Breaking the silence: the poor Clares and the visual arts in fifteenth-century Italy

Renaissance Quarterly, Summer, 1995 by Jeryldene M. Wood

Best known among Saint Catherine's writings is Le Sette Armi Spirituali, which she composed mainly between 1438 and 1456 as a training manual for the novices at Ferrara.(24) Saint Catherine employs methods of narration and dialogue in her treatise that are typical of spiritual exercises in this period: she lists the seven spiritual weapons for combating Satan, explains their necessity, and explicates their benefits.(25) Her text includes the reminiscences of an unnamed, but obviously autobiographical "religious" who counter-poses accounts of clever demonic apparizioni that tempted her into sins of pride and disobedience with divine visitazioni that rewarded her humility and obedience.(26) Near the end of the book, Saint Catherine recalls that when she was beset by terrible doubts concerning the divine presence in the Eucharist, she was blessed with a visitation from Christ who personally clarified transubstantiation for her. From that moment the saint not only craved the spiritual nourishment of communion, but she also made the Incarnation the centerpiece of her writing and painting.(27)

According to Lo Specchio di Illuminazione, a biography of the abbess by her life-long friend Suor Illuminata Bembo, Saint Catherine believed that the only suitable subject for prayers, readings, and art was Christ and she opposed profuse religious ornamentation: "What can flowers and branches do there? Would not Jesus Christ be better in the initial letters [of texts] as he is in prayers and lessons? What sentiment is derived from these boughs if not a wandering of the mind? But Christ Jesus is a sweet and gentle memory."(28) Saint Catherine gave visible expression to her beliefs when she illuminated her breviary with the heads of Christ, the Blessed Virgin and saints in the historiated capitals, and tiny figures of the swaddled, nimbused, and sometimes blessing Infant Christ drawn either in the initials or in the margins on several pages.(29) Tender versions of the Madonna and Child or Christ as the Savior are characteristic subjects for her paintings. In her Redeemer, still at the Corpus Domini, Christ is the Incarnate Word [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 6 OMITTED]. The shining aureole and the gold-starred and collared white dalmatic celebrate the transcendence of the pale blond Jesus whose wisdom enlightens an infinite blue space. Inscribed with "In me omnis gratis/in me omnis [spes] vite et veritatis/In me omnis spes vite et virtutis," the Redeemer's book and the colorful Annunciation enclosed in roundels above his head connect the Divine Word and its moment of Incarnation the-matically and spatially in the foreground plane.(30) Saint Catherine's imagery here, the frontal, three-quarter length, blessing Redeemer derived from icons of the Pantocrator, and her medium, the rich hues and delicate brushwork of tempera and gold on paper of manuscript illuminations, conflates a genre associated with meditation on the invisible divine essence with one whose visible juxtaposition of text and image inspire intimate reading and study. Edifying and didactic at once, the form and content of her art thus evokes a unified veneration and visualization of the Word.