Nun Artists in Early Modern Italy

Co-sponsored by the Medici Archive Project's Jane Fortune Research
Program on Women Artists and the Biblioteca Domenicana in Santa Maria
Novella, this conference highlights new research on artistic
production in female monastic communities since the early Renaissance
until the Napoleonic suppression.

Demolishing older notions of enclosure as an absolute barrier between
nuns and the world outside, recent research on social and religious
aspects has begun to reinsert the convent within the wider networks of
patronage and economic life in the early modern state, and to
reposition it within larger civic and ecclesiastical discourses.
Presumably this model can also be applied to the study of nun artists.
By framing research on nun artists and their activities within broader
visions of society and material culture, we hope to arrive at a
clearer understanding of the significance of nuns' artistic
production.

We welcome papers on a variety of topics regarding convents and their
artistic production, from painting, to needlework, to carta pestata
sculpture, to ephemera, to manuscript illumination. Suggested topics
include but are not limited to:

- monographic studies on single artists
- studies of artistic practice in one or more female religious
communities
- stylistic analysis and attributions of artworks
- studies of the visual culture of nun artists
- the role of art in the economic and patronage strategies of monastic
communities
- the teaching of art in female religious communities
- comparisons between nuns' artistic patronage their artistic
production
- investigations of the relations and tensions between piety and
artistic production
- historiographic studies of nun artists

Paper presentations, which must feature original research, may be
given in Italian or English, and should be no longer than 20 minutes.
A publication based on the conference papers is planned. Some support
for travel expenses may be available. To apply, please send a one-page
abstract and a brief c.v. to Dr. Sheila Barker (barker[at]medici.org)
and Dr. Luciano Cinelli, O.P. (memorie.domenicane[at]gmail.com). The
deadline for applications is July 31, 2013.