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Caterina Vigri (later Saint Catherine of Bologna) was a mystic, writer, teacher and nun-artist. Her first home, Corpus Domini, Ferrara, was a house of semi-religious women that became a Poor Clare convent and model of Franciscan Observant piety. Vigri's intensely spiritual decoration of her breviary, as well as convent altarpieces that formed a visual program of adoration for the Body of Christ, exemplify the Franciscan Observant visual culture. After Vigri's departure, it was transformed by d'Este women patrons, including Isabella da Aragona, Isabella d'Este and Lucrezia Borgia. While still preserving Observant ideals, it became a more elite noblewomen's retreat, Grounded in archival research and extant paintings, drawings, prints and art objects from Corpus Domini, this volume explores the art, visual culture, and social history of an early modern Franciscan women's community.
List of contents
List of Figures and Plates, Acknowledgements, List of Abbreviations, Introduction, 1. The Pious Women of Corpus Christi Bernardina Sedazzari's House in Via Praisolo Leaders of the Community The Inventory of 1426: Ecclesiastical Vestments Relics, Devotional Objects and Altarpieces From 'Urban Hermits' to Cloistered Nuns, 2. Building a Public Image of Piety San Guglielmo as a Poor Clare 'Anti-model' Building the First Church and Convent The Poor Clares Form of Life The Entombment and Adoration of the Host Altarpieces, 3. The Sette Armi Spirituali and its Audience The Corpus Christi Community 1431-1456 Women's Education in Ferrara, Mantua, and Urbino The Nuns' Library and Lectio Divina The Sette Armi Spirituali and Teaching Novices, 4. Drawing for Devotion: Sister Caterina's Breviary Nun-artists: Aesthetic, Medium and Materials Structure and Provenance of the Kalendar and Psalter Personalizing the Breviary: The Temporale Poverty, Penitence, and Franciscan saints: The Sanctorale Vigri's Man of Sorrows and the Gaude Mater Virgo Christi, 5. Corpus Christi's Later Religious and Civic Identity The Sette Armi Spirituali and Observant Devotion The Community and Casa Romei The d'Este Duchesses as Patrons Later Fifteenth-century Art and Vsual Culture Corpus Christi as a Pantheon of d'Este Women Conclusion Appendices
About the author
Kathleen Giles Arthur is Professor of Italian Renaissance Art (emerita) at James Madison University (Virginia), author of studies on fifteenth-century women artists, including Caterina Vigri (St. Catherine of Bologna) and self-portraitist Maria di Ormanno degli Albizzi, as well as Florentine art and patronage around the time of the Black Death.
