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for reading versions of this article and improving it in numerous ways. Many thanks also to Don Romano and Elia Mariano of the Biblioteca di Santa Scolastica, Subiaco, for their generous assistance. Portions of this study have been presented at the seventythird annual meeting of the American Musicological Society (Quebec City, 2007) and in invited lectures at Northwestern Uni

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Cultural life in late seventeenth‐century Rome was enormously enriched by women's support of music and musicians, theatre, and public entertainments. This essay explores the patronage of Maria Mancini Colonna, Queen Christina of Sweden and women of their circles, the resonance of their sponsorship of musical or theatrical events in Rome during the 1660s and 1670s, and their self‐fashioning as patrons. The picture that results from this investigation shows that patronage offered women the possibility to express their desires, accomplish diplomatic endeavours, and even respond to the criticisms of their detractors in acceptable ways. Furthermore, by examining mostly chronicles compiled by their male contemporaries (avvisi di Roma), correspondence, and memoirs, this essay aims also at exploring the challenges and methodological avenues available to scholars whose study of women's patronage cannot be supported by the proof of financial support to a musician or to sponsor an event. The much broader idea of patronage that emerges from such a study indicates that the path is open for music historians for more studies on women's struggles to produce, inspire, influence, and commission music, theatrical entertainment, and cultural activities in early modern Rome.

Patronage of the arts and the sponsorship of events that attracted public attention were essential tools for the Roman elite to negotiate their position within the complex social and political structure of the city. This chapter introduces Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, Maria Mancini, and their cultural milieu in Rome. Their palace in piazza Santi Apostoli became the stage for their support of conversazioni, music-making, and intellectual gatherings. The palace and its collections of paintings, antiquities, arts, and the cycle of frescoes that began to be executed during Lorenzo Onofrio’s life were also essential elements of their self-fashioning and family myth-making.