de’ Medici
seems to have insisted on sleeping with her husband, despite her doctor’s advice that she
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sleep alone while recovering from a fever. Traiano di Fabrizio Bobba to Piero di Francesco
Usimbardi, Mantua, 23 April 1588, MdP 2940, n.p., in MAP Database, 4681.
11. Camillo Capilupi to Ferdinando I de’ Medici, 4 April 1584, MdP 2939, n.p.,
in MAP Database, 4400.
12. Elizabeth Currie, Inside the Renaissance House (London: V&A Publications,
2006), 61; Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Vitue: Art in Renaissance Italy
(London: British Museum Press, 2001), 37–77; Allison Lee Palmer, “The Walters’
‘Madonna and Child’ Plaquette and Private Devotional Art in Early Renaissance Italy,”
Journal of the Walters Art Museum 59 (2001): 73–84.
13. Pier Francesco Riccio to Pietro Aretino Camaiani, Pisa, 13 November 1542,
MdP 1170, f˚ 78, in MAP Database, 2399.
14. Paola Tinagli, Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation,
Identity (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1997), 127–30; see also Sara
Matthews Grieco, Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy (Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming).
15. Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 49–51.
16. A resin perfume for Eleanora de Toledo’s bedroom is discussed in Tommaso
di Iacopo de’ Medici to Pier Francesco Riccio, Poggio a Caiano, 18 October 1549, MdP
1175, insert 2, f˚ 35, in MAP Database, 12996.
17. Averardo di Raffaello de’ Medici di Castellina to Curzio di Lorenzo da
Picchena, Madrid, 2 April 1624, MdP 4952, n.p., in MAP Database, 9562.
18. Ferdinando I de’ Medici to Sallustio Tarugi, Florence, 20 December 1604,
MdP 4936, f˚377, in MAP Database, 14617.
19. Tinagli, Women in Italian Renaissance Art, 126–27; Primatice, maître de
Fontainebleau. L’Italie à la cour de France, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Réunion des Musées
Nationaux, 2004).
20. Ferdinando I Gonzaga to Caterina di Ferdinando I de’ Medici, 26 February
1617, MdP 6109, n.p., in MAP Database, 7042; Ferdinando I Gonzaga to Caterina di
Ferdinando I de’ Medici, 2 March 1621, in MAP Database, 7060.
21. For an example, see Averardo di Raffaello de’ Medici di Castellina to Curzio
di Lorenzo da Picchena, Madrid, 3 May 1623, MdP 4952, n.p., in MAP Database, 8933.
22. The original reads: “Caterina voi siate di natura sana et hora dicendomi
che state molto bene dico che sin a questo giorno se le purghe non vi sono venutte si può
credere che siate gravida poichè secondo mi vien detto voi siate [siete] stata sempre benissimo regolata. . . . ” Cristina di Lorena to Caterina di Ferdinando I de’ Medici, 28 April
1617, ASF, MdP 6110, f˚ 343, in MAP Database, 7037. Sheila Barker provides a more
comprehensive reading of this document’s medical advice in her forthcoming work.
23. The original reads: “Madama Sma mia comandato scrivere a V.A.S. che lei
cerchi di non mangiare troppo . . . bisognava cavarli sangue dun certo tempo, quando con
gravida per far portarsi a bene.” Claudia d’Albon Coppoli to Caterina di Ferdinando I de’
Medici duchessa di Mantova, Pisa, 15 January 1618, ASF, MdP 6113, f˚ 56–57 [also
analyzed in MAP Database, 18676].
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24. For discussions of Maria de’ Medici’s pregnancies, see Maria de’ Medici
to Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 26 July 1602, MdP 4729, f˚ 52;
Cosimo Baroncelli to Belisario di Francesco Vinta[?], Monceaux-les-Meaux, 11 July 1605,
ASF, MdP 5157, f˚ 378; Pietro Accolti to Belisario di Francesco Vinta, Paris, 2 March
1608, ASF, MdP 5157, f˚ 750.
25. Giovanni de’ Medici to Belisario di Francesco Vinta, Bruxelles, 30 March
1603, ASF, MdP 5155, f˚ 408–409: “ . . . questa Signora mi domandò con molta familiarità et secretezza, se io sapevo che fra li molti e varij rimedi et secreti che ha il Serenissimo
Padrone [Ferdinano I de’ Medici], ci fusse cosa che fusse buona, o a rimediare alla sterilità,
o, a augumentare la facultà del poter generare, sì nel huomo come nella donna.”
26. Francesco di Paolo Vinta to Cristiano Pagni, Milan, MdP 3102, f˚ 69, in
MAP Database, 11972.
27. The original reads: “ . . . rispetto a certa voce uscita da’ Farnese che il Principe
era impotente, non volemmo firmare le capitulazioni, se prima non restavamo giustificati
della sua potenza, et così convenimmo che in Venezia se ne facessi la prova, dove inviammo una giovane con la quale egli ci rese molto ben chiari et giustificati della vanità della
voce sparsa, con tutte quelle satisfazioni che habbiamo saputo desiderare.” Francesco I de’
Medici to Bongianni di Piero Gianfigliazzi, Florence, 10 April 1584, MdP 5046, f˚ 348,
in MAP Database, 16148.
28. The original reads: “Ho presentito che il Sig.r D. Giovanni [de’ Medici] viene
a far costà il Carnevale, et che mena seco quella sua femina, et si come la prima parte di
questa sua resolutione mi piace, credendo che V.A. haverà caro di rivederlo in cotesta casa,
così la seconda mi da fastidio . . . io non tengo detta Donna se non per puttana.” Cosimo
II de’ Medici to Caterina di Ferdinando I de’ Medici duchessa di Mantova, Florence, 7
February 1619, MdP 6108, f˚ 563, consulted in MAP Database, 6302. On Giovanni
de’ Medici, see Brendan Dooley, Amore e guerra nel tardo Rinascimento Le lettere di Livia
Vernazza e Don Giovanni de’ Medici (Florence: Polistampa, 2009), a volume I have not
yet been able to consult.
29. Thomas Kuehn, Illegitimacy in Renaissance Florence (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 2002).
30. Pietro di Cosimo I de’ Medici to Francesco I de’ Medici, Pisa, n.d. [ July
1576], ASF, MdP 5154, fº 86.
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