Un archivio tutto per sé? Le carte e i registri delle principesse italiane del Quattrocento

Historians have extensively investigated the parallel processes of the construction of power by the principalities of northern Italy in the late Middle Ages and the creation of their archives, but the existence of documents belonging to princesses has never been addressed as a whole. Taking into consideration the duchies of Milan and Ferrara and the marquisate of Mantua, this essay aims to reflect on the “archives of princesses” on two levels: the first, historical, aims to gather evidence of the ancient existence of female princely archives; the second, historiographical, aims to understand the mechanisms of concealment and disclosure of these records both in the later archival reordering and in historiography.