Description
Book SynopsisIn the fifteenth century, the Oblates of Santa Francesca Romana, a fledgling community of religious women in Rome, commissioned an impressive array of artwork for their newly acquired living quarters, the Tor de'Specchi. The imagery focused overwhelmingly on the sensual, corporeal nature of contemporary spirituality, populating the walls of the monastery with a highly naturalistic assortment of earthly, divine, and demonic figures. This book draws on art history, anthropology, and gender studies to explore the disciplinary and didactic role of the images, as well as their relationship to important papal projects at the Vatican.
Trade Review"Scanlan offers an extensive survey of this important example of feminine patronage and art and, with her focus on liminality and corporeality, opens stimulating perspectives. Her pleasant writing style makes it easy for readers to immerse themselves in the fifteenth-century setting." - Kirsten Lee Bierbaum,
Renaissance Quarterly, Winter 2019 "Suzanne Scanlan’s
Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de' Specchi is a carefully delineated and circumscribed study ... [it is] a welcome addition to English-language scholarship on Santa Francesca Romana (St. Frances of Rome, d. 1440)." - Cordelia Warr,
Speculum, 95/1 (January 2020) "
Divine and Demonic Imagery presents a persuasive argument for the visual as primary documentation for the study of church history. ... Suzanne M. Scanlan coordinates her reading of this extraordinary imagery [of artwork at Tor de’Specchi] through the multivalent lens of late medieval optical theory, the theology of visions, and then contemporary Italian texts to guide her readers through the meditative and mnemonic practices of these religious women." - Diane Apostolos-Cappadona,
Church History, October 2019
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Demonic and Divine Bodies Chapter 1: Sanctity on the Threshold: Liminality and Corporeality at Tor de'Specchi Chapter 2: Painted Visions and Devotional Practices at Tor de'Specchi Chapter 3: Dining and Discipline at Tor de'Specchi: The Refectory as Ritual Space Chapter 4: The Devil in the Refectory: Bodies Imagined at Tor de'Specchi Epilogue : Imagining the Canonization of Francesca Romana Appendix A: Statutes of Ordination for the Beata Francesca Bibliography Index
