Book contents
- Saints, Miracles, and Social Problems in Italian Renaissance Art
- Saints, Miracles, and Social Problems in Italian Renaissance Art
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- One Introduction
- Two The Vita Icon Reimagined: New (and Old) Saints, New (and Old) Miracles
- Three Storytelling with Saints: Pictorial Narrative and Viewing Experience
- Four Girls in Trouble: Gendering Possession and Exorcism
- Five Assault, Amputation, Absolution: Visualizing the Power of Confession
- Six Thinking with Julian: Marital Violence and Elite Masculinity
- Seven Bernardino the Peacemaker: Visual Hagiography and Factional Violence
- Eight Cannibal Mothers: Picturing Madness and Maternal Infanticide
- Nine Making Innocence Visible (and Audible) in the Basilica del Santo
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
One - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 April 2023
- Saints, Miracles, and Social Problems in Italian Renaissance Art
- Saints, Miracles, and Social Problems in Italian Renaissance Art
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- One Introduction
- Two The Vita Icon Reimagined: New (and Old) Saints, New (and Old) Miracles
- Three Storytelling with Saints: Pictorial Narrative and Viewing Experience
- Four Girls in Trouble: Gendering Possession and Exorcism
- Five Assault, Amputation, Absolution: Visualizing the Power of Confession
- Six Thinking with Julian: Marital Violence and Elite Masculinity
- Seven Bernardino the Peacemaker: Visual Hagiography and Factional Violence
- Eight Cannibal Mothers: Picturing Madness and Maternal Infanticide
- Nine Making Innocence Visible (and Audible) in the Basilica del Santo
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In a painting of ca. 1500–5 (Fig. 1), the Augustinian saint Nicholas of Tolentino (1246–1305, can. 1446) miraculously saves two young men from execution at the gallows. Dressed in the black robes of the Augustinian order, Nicholas appears in the center of the compositional space, supporting the bodies of the condemned men with an effortless grace. The panel, now in Pisa, would have originally been part of a multiscene predella placed below a painted image of Nicholas crowned in glory.1 Before its late eighteenth-century dismantling, the ensemble would have been found in a prominent and easily accessible location – a nave chapel – in the church of Sant’Agostino, the principal Augustinian friary in the north Umbrian town of Città di Castello.2 In this open and bustling viewing context, the image of Nicholas’s miraculous act, juxtaposed with the figure of the saint, would have reached a wide and diverse audience from all walks of life.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023