hey gang
apologies if this sounds a little too much like, ah, asking you to do my homework for me, but im wondering if anyone off the top of their head can think of any prominent examples of women crossdessing in renaissance italy. i just got done pitching my dissertation concept to my prof and he suggested the major issue is he can think of a few really good examples from spain, but none from italy, which is where i specifically need to be focusing on
theres been some attention to male crossdressing in renaissance italy, and theres something to be said for women wearing articles of mens clothing for a sort of erotic effect, but not a whole lot on female crossdressing in a broader sense, hence my interest. my ultimate goal is to look through examples of figures who spent their whole lives dressed as men (such as the 12th century german semi-saint hildegund) and try to tease out if any of them could arguably be considered late-medieval/early-modern examples of transgender men while taking into account all the circumstances involved, but if theres not a whole lot of primary source material to work with then theres not a whole lot i can do, ill just have to think of something else
ive been up and down jstor and google scholar and the like to try and find anything anyone else might have written but part of the issue is the use of renaissance as a general term for a flourishing of culture, so im throwing up a lot of stuff on modern lgbt renaissances and not a whole lot on renaissance italy. i just need one good example to jump off from and i should be able to get the ball rolling from there - not asking ye to hunt down sources for me or anything, i can probably do that myself
apologies again if this is a misuse of the subreddit, ive no excuse for it other than i have no idea what im doing at any given time and also i never learned how to read
Gerry Milligan's Moral Combat: Women, Gender, and War in Italian Renaissance Literature has been on my reading list for a while and would seem to be the most recent and up to date book on the topic, at least so far as cross-dressing women and warfare, but Margaret Tomalin's The Fortunes of the Warrior Heroine in Italian Literature: An Index of Emancipation and Lillian S. Robinson's Monstrous Regiment: The Lady Knight in Sixteenth-century Epic should also be on your list.
Although not directly related to women dressing as men, [this article](Is This Love? Same-Sex Marriages in Renaissance Rome) on a same-sex marriage in the 1570s includes a reference to men who dressed up as women during the ceremony, and you might find it profitable to look into same-sex communities of the time and see if cross-dressing was common beyond just the one known instance of a wedding ceremony. And speaking of the possibility of transwomen, there was possibly one in mid-14th century Venice, although you'll probably need to do some real digging to verify that.
How much Italian can you read? I suspect that most sources will be easiest to find if you know the right terms to search academia.edu and Google Scholar for Italian scholarship.
If you can find a copy in the library, you might want to check the Bibliography for https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=heEpAQAAMAAJ (Hidden From History - Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past) which I used for a university project and has a few instances of trans folk in it. The Google Books write up mentions that at least one section involves Renaissance Italy. So, even if that section is on gay or lesbian life in that era - the source material they used might have something that would help you.