Queens of the Renaissance

Transcriber's Note
The cover image was created by the transcriber for the convenience of the reader, and is placed in the public domain.
BY M. BERESFORD RYLEY
WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON
First Published in 1907

BEATRICE AND LUDOVICO KNEELING ALTAR-PIECE BY ZENALE
To B——

THERE are no two people who see with the same kind of vision. It is for this reason that, though twenty lives of the six women chosen for this book had been written previously, there would still, it seems to me, be room for a twenty-first. For though the facts might remain identical, there is no possible reiteration of another mind’s exact outlook. Hence I have not scrupled to add these six character studies to the many volumes similar in scope and subject.
The book is called “Queens of the Renaissance,” but Catherine of Siena lived before the Renaissance surged into being, and Anne of Brittany, though her two husbands brought its spirit into France, had not herself a hint of its lovely, penetrating eagerness. They are included because they help, nevertheless, to create continuity and coherence of impression, and the six leading, as they do naturally, one to the other, convey, in the mass, some co-ordinated notion of the Renaissance spirit.