I would like to thank Barbara S. Kanner, Occidental College, for her inspiration is establishing the importance of historiographical and bibliographical essays in women's history and Mary Elizabeth Perry, University of Southern California, for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. My students in ‘The Reformation Debate on Women’ at the Harvard Divinity School and in ‘The Renaissance’ and ‘Woman and Man in Western Thought’, at Occidental College fostered lively discussions on the ‘image’ of the Renaissance woman. In particular, (...) I would like to thank Muffy Barman, Occidental College, for an Occidental Independent Study in 1986, parallel to my research on the woman question in the Renaissance. At the Huntington Library Seminar on Women's Studies, 6 December 1986, I gave an address on 'The Renaissance Debate on Women' which will appear in the 1986–1987 Proceedings. (shrink)