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

Renaissance Quarterly, Summer, 1995 by Jeryldene M. Wood

Individually, Lorenzo di Credi's Adoration of the Shepherds and Perugino's Lamentation are affecting. When visualized side by side and beneath Andrea della Robbia's delicately carved Assumption and Resurrection, near Leonardo del Tasso's elegant altarpiece, and enclosed within Giuliano da Sangallo's harmonious edifice, the pathos of the ensemble is almost palpable. Entrancing coloristic effects, whether the cool pastels of the reliefs or the resonant hues of the paintings, and subtle plays of light illuminating the refined sculptural surfaces and highlighting precious gilding, would have transformed the fifteenth-century interior of Santa Chiara Novella into a gentle, serene space. Despite differences of medium, all the works from Santa Chiara share a particular kind of soothing beauty, which is often described as soave or mistica in Italian, adjectives like those that Saint Catherine used to convey spiritual essence. When utilized to interpret religious events, this type of beauty creates a contrapposto of form and meaning - the pleasurable perception of the beautifully-adorned material environment counterpoised with cognitive awareness of the religious message - that engenders a powerful spiritual response. And as Saint Catherine required, the visual imagery was not merely didactic but also edifying. Rather than promoting intellectual or analytical inquiry into the mysteries of faith, here "beauty" activates the senses which, in turn, inspire emotions that encourage beholders to feel the ineffable.

Despite commissioning and occasionally producing art themselves, the fifteenth-century Poor Glares were constant to their vow of poverty. The women's piety assumed the visible form of precious materials whose richness highlights rather than conflicts with their vows. As the legacies destined to embellish the outer church at Monteluce and the thoughtful decoration of the public space at Santa Chiara Novella indicate, the nuns were the caretakers and ideators but not the possessors nor in most instances even the observers of these works. For walled within the cloister and attending services in their private choir, the Poor Clares were as pointedly excluded from their churches as they were from society at large.(39) Like their intercessory prayers, the nuns' public churches attempted to mediate the vast distance between humanity and deity that is the purpose of spirituality. Though the Poor Clares, in the words of their foundress, abandoned "the things of time for those of eternity," their art made their spirit quietly and profoundly felt.(40)

1 The citations from the Paradiso are taken from Dante Alighieri, The Paradiso, trans. by John Ciardi, New York, 1970.

2 For a sixteenth-century interpretation of Piccarda's abduction that refutes Dante's view of her inconstancy, see Fra Mariano, 204-07, who gives her religious name in order to counter Dante's assertions, 204. Transgressing monastic vows for the purpose of marriage also informs hagiographical writings, such as Thomas of Celano's vivid anecdote of family opposition to the adolescent Clare's vocation in his Legenda Sanctae Clarae. Yet in his account Clare's steadfast faith is victorious: her relatives retreat when she unveils her tonsured head as proof of her resolve, whereupon she founds the first house of Franciscan nuns at Assisi. For this legend ordered by the pope at the time of Clare's canonization in 1255, see the English translation in Brady, 17-61. Dante's placement of Piccarda and the inconstant souls on the moon probably stems from the linkage between inconstancy and the moon in medieval astrology. (I am grateful to Sheila Rabin at the Renaissance Society office for this information.)