Nuns As Artists

"Hamburger's singular discovery of a group of devotional drawings made by an anonymous nun . . . is here presented with magisterial learning, theoretical sophistication, and deep human sympathy."—V. A. Kolve, University of California, Los Angeles

"Hamburger's singular discovery of a group of devotional drawings made by an anonymous nun . . . is here presented with magisterial learning, theoretical sophistication, and deep human sympathy."—V. A. Kolve, University of California, Los Angeles

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived

Witchcraft. Arson. Going AWOL. Some nuns in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy strayed far from the paradigms of monastic life. Cloistered in convents, subjected to stifling hierarchy, repressed, and occasionally persecuted by their male superiors, these women circumvented authority in sometimes extraordinary ways. But tales of their transgressions have long been buried in the Vatican Secret Archive. That is, until now. In Nuns Behaving Badly, Craig A. Monson resurrects forgotten tales and restores to life the long-silent voices of these cloistered heroines. Here we meet nuns who dared speak out about physical assault and sexual impropriety (some real, some imagined). Others were only guilty of misjudgment or defacing valuable artwork that offended their sensibilities. But what unites the women and their stories is the challenges they faced: these were women trying to find their way within the Catholicism of their day and through the strict limits it imposed on them. Monson introduces us to women who were occasionally desperate to flee cloistered life, as when an entire community conspired to torch their convent and be set free. But more often, he shows us nuns just trying to live their lives. When they were crossed—by powerful priests who claimed to know what was best for them—bad behavior could escalate from mere troublemaking to open confrontation. In resurrecting these long-forgotten tales and trials, Monson also draws attention to the predicament of modern religious women, whose “misbehavior”—seeking ordination as priests or refusing to give up their endowments to pay for priestly wrongdoing in their own archdioceses—continues even today. The nuns of early modern Italy, Monson shows, set the standard for religious transgression in their own age—and beyond.

A fully updated and comprehensive companion to Romanesque and Gothic art history This definitive reference brings together cutting-edge scholarship devoted to the Romanesque and Gothic traditions in Northern Europe and provides a clear analytical survey of what is happening in this major area of Western art history. The volume comprises original theoretical, historical, and historiographic essays written by renowned and emergent scholars who discuss the vibrancy of medieval art from both thematic and sub-disciplinary perspectives. Part of the Blackwell Companions to Art History, A Companion to Medieval Art, Second Edition features an international and ambitious range of contributions covering reception, formalism, Gregory the Great, pilgrimage art, gender, patronage, marginalized images, the concept of spolia, manuscript illumination, stained glass, Cistercian architecture, art of the crusader states, and more. Newly revised edition of a highly successful companion, including 11 new articles Comprehensive coverage ranging from vision, materiality, and the artist through to architecture, sculpture, and painting Contains full-color illustrations throughout, plus notes on the book’s many distinguished contributors A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, Second Edition is an exciting and varied study that provides essential reading for students and teachers of Medieval art.

Silvia Evangelisti presents the story of the women who have lived in religious communities, from the dawn of the modern age onwards - their ideals and achievements, frustrations and failures, and their attempts to reach out to the society aroundthem.

Highly Commended in the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Prize 2007 The patronage of Benedictine art and architecture, and the circumstances that made it possible and desirable, reveal much about the ambitions, beliefs and allegiances of both the order and those who interacted with it; moreover, analysis of such patronage also improves our understanding of some of the most important and beautiful buildings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass and other artefacts surviving from the middle ages.In this survey, focussing on the Benedictine monasteries and nunneries in south-west England (including Glastonbury) during the 240 years leading up to the dissolution of the religious orders under Henry VIII, the author discusses the question in terms of 'internal' practice, initiated by Benedictine monks and nuns, and 'external' practice, for which non-monastic agents were responsible; and analyses the historical circumstances affecting the commission and the purchase of art and architecture. Throughout, he takes care to situate the study of buildings and their embellishment within the broader context of Benedictine culture. The text is lavishly illustrated with forty-five black and white plates of art, architecture and documents, many of which have not previously been reproduced. Dr JULIAN M. LUXFORD is Lecturer at the School of Art History, St Andrews University.