Recent Book and articles by Kathleen G Arthur
Testimony, Narrative and Image: Studies in Medieval and Franciscan History, Hagiography and Art in memory of Rosalind B. Brooke, eds. Michael Robson & Michael Cusato, (forthcoming Brill), 2021
This essay looks at four altarpieces that illuminate Saint Francis’s message to different audienc... more This essay looks at four altarpieces that illuminate Saint Francis’s message to different audiences in the Franciscan family from c.1400 to c.1470. The first example is the Coronation of the Virgin by Gentile da Fabriano, finished c.1412, from the hermitage of Valle Romita near Fabriano. This has been studied in light of the artist’s style rather than as a surviving example of an altarpiece from an early Observant hermitage. The second — perhaps the best-known fifteenth-century Franciscan altarpiece — is the double-sided polyptych showing Saint Francis in Glory painted for the church of San Francesco, in Borgo Sansepolcro near Siena, by Sassetta (1439-44). This exceptionally well-documented work offers insight into the process of commissioning artworks by the Friars Minor, as well as being evidence of Observant reform in a Conventual house during Bernardine of Siena’s lifetime. The third, Saint Francis Consigning the Rule, painted for San Lorenzo Maggiore in Naples by Colantonio (c.1445-50), represents a statement of authority from a large Franciscan studium in a city where Angevin and Aragonese rulers strongly supported the Observant Franciscans. It bespeaks a political agenda championing the canonisation of Bernardine of Siena but, at the same time, recaptures the humility of Francis, the Poverello. The fourth, The Entombment of Christ, painted between c.1450-60, represents the lesser-known genre of nuns’ altarpieces. It displays Observant influence in the distraught, weeping Saint Francis and his mystical, emotional devotion to the body of Christ.
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Renaissance Studies 35.2 (April), 2021
Augustine's Citta di Dio has been studied in a humanist context and the impact of its vernacular ... more Augustine's Citta di Dio has been studied in a humanist context and the impact of its vernacular translation on women readers has not been considered. This essay presents an Italian codex copied by nun scribe Veronica in 1472 in the Benedictine convent Santo Spirito, Verona. It examines the convent's social history, literary and devotional culture known through a library inventory dating c.1475, extant manuscripts and early printed books. The content and appeal of the library for elementary and advanced readers is analyzed. The active scribal culture is seen through nun scribe Scholastica Maffei who had strong humanist connections and Domicilla Bernabuzi da Faenza who translated a religious treatise for presentation to a mentor, a reflection of humanist practices. Veronica's City of God follows no known iconographic model and has unique pen and ink miniatures that express tension, emotional conflict, an understanding of Augustine's philosophy, and her role in mediating the text with allegorical imagery for her community. This is the first study of a vernacular copy produced by a nun and shows how women religious read and reacted to Augustine's popular text.
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Renaissance Studies 35.2 (April), 2021
Augustine's City of God has been studied in a humanist context and the impact of its vernacular t... more Augustine's City of God has been studied in a humanist context and the impact of its vernacular translation on women readers has not been considered. This essay presents an Italian codex copied by nun scribe Veronica in 1472 in the Benedictine convent Santo Spirito, Verona. It examines the convent's social history, literary and devotional culture known through a library inventory dating c.1475, extant manuscripts and early printed books. The content and appeal of the library for elementary and advanced readers is analyzed. The active scribal culture is seen through nun scribe Scholastica Maffei who had strong humanist connections and Domicilla Bernabuzi da Faenza who translated a religious treatise for presentation to a mentor, a reflection of humanist practices. Veronica's City of God, follows no known iconographic model and has unique pen and ink miniatures that express tension, emotional conflict, an understanding of Augustine's philosophy, and her role in mediating the text with allegorical imagery for her community. This is the first study of a vernacular copy produced by a nun and shows how women religious read and reacted to Augustine's popular text.
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Amsterdam University/ Univ Chicago Press (now available), 2018
Caterina Vigri (later Saint Catherine of Bologna) was a mystic, writer, teacher and nun-artist. H... more 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. 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. It reconstructs 100 years of community growth, architecture, artworks and patronage. 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.
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Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 2017
"Maria Ormani" has been known as the earliest scribal nun-artist to paint a self-portrait, signed... more "Maria Ormani" has been known as the earliest scribal nun-artist to paint a self-portrait, signed and dated 1453 . However, her breviary contained no further information about her convent or personal identity. A search through Florentine archives revealed her place of residence, Santa Katerina al Monte in Florence, known as San Gaggio, her proper name--daughter of Ormanno degli Albizzi-- and much new information about her family history and the convent's active scriptorium. The nuns of San Gaggio formed an elite community with an outstanding library inherited from Pietro Corsini. They copied manuscripts for the Augustinian friars at Santo Spirito, especially for the new convent of Santa Monaca. Maria di Ormanno Albizzi appears to have sketched her self-portrait in the frontispiece, but not illuminated other initials. After her disappearance from the convent's archives c. 1470, the manuscript traveled to northern Italy (possibly Ferrara or Mantua), and thence to Vienna.
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Book Chapters by Kathleen G Arthur
I Monasteri Femminili come Centri di Cultura fra Rinascimento e Barocco, 2005
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Christianity and the Renaissance. Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, 1990
This essay discusses the role of Florentine lay confraternities in commissioning artworks for li... more This essay discusses the role of Florentine lay confraternities in commissioning artworks for liturgical use and the embellishment of their meeting places. The nature and function of cult objects owned by the Florentine flagellant confraternity of Gesu Pellegrino which met in the Chiostro dei Morti in Santa Maria Novella are analyzed based on an original inventory from 1341/1350 that lists over 100 paintings, sculpture, vestments and altar furnishings, and alludes to their placement in the chapel. The confraternity statutes of 1354 and the notes from a meeting discussing the projected commission of a new altarpiece, along with the inventories, offers an intimate view of the importance of art to its members. The new altarpiece, mentioned in 1347, was commissioned from Pietro di Civillari and intended to included the Madonna and Child flanked by saints Thaddeus and Simon . The choice of the new cult image demonstrates the strength of the cult of the Virgin Mary even in a flagellant confraternity. After the Black Death in 1350, the objects suggest an increase in penitential rituals as well as a strong social dimension with the confraternity providing elaborate funeral rituals for its members.
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Gravity in Art. Essays on Weight and Weightlessness, ed. Mary D. Edwards, 2012
This study presents the Strozzi Chapel frescoes as a Dominican statement on Judgment and Resurrec... more This study presents the Strozzi Chapel frescoes as a Dominican statement on Judgment and Resurrection and argues that the task of visualizing the Inferno on a monumental scale for the first time (c. 1350) served as a catalyst for rethinking the construction of meaning in the whole chapel. Nardo's fresco of the Inferno often juxtaposes oppositional forces like weight and weightlessness to create visual metaphors for sin and virtue. Nardo and Andrea Orcagna employed weight, weightlessness and movement on a vertical axis--descent, elevation and ascent--as critical signifiers in the frescoes and in the Strozzi Altarpiece. Rather than floating or being suspended, the Christ was surrounded by heat and light of the cherubim and seraphim (as Thomas Aquinas describes them) and was rising towards Heaven. The Risen Christ in the Strozzi Altarpiece formed a theatrical backdrop to the priest's elevation of the Host.
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Articles by Kathleen G Arthur
Franciscan Studies, 2004
Caterina Vigri was a young, educated Ferrarese noblewoman who fled to the court of Niccolo II d'E... more Caterina Vigri was a young, educated Ferrarese noblewoman who fled to the court of Niccolo II d'Este in 1426 to join a community of pinzochere or pious laywomen. When they became Poor Clare nuns, she served as mistress of novices, baker of bread, healer, wrote religious tracts, including the Sette Armi Spirituali, and decorated her own breviary with colored drawings of the infant Christ Child, the Christus Sponsus, and many male and female saints. Caterina's breviary is a unique document that offers insight into how Francis and Clare were imagined and venerated by a Clarissan nun in the early Renaissance. Her images of Clare and Francis display her original interpretations and iconography.
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Southeastern College Art Conference Review (SECAC Review), 2012
The Italian Baroque Maria del Sochorso Altarpiece in the collection of James Madison University d... more The Italian Baroque Maria del Sochorso Altarpiece in the collection of James Madison University displays an unusual iconographic motif in the central image. While the visual dynamics between the Virgin and saints reflect Post-Tridentine Counter-reformation narrative conventions, the Madonna and Child harks back to a Byzantine icon type brought to Italy by the Cretan artist Andrea da Ritzos c. 1450. This study of the origins and iconography finds that the cult of the Madonna del Soccorso encompassed numerous formal types. A review of 26 Maria del Soccorso sites in northern Italy 1450-1770 shows its was not so much part of an Augustinian movement to replace the Latin type, but a multiplication or diversification of popular images under the same title. A Greek/ Cretan icon in Hermit Augustinian church of San Matteo in Merulana, Rome gave rise to a new Marian cult despite strong competition from more venerable Maria icons. Its influence spread in part because of the reconstruction of the urban space between the Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore for the Holy Year of 1575. This was commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII who held a special personal devotion to the Madonna del Soccorso.
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Art Bulletin, 1983
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Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 1988
Andrea di Cione was first documented in the Confraternity of Gesu Pellegrino in Santa Maria Novel... more Andrea di Cione was first documented in the Confraternity of Gesu Pellegrino in Santa Maria Novella in 1343, not for his artistic work but rather his "faults and disobedience." He joined the Guild of the Medici e Speziali in 1343-46, and may have painted the Lindau-Finaly Annunciation and the nave frescoes in Santa Croce in this period. A second previously unnoticed payment to Orcagna on June 26, 1345 refers to his painting funeral torches or candelabra for the confraternity. The company statutes of 1354 describe the elaborate funeral rituals conducted for members of the confraternity. The candelabra may have resembled the example by Cecco di Pietro in the Museo Nazional di San Matteo, Pisa. The document represents the first dated reference to Orcagna's artistic activity.
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Conference Papers by Kathleen G Arthur
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