In the fifteenth century, the Oblates of Santa Francesca Romana, a community of religious women in Rome, commissioned an array of artwork for their newly acquired living quarters, the Tor de'Specchi. The imagery focused on the sensual, corporeal nature of contemporary spirituality, populating the walls of the monastery with an assortment of earthly, divine, and demonic figures. This book draws on art history, anthropology, and gender studies to explore the disciplinary and didactic role of the images, as well as their relationship to important papal projects at the Vatican.
This essay collection features articles on women artists and patrons in the Netherlands 1500-1700. Covering painting, printmaking, and patronage, authors highlight the contributions of women art makers in the Netherlands, showing that women were prominent as creators in their own time.