Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de'Specchi, 1400-1500
Religious Women and Art in 15th-century Rome
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Amsterdam University Press
Published:12th Mar '18
Should be back in stock very soon
In 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.
"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
ISBN: 9789462983991
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
244 pages