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

Renaissance Quarterly, Summer, 1995 by Jeryldene M. Wood

3 Writings by religious women in early modern Italy have received much attention in recent years. For comprehensive bibliographies that include fifteenth-century monastic women, see Stuard and Simons, and especially Bynum, which has become a standard reference for studies of religious women. For Franciscan nuns, see Varano (whose spiritual autobiography and treatise on the Mental Sorrows of Christ are also available in English translations by Joseph Berrigan [Saskatoon, 1986]), and the writings by Saint Catherine of Bologna and Illuminata Bembo cited below. For Italian nuns and art, see Barzman; Bruzelius; Dunn; Rigaux; and Gilbert, 1984. (I am grateful to the anonymous reader for this last reference.)

4 The breviary (Siena, Biblioteca Comunale, Ms. X.IV.2) was donated to the convent by the Castellani family, whose stemma, as well as that of Cardinal Riccardo Petroni, the founder of Santa Chiara at Siena appears on fol. 7 (left and right, respectively). For the identification of these arms and additional information about the manuscript, see Garosi, 23-28.

5 The Second Order of Franciscans, called Poor Clares or Clarisse in honor of their foundress, was characterized by its strict clausura, severe asceticism, and humble Christlike poverty as detailed in Saint Clare's monastic rule. For a brief history of the Poor Clares, see Moorman, 32-39, 205-15, 406-16. Similar difficulties in justifying the use of art among male Franciscans are apparent as early as 1260 when the Minister General Saint Bonaventure issued guidelines for the building of Franciscan churches. For the issue of poverty and art at the friars' Santa Croce in Florence, see Goffen, 1-11.

6 The workers engaged in tending plants (February), harvesting grain (July), constructing wine casks and making wine (August and September), and slaughtering hogs (December) should be viewed in light of long-standing iconographical and visual conventions for the labors of the months. Reproductions of Sano's calendar pages can be found in Galliard, figs. 16-19.

7 In his introduction, Nicolini describes the original volume that he discovered at the Monastero di Monteluce in Sant' Erminio at Perugia; see Memoriale, xiv-xv. Suor Battista Alfani states that her sources were the books and papers stored at the convent and the memory of older sisters (ibid., 1-3).

8 The complex is now the Ospedale Regionale e Policlinico. For the fifteenth-century appearance of the convent, see the early sixteenth-century Misericordia reproduced in Memoriale, fig. 21, and for the standard structure of Umbrian churches, see Pardi.

9 The roof of the nun's choir at Monteluce was vaulted and the position of the main altar was changed in 1449-51: "Item, al tempio de l'offitio suo fu fatta la volta alla chiesia nostra dentro, che prima stavamo socto el tecto; et fu facto el choro da quella parte de sopra, dove era allora l'altare; et lo altare fu revoltato da questa altra parte, dove sta al presente" (Memoriale, 13). These renovations, which were probably made to accommodate the choir in an enclosed space behind the high altar, recall similar alterations at the original Clarissan complex of San Damiano; see Bigaroni, 45-97. The choir in female monastic churches could not be located before the high altar as in most male churches without compromising the women's clausura; nun's choirs usually took the form of a gallery situated above the entrance, as at the Donnaregina in Naples (begun after 1297), or as a separate space behind or contiguous to the altar area, as at Assisi in San Damiano (occupied by the Clares c. 1212-60) and in Santa Chiara (consecrated 1265). The problem of determining the site of the nun's choir at Santa Chiara in Assisi is addressed in Casolini, who argues that it was on the south side of the nave, in a space now occupied by the Chapels of the Sacrament and the Crucifix. Bruzelius, 86-88, states that the choir behind the altar at Santa Chiara in Naples is the earliest of this type (completed 1340) and considers the implications of choir placement for the nuns' religious rituals; Meier does not discuss the choir.