Here is a reading list for topics covered in the Love, Marriage and Sex in Renaissance Italy seminar:

Alberti, Leon Battista. The Family in Renaissance Florence, trans. Renée Neu Watkins, Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1969.

Barkan, Leonard. The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism. Yale Univ Press, 1986.

Baskins, Cristelle. The Triumph of Marriage: Painted Cassoni of the Renaissance, Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, 2009

Bassanese, Fiora A. “Private Lives and Public Lies: Texts by Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance,” in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 30, No. 3, Renaissance Culture, Literature, and Genres, Fall 1988, pp. 295-319.

Brown, Judith. Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, Oxford Univ Press, 1986

Brucker, Gene. Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence, UC Press, 1985.

Brucker, Gene. “Monasteries, Friaries, and Nunneries in Quattrocento Florence” in Christianity and the Renaissance, Syracuse UP, 1990.

Bull, Malcolm. The Mirror of the Gods: How Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods, Oxford UP, 2005.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, UC Press, 1987.

Clark, Kenneth. The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art, Princeton Univ Press, 1956.

Clarke, Paula C.  “The Business of Prostitution in Early Renaissance Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Summer 2015), pp. 419-464.

Cohen, Elizabeth S. “Seen and Known: Prostitutes in the Cityscape of Late-sixteenth-century Rome,” Renaissance Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Sept 1998), pp. 392-409.

Ferraro, Joanne M. Marriage wars in late Renaissance Venice, Oxford Univ Press, 2001.

Franco, Veronica. Poems and Selected Letters, ed. and trans. A. R. Jones and M. F. Rosenthal. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998.

Hayum, Andrée. “A Renaissance Audience Considered: The Nuns at S. Apollonia and Castagno’s Last Supper,” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 88, No. 2 (Jun., 2006), pp. 243-266.

Herlihy, David and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427, Yale Univ Press, 1985.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing unto Others, Routledge, 2005.

King, Margaret. Women of the Renaissance, Univ of Chicago Press, 1991.

Kirshner, Julius and Anthony Molho. “The Dowry Fund and the Marriage Market in Early Quattrocento Florence,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Sep., 1978), pp. 403-38.

Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1985.

Renaissance Love: Eros, Passion, and Friendship in Italian Art Around 1500, ed. Jeanette Kohl, Marianne Koos, and Adrian W.B. Randolph. Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2014

Lawner, Lynn. Lives of the Courtesans: Portraits of the Renaissance, Rizzoli, 1987.

Lowe, Kate.“Secular brides and convent brides: wedding ceremonies in Italy during the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation” in Marriage in Italy, 1300-1650, edited by Trevor Dean and K.J.P. Lowe. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998.

Miller, Maureen C. “Why the Bishop of Florence Had to Get Married,” Speculum, Oct., 2006, Vol. 81, No. 4, pp. 1055-1091.

Musacchio, Jacqueline Marie. Art, Marriage, & Family in the Florentine Renaissance Palace, The Getty Foundation, 2008.

Rocke, Michael. Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence, Oxford Univ Press, 1996

Rosenthal, Margaret F. The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth Century Venice. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992.

Ruggiero, Guido. The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice. Oxford, 1985.

Saslow, James M. The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation, Yale Univ Press, 1991.

Stampa, Gapara. The Complete Poems: The 1554 edition of the Rime, a bilingual edition, ed. Troy Tower and Jane Tylus; trans. Jane Tylus. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2010.

Strocchia, Sharon. Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence, Johns Hopkins, 2009.

Talvacchia, Bette. Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture, Princeton Univ Press, 1999.

Trexler, Richard. “Florentine Prostitution in the Fifteenth Century: Patrons and Clients” in Dependence in Context in Renaissance Florence, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1994.

Zarri, Gabriella. “Living Saints: A Typology of Female Sanctity in the Early Sixteenth Century,” in Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, eds. Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996.