Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-nptnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-24T07:59:21.088Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Breaking the Silence: The Poor Clares and the Visual Arts in Fifteenth-Century Italy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jeryldene M. Wood
Jeryldene M. Wood*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

As Dante and Beatrice begin their ascent to the Empyrean in canto 3 of the Paradiso, they alight on the moon where they encounter pale spirits, not mere reflections but “true substances … assigned [there] for inconstancy to holy vows” (Dante, 29-31).1 Encouraged by Beatrice, Dante asks an eager soul identified as Piccarda Donati, a Poor Clare abducted from a Florentine convent by her brother and coerced into a politically expedient marriage, “through what warp she had not entirely passed the shuttle of her vow” (Dante, 95-96). Like the followers of Saint Clare who “go cloaked and veiled on earth,” she replies, “as a girl, I fled the world to walk the way she walked and closed myself into her habit, pledged to her sisterhood till my last day” (Dante, 98-99, 103-05).

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , Summer 1995 , pp. 262 - 286
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barzman, Karen-edis. “Devotion and Desire: The Reliquary Chapel of Maria Maddalena de'Pazzi.” An History 15 (1992): 171-96.Google Scholar
Battisti, Eugenic. Piero della Francesca. 2 vols. Milan, 1971.Google Scholar
Bembo, Illuminata. Specchio di Illuminazionc. Ed. d'Aurizio, Sergio. Bologna, 1983.Google Scholar
Bigaroni, Marino OFM “San Damiano, Assisi: The First Church of Saint Francis.“ Franciscan Studies 47 (1987): 45–97.Google Scholar
Bigaroni, Marino OFM, ed. The Legend and Writings of Saint Clare of Assisi. St. Bonaventure, NY, 1953.Google Scholar
Bruzelius, Caroline. “Hearing is Believing: Clarissan Architecture, ca. 1213-1340.“ Gesta 31 (1992): 83–91.Google Scholar
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley, 1987.Google Scholar
Casolini, Fausta. Il Protomonastero di Santa Chiara in Assisi, Storia e Cronaca (1253-1950). Milan, 1950.Google Scholar
Dunn, Marilyn R. “Nuns as Art Patrons: The Decoration of S. Marta al Collegio Romano.” Art Bulletin 70 (1988): 451-77.10.1080/00043079.1988.10788582Google Scholar
Gaillard, Émile. Sano diPietro (1406-1481), Un Peintre Siennois au XVe Steele. Chambery, 1923.Google Scholar
Garibaldi, Vittoria. ed. Piero della Francesca: 11 Polittico di Sant'Antonio. Perugia, 1993.Google Scholar
Garosi, G. lnventario dei Manuscritti nella Biblioteca Comunale di Siena. Siena, n.d.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Creighton. “The Archbishop on the Painters of Florence, 1450.” Art Bulletin 41 (1959): 75–87.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Creighton. “Tuscan Observants and Painters in Venice, ca. 1400.” In Interprelazioni Veneziane: Studi di Storia dell'Arte in Onore di Michelangelo Muraro, ed. Rosand, David, 109-20. Venice, 1984.Google Scholar
Gnoli, Umberto. “Raffaello e la incoronazione' di Monteluce.” Bollettitw d'Arte (1917): 133-54.Google Scholar
Goffen, Rona. Spirituality in Conflict: Saint Francis and Giotto's Bardi Chapel. University Park, 1988.Google Scholar
Höhler, Peter. “II Monastero delle Clarisse di Monteluce in Perugia (1218-1400). “In Il movimento religioso femminile in Vmbria neisecoliXIII-XIV, ed. Roberto Rusconi, 61-82. Perugia, 1984.Google Scholar
Kent, F. W. “Lorenzo di Credi, his Patron Jacopo Bongianni and Savonarola.” Burlington Magazine 125 (1983): 539-41.Google Scholar
Lega, A. Bacchi della. “S. Caterina da Bologna Scrittrice, Miniatrice e Pittrice.” In La Santa nella storia, nelle lettere e nell'arte, 41–70. Bologna, 1912.Google Scholar
Lightbown, Ronald W. Piero della Francesca. New York, 1992.Google Scholar
Mancinelli, Fabrizio. “La Pala di Monteluce.“ In Raffaello in Vaticano, 286-96. Milan, 1984.Google Scholar
Marchini, Giuseppe. “Aggiunte a Giuliano da Sangallo.” Commentari 1 (1950): 34-8.Google Scholar
Fra Mariano da Firenze, . Libro delle degnita et excellentiae del ordine della seraphica madre delle povere donne Sanctae Chiara da Assisi. Ed. Boccali, P. G.. Assisi, 1986.Google Scholar
Marquand, Allen. Andrea della Robbia and his Atelier. New York, 1972.Google Scholar
Meier, Hans-Rudolf. “Santa Chiara in Assisi. Architektur und Funktion im Schattcn von San Francesco.” Arte Mcdievale 4 (1990): 151-78.Google Scholar
Memoriale di Santa Maria di Montcluce. Intro. Ugolino Niccolini. OFM. Assisi, 1983.Google Scholar
Moorman, John OFM. A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517. Oxford, 1968.Google Scholar
Nuñez, P. Lucius, M. OFM. “Descriptio Breviarii Manuscripti S. Catharinae Bononiensis O.S.CL.,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 4 (1911): 732-47.Google Scholar
Pardi, Renzo. Ricerche di architecttura religiosa medioevale in Umbria. Perugia, 1972.Google Scholar
Pope-Hennessy, John. Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum. 2 vols. London, 1964.Google Scholar
Regoli, Gigetta dalli. Lorenzo di Credi. Pisa, 1966.Google Scholar
Ragusa, Isa. and Rosalie B. Green, ed. Meditations on the Life of Christ. Trans. Isa Ragusa. Princeton, 1961.Google Scholar
Richa, Giuseppe. Notizie istoriche delle chiese fiorentine divise nc’ suoi quartieri. 9 vols. Florence, 1761.Google Scholar
Rigaux, Dominique. “The Franciscan Tertiaries at the Convent of Sant'Anna at Foligno.“ Gesta 31 (1992): 92-8.Google Scholar
Scarpellini, Pietro. Perugino. Milan, 1984.Google Scholar
Shearman, John. “The Chigi Chapel in S. Maria del Popolo.“ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 24 (1961): 129-60.Google Scholar
Schrader, Donald R. “A Marble Relief by Francesco di Simone Ferrucci in the Virginia Museum Collection.” Arts in Virginia 29 (1990): 22–27.Google Scholar
Simons, Patricia. Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance and Baroque Italy: A Working Bibliography. Sydney, 1988.Google Scholar
Spanò Martinelli, erena. “Per uno studio su Caterina da Bologna.” Studi Mediaevali, 3dser., 2 (1971): 713-59.Google Scholar
Spanò Martinelli, Serena. “La Biblioteca del ‘Corpus Domini' bolognese: 1'inconsueto spaccato di una cultura monastica femminile.” La BibliofiliaSS (1986): 1–23.Google Scholar
Stuard, Susan M. Women in Medieval History and Historiography. Philadelphia, 1987.Google Scholar
Todini, Filippo. La Pittura Umbra dal Duecento al Primo Quattrocento. 2 vols. Milan, 1989.Google Scholar
Varano, Battista.da. Le Opere Spirituali. Ed. Boccanera, Giacomo. Iesi, 1958.Google Scholar
Vigri, Saint Catherine. Le Sette Armi Spirituali. Ed. Foletti, Cecilia. Padua, 1985.Google Scholar
Zeri, Federico. and Gardner, Elizabeth E.. Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central Italian Schools. New York, 1980.Google Scholar