Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de'Specchi, 1400-1500: Religious Women and Art in 15th-century Rome 9789048534517

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 A forum for innovative research on the role of images and objects in the late m ­ edieval and early modern periods, Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 publishes monographs and essay collections that combine rigorous investigation with critical inquiry to present new narratives on a wide range of topics, from traditional arts to seemingly ordinary things. Recognizing the fluidity of images, objects, and ideas, this series fosters cross-cultural as well as multi-disciplinary exploration. We consider proposals from across the spectrum of analytic approaches and methodologies. Series Editor Dr. Allison Levy, an art historian, has written and/or edited three scholarly books, and she has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Getty Research Institute, the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library of Harvard ­University, the Whiting Foundation and the Bogliasco Foundation, among others. www.allisonlevy.com.

Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500 Religious Women and Art in Fifteenth-Century Rome

Suzanne M. Scanlan

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, The Death of Santa Francesca Romana, detail, fresco, 1468, former oratory, Tor de’Specchi, Rome. Photo by Author with permission from Suor Maria Camilla Rea, Madre Presidente. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Newgen/Konvertus Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 94 6298 399 1 e-isbn 978 90 4853 451 7 doi 10.5117/9789462983991 nur 685 © S.M. Scanlan / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2018 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

For Em, Molly and Jimmy With Love

Contents List of Illustrations

9

Acknowledgments15 Introduction: Demonic and Divine Bodies

17

1. Sanctity on the Threshold: Liminality and Corporeality at Tor de’Specchi

27

2. Painted Visions and Devotional Practices at Tor de’Specchi

63

3. Dining and Discipline at Tor de’Specchi: The Refectory as Ritual Space

99

4. The Devil in the Refectory: Bodies Imagined at Tor de’Specchi

127

Epilogue: Imagining the Canonization of Francesca Romana

155

Appendix: Statutes of Ordination for the Beata Francesca

165

Notes171 Bibliography203 Index217

List of Illustrations Color Plates Plate 1: Fra Angelico, Saint Lawrence Distributing Alms to the Poor, fresco, c. 1448, Chapel of Nicholas V, Vatican Museum, Rome. Scala/Art Resource, NY. Plate 2: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana and her followers make their formal oblation at Santa Maria Nova, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Plate 3: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Altar wall (north wall) and altarpiece, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Plate 4: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana heals a man with a severed arm, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Plate 5: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana heals the foot of a man injured while chopping wood, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Plate 6: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana heals a young man who had lost the use of one eg, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Plate 7: Artist unknown, Madonna and Child with Saint Benedict and Francesca Romana, fifteenth-century fresco, Tor de’Specchi entryway. Photograph by author. Plate 8: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana’s Vision of Hell, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Plate 9: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana distributes grain to the poor, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Plate 10: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana miraculously multiplies bread for her community, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Plate 11: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, The death of Francesca Romana, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Plate 12: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca’s obsequies in Santa Maria Nova, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Plate 13: Attributed to Antonio del Massaro da Viterbo, Santa Francesca Romana Holding the Christ Child, tempera on panel, c. 1445, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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DIVINE AND DEMONIC IMAGERY AT TOR DE’SPECCHI, 1400–1500

Plate 14: Attributed to Antonio del Massaro da Viterbo, Santa Francesca Romana Embraced by the Virgin, tempera on panel, c. 1445, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Plate 15: Attributed to Antonio del Massaro da Viterbo, The Communion and Consecration of the Blessed Francesca Romana, tempera on panel, c. 1445, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Plate 16: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana embraced by the Virgin, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Plate 17: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, The communion and consecration of Francesca Romana, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Plate 18: Artist unknown, Terra verde fresco cycle, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author. Plate 19: Artist unknown, Francesca Romana confronts the Beast of the Apocalypse, fresco, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author. Plate 20: Artist unknown, The Devil disguised as Sant’Onofrio, fresco, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author. Plate 21: Artist unknown, Man of Sorrows in passageway from oratory to refectory, fresco, c. 1475, Tor de’Specchi. Photograph by author. Plate 22: Artist unknown, Demons beat Francesca Romana with animal tendons, fresco, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author. Plate 23: Artist unknown, Demons whip Francesca Romana with dead snakes, fresco, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author. Plate 24: Artist unknown, The Devil pushes Francesca Romana onto a rotting corpse, fresco, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author. Plate 25: Artist unknown, Demons tear up Francesca Romana’s prayer books, fresco, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author. Black and White Illustrations Figure 1:

Perspectival reconstruction of fifteenth-century complex of Tor de’Specchi. © Matthew Bird, 2017. Figure 2a–d: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Four walls of Tor de’Specchi oratory, c. 1468. Photographs by author.

List of Illustrations

Figure 3:

Giotto di Bondone, Pope Innocent III Confirming the Rule of the Order of Saint Francis, c. 1300, Upper church, basilica of San Francesco, Assisi. Scala/Art Resource, NY. Figure 4: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, The Virgin Mary nursing the infant Christ, c. 1468, detail, altarpiece, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Figure 5: Bandages with dried blood, detail of Plate 5. Photograph by author. Figure 6: Bloody bandages and apothecary jar, detail of Plate 6. Photograph by author. Figure 7: Fra Angelico, The Healing of Palladia by Saints Cosmas and Damian, c. 1440, predella panel from the San Marco Altarpiece, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1952.5.3). Figure 8: Grate at the base of oratory fresco of Hell, detail of Plate 8. Photograph by author. Figure 9: View of eastern wall, oratory, Tor de’Specchi. Photograph by author. Figure 10: Fra Angelico, Saint Stephen Receiving the Diaconate and Distributing Alms, c. 1448, Chapel of Nicholas V, Vatican Museum, Rome. Scala/Art Resource, NY. Figure 11: Piety as a lady distributing alms, detail, The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, c. 1440. The Morgan Library and Museum/Art Resource, NY. Figure 12: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Miraculous appearance of grapes in winter, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author. Figure 13: Christ takes hold of Francesca Romana’s risen soul, detail of Plate 11. Photograph by author. Figure 14a: Figure of Francesca Romana in the Chapel of Nicholas V, detail of Plate 1. Figure 14b: Figure of standing oblate at the funeral of Francesca Romana, detail of Plate 12. Figure 15: Pietro Lorenzetti, Stories of the Beata Umiltà (Saint Humility Altarpiece), c. 1315, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Scala/Art Resource, NY. Figure 16: Francesca Romana and the infant Jesus, detail of Plate 13. Figure 17: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana holds the infant Christ, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

11

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Figure 18: Figure 19: Figure 20: Figure 21: Figure 22: Figure 23: Figure 24: Figure 25: Figure 26: Figure 27: Figure 28: Figure 29: Figure 30: Figure 31: Figure 32: Figure 33: Figure 34: Figure 35: Figure 36: Figure 37: Figure 38: Figure 39: Figure 40:

DIVINE AND DEMONIC IMAGERY AT TOR DE’SPECCHI, 1400–1500

Piero della Francesca, Madonna della Misericordia from the Altarpiece of the Misericordia, 1460–1462, Pinacoteca Comunale, Sansepolcro. Scala/Art Resource, NY. The Virgin embracing Francesca Romana, detail of Plate 14. Mary Magdalene and Saint Benedict envelop oblates, detail of Plate 14. Angel, cats and dogs, detail of Plate 14. Giovanni di Paolo, The Miraculous Communion of Catherine of Siena, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Communion wafer stamped with the Holy Name of Jesus, detail of Plate 15. Sano di Pietro, Saint Bernardino Preaching in the Piazza del Campo in Siena, 1445, Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana, Scala/ Art Resource, NY. Francesca Romana’s guardian angel, detail of Plate 17. Tri-layered crown of the Virgin, detail of Plate 17. Christ and the Virgin, detail, mosaic of the apse of the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, c. 1140–1143, Rome. Scala/Art Resource, NY. The Virgin’s tri-layered crown, detail of Plate 15. St. Peter wearing the papal tiara, detail of Plate 17. Florentine, Saint Catherine of Siena and Four Scenes from her Life, c. 1465. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Sinners in Hell with toads and snakes, detail of Plate 8. Francesca Romana strides toward the seven-headed beast, detail of Plate 19. Artist unknown, Francesca Romana assaulted by demons disguised as sheep, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author. Demonic sheep, detail of Figure 33. Artist unknown: First two scenes of terra verde cycle, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author. Doorway with SILENTIO inscription and frescoes on either side, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author. Master of the Triumph of Death, Saints Paul the Hermit and Anthony Abbott, detail of Thebaid, fourteenth century, Camposanto, Pisa. Alinari/Art Resource, NY. Sant’Onofrio points to his hermitage, detail of Plate 20. Sant’Onofrio’s rosary beads, detail of Plate 20. Anonymous, fifteenth century, Madonna del Soccorso (Madonna of Succour), c. 1475–1485, church of Santo Spirito, Florence. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

List of Illustrations

Figure 41: Figure 42: Figure 43: Figure 44: Figure 45: Figure 46: Figure 47: Figure 48: Figure 49: Figure 50: Figure 51: Figure 52: Figure 53: Figure 54: Figure 55: Figure 56: Figure 57:

Artist unknown, Man of Sorrows, c. 1475, Tor de’Specchi, detail of Plate 21. Marble lavabo in south wall of Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author. Giovanni Fontana, Magic lantern projecting the image of a she-devil, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cod.icon. 242, fol. 70r. Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Apollo and Daphne, c. 1470–1480. © National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY. Sandro Botticelli, Primavera, c. 1482, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Scala/Art Resource, NY. Sandro Botticelli, The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, 1st panel, c. 1483, Museo del Prado, Madrid. Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY Rotting corpse, detail of Plate 24. Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Lamentation over a Dead Hero, c. 1450–1500. By kind permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London/Art Resource, NY. Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Nude Dancers, c. 1465, Villa Galletti, Arcetri, Florence. © DeA Picture Library/Art Resource, NY. Luca Signorelli, Flagellation, c. 1482–1485, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY. Body of a Roman Maiden, from the sylloge of Bartholomeus Fontius, MS Lat. Misc. d. 85, f. 161v. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Battle of the Nudes, detail, c. 1470–1475. Musée du Petit Palais, Paris. Scala/White Images/Art Resource, NY. Luca Signorelli, Nude male seen from behind. Photo: Rene-Gabriel Ojeda, Bayonne. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY. Antonio Tempesta, Minutissima Cerimonia Osservata nell’Atto Della Canonizazione di Santa Francesca Romana, 1608. Biblioteca Angelica, Rome. Antonio Tempesta, Text key to canonization print, Santa Francesca Romana, 1608. Biblioteca Angelica, Rome. Title Page, Giulio Orsini, Vita Della B. Francesca Romana, 1608. Biblioteca Angelica, Rome. Contemporary reproduction of Annibale Corrandini’s 1602 canonization banner, Francesca Romana and guardian angel, Tor de’Specchi, Rome. Photograph by author.

13

Acknowledgments This project and book would not have been possible without the support of the Oblates of Santa Francesca Romana. Suor Maria Camilla Rea, Madre Presidente of Tor de’Specchi during my years of research at the convent, was most gracious and hospitable in giving me access to the frescoes and treasures of the monastery. I am particularly grateful to Madre Camilla, as well as to Madre Paola Vecchi and Suor Roberta Vido. I am also indebted to Federica Moretti for generously discussing the restoration of the quattrocento frescoes at Tor de’Specchi with me. The assistance of archivists, librarians and curators at the following institutions was invaluable and much appreciated: the Archivio Segreto Vaticano; the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; the Archivio di Stato di Roma; the Biblioteca Angelica; the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore; the Widener Library at Harvard; and the John Hay and Rockefeller Libraries at Brown University. Funding for initial research and travel came from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; the Kermit Champa Memorial Fund; the Department of Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at Brown; the Brown Graduate School; and the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Brown. At the Rhode Island School of Design, generous support for final research and publication of this book came from the RISD Professional Development Fund, the Humanities Fund and the Department of Liberal Arts. Special thanks to Dedda DeAngelis for assistance with the translation of the Tor de’Specchi statutes. I am also grateful to Patricia Curran for sharing her expertise and insights on convent dining and ritual over lemonade on Ashmont Hill. Alicia Vaandering and Jean Lewis Keith provided expert – and much appreciated – copy editing at a crucial moment. Matthew Bird saved the day with his outstanding drafting skills, and Dean Abanilla saved my sanity with technical assistance. Conversation with and support from dear friends and colleagues have shaped and strengthened me and this project in ways too numerous to mention. Many of them read drafts at pivotal moments and offered invaluable criticism. My heartfelt thanks to: Johan van Aswegen, Mary Bergstein, Anthony Bevilacqua, Christina Bevilacqua, Gina Borromeo, Luigi Cacciaglia, Bolaji Campbell, Hannah Carlson, Nirit Debby, Daniel Harkett, Eunice Howe, Pam Jones, Carla Keyvanian, Dian Kriz, Anne Lange, Dalia Linssen, Jeffrey Muller, Maureen O’Brien, Mario Pereira, Taylor Polites, Jason Reed, Pascale Rihouet, Cat Sama, Hope Saska, Jim Scanlan, Allyson Sheckler, Grace Tagliabue, Carolyn Testa, Mariah Proctor-Tiffany, Lisa Tom, and Susan Ward. I am most fortunate to be one of the legions of scholars to work with the incomparable editor Erika Gaffney – I can’t thank her enough. All thanks also to Allison Levy for her critical eye and support as series editor. The reports and editorial suggestions

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DIVINE AND DEMONIC IMAGERY AT TOR DE’SPECCHI, 1400–1500

of both Allison Levy and the anonymous reviewer for AUP made this a more incisive study. I am most grateful for their considerable, considered feedback and excellent advice. All along the way, Sheila Bonde, Caroline Castiglione, and Evie Lincoln have been extraordinary mentors. The archives and cuisine of Rome came to life over summers happily spent with Caroline and our families. Evie, you inspired and nurtured a vocation I treasure. To my parents, Ann and Don Cederholm, my siblings, Kurt and Deb Cederholm, Eric and Sara Cederholm, and Melanie Jansky, and to Tate Molaghan and Grace Wood, endless thanks for your boundless love, unwavering support and hearty laughter. And to my children, Em, Molly and Jimmy Scanlan: I love you to the moon and back.



Introduction: Demonic and Divine Bodies

On any given day in late fifteenth-century Rome, pairs of devoted women wearing prickly black dresses and crisp white veils crossed the threshold of their shared monastery on the Capitoline Hill and ventured into the squalid streets of the city. They set out to bring relief to poor, hungry and sick neighbors throughout their parish and took regular turns assisting at local hospitals. When they returned from their charitable work at sunset, they came home to a shared dwelling decorated with vibrant frescoes that reverberated with stories from the life of a Roman noblewoman, Francesca Bussa de’Ponziani (1384–1440). The design, appearance, purpose and context for these frescoes form the core of this book, as they tell us as much about daily life and making art in Renaissance Rome as they do about women’s patronage, devotional practices and pious work during this period. Pious women in Renaissance Italy relied on images to nourish their faith. Whether recalling a beatific vision to mind or contemplating a gilded altarpiece in church, women looked at pictures as an essential component of religious devotion. In Rome, larger-than-life mosaics depicting scenes from the lives of venerable saints sparkled on the walls and in the apses of early Christian basilicas, and illuminated the edifying ritual of the Eucharist performed during Mass. Numerous chapels, columns and niches in parish churches across the city were covered with paintings and votive images, evidence of robust forms of popular piety and affirmations of local miracles. In their homes, women regularly contemplated, and in many cases read, colorfully illuminated prayer books and devotional prints that offered ideals of feminine virtue as models for their own behavior. Many of these images were designed to demonstrate control over one’s body and to encourage mastery of one’s senses in the quest for eternal salvation. They also cautioned the viewer about the gruesome punishments awaiting those who failed to heed their warning and therefore succumbed to corporeal temptation. This book examines diverse depictions of divine, demonic and all-too-human bodies made in Rome during a period of rapid expansion and renewal for the Church and city (1440–1500). It is not a study of Santa Francesca Romana herself, whose biography (Vita), legacy and eventual canonization in 1608 have been extensively examined by noted scholars such as Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli, Giulia Barone, Giorgio Carpaneto, Arnold Esch, Anna Esposito, Placido Lugano, and Mario Sensi.1 Rather, I analyze specific motifs and moments from the impressive array of images made for the expanding community of women devoted to Francesca as primary evidence for women’s spirituality, work and agency in the fifteenth-century city. Known as the Oblates of Santa Francesca Romana, Francesca’s followers interpreted and recreated the spiritual, social and political milieu of Renaissance Rome inside their monastery, based on a model for living and worship set by Francesca Ponziani

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

during her lifetime. The oblates commissioned a series of panel paintings and two extensive fresco cycles that constitute a uniquely female and, I argue, quintessentially Roman contribution to the cultural heritage of quattrocento Italy. They serve as the cornerstone for my discussion of women who engaged with art patronage at the highest ecclesiastic and civic levels in Rome while shaping specific models for daily devotional living in their homes. During the decades covered in this book, the papal Chapel of Nicholas V was decorated, the Vatican Library was established, the pontifical Hospital of Santo Spirito was renovated and the Sistine Chapel was built and richly frescoed.2 As we will see, the Oblates of Santa Francesca engaged with all of these projects, and with the artists who designed and embellished them, when they decorated the spaces in which they lived and worshipped at Tor de’Specchi. Although there has been little contextual and interpretive analysis of the often innovative, hagiographic images commissioned by the oblates, this study shows that Francesca’s followers were sophisticated and discerning consumers of art from the outset. While they acquired and adapted their permanent monastic quarters, they commissioned paintings to document Francesca’s mystical visions and miraculous works in an effort to further the cause for her canonization. At the same time, the images were meticulously crafted to shape and define the oblates’ private devotional practices, as well as to reflect the political and economic circumstances of communal life in a casa santa.

Francesca Ponziani and the Oblates at Tor de’Specchi Francesca Bussa dei Ponziani came to prominence as an exemplar of charity and piety during a period of political and ecclesiastical instability in Rome when the papacy fought to regain a local foothold after the Great Schism of the Church, and parochial barons engaged in bloody conflict for territory and power.3 Francesca was born in 1384 in the Parione region of the city, the daughter of the nobleman Paolo di Giovanni Bussa and his wife Jacobella de’ Roffredeschis. Fifteenth-century biographers of the would-be saint, most notably her confessor, Giovanni Mattiotti, characterized her as a woman who exhibited a sincere religious vocation even as a child, expressing a fervent wish to become a nun.4 Witnesses at the three processi or canonization trials commenced immediately after her death (1440, 1443, and 1451) also testified to Francesca’s lifelong vocation. By all accounts she was married against her will at the age of eleven to Lorenzo Ponziani, the son of a cattle-farming family from Trastevere that was allied politically and socially to hers. She was believed to be so unhappy in the bonds of marriage that conjugal relations with her husband made her ill. Indeed, canonization witnesses reported that she vomited after intercourse throughout her married life.5 Yet, the Ponziani – Bussa marriage produced three children, two of whom died of the plague, and Francesca ultimately found ways to

Introduction: Demonic and Divine Bodies

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simultaneously fulfill the duties befitting her social station while privately nourishing her religious devotion.6 As recent scholarship has shown, there were varied opportunities for women seeking to join a religious community in fifteenth-century Rome, ranging from nuns who observed strict enclosure (clausura) in a convent to tertiaries, or members of a third order, who lived according to a Rule (statutes governing daily living and worship) in a variety of settings.7 In her early work on semi-religious women in Italy, Katherine Gill proposed the community of oblates at Tor de’Specchi as a model study for the institutions known as “open monasteries” (monasteri aperti).8 Several types of community fell into this category: some consisted of nuns who took solemn vows but did not observe clausura; others petitioned the Pope for license to live in common but exempt from enclosure; and, finally, there were communities of laywomen who took no solemn vows and who may or may not have had formal ecclesiastical ties to a monastic order, bishop, or the papacy.9 As Mario Sensi has persuasively argued, the oblates of Tor de’Specchi primarily embodied the second category.10 Francesca’s earliest followers were united by their commitment to emulate their founder’s fervent religious devotion as well as their desire to serve Rome’s poor. After Francesca’s death, they called themselves the Oblates of Francesca Romana and lived according to a set of statutes modeled by Francesca Ponziani during her lifetime (see Appendix).11 As noblewomen who were either widowed or unmarried, the oblates chose a vocation that allowed them collectively to acquire property in urban Rome and to furnish and decorate it according to the standards of the most prominent ecclesiastic and charitable institutions of the period. By end of the quattrocento, I argue, the community had commissioned a series of small panel paintings and two fresco cycles that were comparable in scale and scope to contemporary papal projects at the Vatican and in the nearby Hospital of Santo Spirito.12 In 1468, a series of 26 fully colored and highly detailed images portraying Francesca’s mystical visions and mapping her miraculous thaumaturgic, spiritual, and charitable work throughout Rome were frescoed on the four walls of the community’s private oratory, with explanatory captions written in Roman dialect (romanesco) accompanying each scene.13 The frescoes are currently attributed to the hand and workshop of the Roman painter known as Antoniazzo Romano (Antonio di Benedetto Aquilo degli Aquili, c. 1430–c. 1510) and represent one of the most extensive pictorial cycles of the period extant in Rome today.14 Two decades later, in 1485, the oblates directed that an entire wall of their refectory, adjacent to the oratory, be painted with jarring and violent images of their founder’s battles with the Devil.15 Rendered in green monochrome (terra verde), the ten panels that make up the series are life-size depictions of Francesca’s ongoing nocturnal temptations by Satan and corporeal torture inflicted by demons. They are innovative and provocative representations of a woman’s mystical visions and, in

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

Figure 1: Perspectival reconstruction of fifteenth-century complex of Tor de’Specchi. © Matthew Bird, 2017.

some cases, show the Devil and his cohorts represented in recognizably human form. It is significant that the terra verde cycle was commissioned at a time when Christian beliefs in the power and omnipresence of the Devil and demonic forces were pervasive, and when accusations of witchcraft and diabolical magic were increasingly hurled against women and mystics.16 Further, the rise in vernacular preaching as well as the invention of printing in the mid-fifteenth century contributed to the spread of demonological literature, and the distribution of images of women consorting with the Devil.17

Primary Sources From the day that she died on March 9, 1440, the Church and cittadini of Rome publicly commemorated Francesca Ponziani’s extraordinary sanctity.18 Her body was transported in a solemn and widely attended procession from the Palazzo Ponziani in Trastevere to the Basilica of Santa Maria Nova in the Forum, where it was laid out for two days and three nights of public viewing. Following a funeral mass presided over by the Olivetan Abbot Fra Ippolito di Roma, Francesca Romana was interred in

Introduction: Demonic and Divine Bodies

21

a sepulcher next to the high altar of Santa Maria Nova, an honor accorded only to the most important figures of the Church.19 After Francesca’s death, official documentation of her mystical life and miraculous works began to take shape. Giovanni Mattiotti, the rector of a chapel at the basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere and Francesca’s spiritual confessor, immediately wrote a lengthy treatise in the Roman vernacular describing the divine and demonic visions that Francesca had recounted to him or experienced in his presence. Soon afterwards, his treatise was translated into Latin. In her critical edition of Mattiotti’s original Latin texts, Alessandra Romagnoli lists the following as the original quattrocento sources that comprise the foundational hagiographic corpus documenting the life and work of Francesca Romana: 1. the transcripts of the three canonization processi (1440, 1443, 1451); 2. the mystical and visionary treatises and Vita of Mattiotti, written in both Latin and vernacular forms between 1440 and 1447; 3. three redactions of Mattiotti’s Vita, written by Fra Ippolito di Roma, between 1452 and 1453; and 4. the two fresco cycles at Tor de’Specchi – the oratory cycle of 1468 and the refectory cycle of 1485.20 In a previous study, I proposed the hagiographic corpus be expanded to include three littleknown panel paintings commissioned by the oblates, made during the same decade that Mattiotti was writing his treatises.21 Though they have been identified as representations of events narrated in Mattiotti’s Trattati, these have not been analyzed or contextualized as the oblates’ initial contributions to the legacy of Francesca Romana. The written sources can be divided into two distinct contemporary versions of events that show how Francesca’s identity became a contested site for the simultaneous representation of a strong religious leader and a pious, modest female saint. Produced in the 40 years or so after Francesca’s death, they shaped an enduring image of the beata that was composed from well-established hagiographic tropes combined with signs of a uniquely Roman identity and association. Here, I use the term beata in relation to Francesca in accordance with its literal meaning – “blessed one.” Indeed, the phrase “blessed soul” (beata anima) was part of the original inscription on Francesca’s tomb in Santa Maria Nova.22 In Catholic doctrine, beatification became an official step in the process of canonization, defined as formal ecclesiastical permission to venerate a holy person, with restriction to specific places and certain liturgical exercises.23 Though no record of Francesca’s official beatification has been published to date, she was referred to as “beata Francesca” in contemporary sources, most notably the canonization proceedings. Mattiotti’s personal and highly emotional tracts were gleaned from his recording of his frequent meetings with Francesca, during which she made confession and received Holy Communion. Along with canonization testimony, they formed the

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

principal inspiration for the spiritual foundation of the community of oblates and were the primary sources for the content of the panel paintings and the Tor de’Specchi frescoes.24 Fra Ippolito’s biographies were more official and sanitized versions of Mattiotti’s tracts. As abbot of the Olivetan monastery that oversaw the oblates of Tor de’Specchi at the time of her death, he presented Francesca as an exemplar of the penitential and charitable female, in accordance with monastic ideals that stressed solitude and withdrawal from the outside world.25 As this study shows, these ideals were addressed in terms of the oblates’ ongoing experience inside and outside their monastery in the pictorial versions of Francesca’s Vita that were commissioned, designed, and utilized at Tor de’Specchi. To date, no contracts for the two fresco cycles at Tor de’Specchi have been identified among records kept at the convent or in archives in or beyond Rome. My discussion of the Oblates of Francesca Romana as the primary or sole patrons of the paintings is therefore arguably speculative. As Anabel Thomas has demonstrated, negotiations for the commissioning of convent imgery could involve parties both inside and outside the convent. In some cases, male advisors (both lay and religious) served as intermediaries between artists and female religious communities, counselling both parties in financial matters and in terms of the desired content for contracted work.26 That the oblates at Tor de’Specchi were knowledgeable viewers and interpreters of their frescoes is certain, however. The women who founded the community hailed from noble families that comprised the primary patronage class in quattrocento Rome. Many of them had lived with Francesca Ponziani and testified at hearings for her canonization. Indeed, it was through family connections and inheritance that the initial oblates acquired the building and property that was to be converted for their shared monastic dwelling. My discussion of the oblates as patrons therefore relies on their extensive social and ecclesiastical networks as noblewomen of the patronage class as the foundation for their dealings as a community, whether or not they contracted for the frescoes with the assistance of an outside advisor. It is in this context that I argue for their active participation in and contribution to the commissioning and design of the fresco cycles for the fifteenth-century oratory and refectory at Tor de’Specchi, in the service of their own religious practices and devotion as well as to advance the cult and canonization of Francesca Romana.

Organization of the Book The practice of painting in monastic spaces in Italy had as much to do with corporeal control as with spiritual edification. Refectory imagery in particular was designed to limit bodily pleasure and gustatory excess for the monastic viewer by redirecting the senses toward spiritual and corporeal temperance. Much of the growing scholarship on convent art and refectory decoration in Italy has focused on monastic spaces in

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Florence and Tuscany.27 Research on images made for Roman refectories, and indeed for Roman monastic communities in general, is scant and fragmented at this point, often embedded within larger surveys or monographs.28 Pathbreaking studies of women as patrons and founders of convents in Rome center on the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and provide important methodological models for looking at earlier communities.29 This study therefore expands the temporal boundaries of the literature on patronage and art made for women and monastic spaces in Rome, and the geographic boundaries of the scholarship on the visual culture of religious communities in Italy, while providing a close reading of the images made for the quattrocento community at Tor de’Specchi. Within the Tor de’Specchi complex, Francesca Romana was often depicted framed by a doorway, on the threshold between two spaces, or, in the case of the demonic refectory images, blocked from entry or exit. In my first chapter, I draw on anthropological models of liminality to discuss the meaning of the position by a doorway as a metaphor for the oblates’ transition from secular to monastic society and from worldly laywomen to chaste servants of God. It also represents Francesca on the threshold of sainthood, specifically portrayed as Rome’s mystical visionary and miraculous healer. The symbolic and ritual significance of doorways in ancient Rome, as represented in popular literature and theatre, and as ultimately appropriated by Renaissance popes, add rich layers of meaning to a seemingly mundane iconographic motif for the oblate viewers. Here, I demonstrate how the fresco cycle for the Tor de’Specchi oratory draws on imagery and iconography from the papal chapel of Nicholas V, where Francesca was represented alongside venerated Roman martyrs as an exemplar of Christian caritas. The visual connections to the papal chapel link the oblate community and the monastery of Tor de’Specchi to the Vatican, and pay homage to one of the most important ecclesiastical commissions of the period. As individuals and as a community who gave succor and charitable assistance in homes, streets, and hospitals of Rome, the oblates of Tor de’Specchi often found themselves in situations that simultaneously put them in the Devil’s pathway and presented an opportunity to perform works that would be pleasing to God. Oratory images of Francesca Romana’s thaumaturgic healing and miraculous charity offered the oblate community avenues for navigating the urban landscape with their eyes ever trained on the spiritual realm. In retrospect, they also present us with evidence of women’s collective work and agency within the evolving political and economic environment of quattrocento Rome. During their first 50 years as a formal, ecclesiastically sanctioned community (roughly 1435–1485), the oblates of Tor de’Specchi commissioned diverse painted representations of Francesca Ponziani’s divine visions and demonic apparitions. These “visions made visible” were designed specifically for the urban spaces that were shared, shaped, and decorated by the women who were Francesca’s initial sorelle (sisters), and range from rather stilted figural compositions in tempera on

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

panel to naturalistic terra verde frescoes featuring life-size male nudes. Considered as a group, they epitomize significant developments in quattrocento representations of the body and manifest principles of contemporary art theory. Chapter 2 focuses on the initial group panel paintings (c. 1445) portraying a series of vignettes from Francesca Ponziani’s divine visions, and subsequent oratory frescoes based on them. Likely commissioned by the oblates for their private burial chapel outside of Tor de’Specchi, the small panels represent the community’s particular contribution to the hagiographic corpus that initially defined the image of Santa Francesca Romana. I draw on late medieval optical theory, the theology of vision, and contemporary Italian religious texts that guided women through meditative and mnemonic practices in order to explain specific iconographic cues in the panels that were meant to be viewed at close range. Like many pious mystics before her, especially charismatic holy women like Catherine of Siena or Bridget of Sweden, Francesca Ponziani was blessed with divine visions and beset by demonic temptation.30 Mattiotti’s written accounts of her visions have been scrutinized by scholars for connections to late medieval hagiography, literature, and imagery.31 Yet, the pictorial representations of Francesca’s mystical life as commissioned by the oblates not only correspond to specific passages from Mattiotti’s Trattati, but also shaped a dynamic meditative and devotional practice for the nascent monastic community. My third chapter focuses on the sculptural, muscular, and naked bodies of the demons imagined in the Tor de’Specchi refectory that appear to be too tempting as visual material intended for a community of religious women. Yet, they are perfectly in line with quattrocento artists’ growing preoccupation with anatomical studies and the practice of life drawing that grew from a desire to make images more forceful, and to narrow the gap between reality and representation. As such, they depicted the demonic trials of Francesca Romana in a more naturalistic manner within the virtual sensorium that was at once the oblates’ dining space and site for ritual penance. Drawing on art theory of the period, and innovative methods for depicting the sacred and profane body, I examine how and why ideas about temptation, penance, sexuality, and punishment were incorporated into the Tor de’Specchi images. At the same time, I argue that the refectory frescoes ultimately glorified Francesca’s triumph over corporeal satiation and sin. Meant to be understood as both didactic and interactive, the paintings firmly point to the oblates’ discerning knowledge of artists and imagery circulating among Florentine workshops engaged in painting the Sistine Chapel walls. Diana Hiller’s recent study of Last Supper imagery commissioned for both male and female monastic houses in Florence advanced our understanding of gendered viewership and dining rituals enacted in the presence of refectory frescoes.32 In my final chapter, I consider these issues in a Roman context, analyzing the terra verde frescoes of Francesca’s demonic temptation in relation to the Tor de’Specchi

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refectory as a ritual space and in conversation with the extensive cycle in the adjacent oratory. Here I argue that the unusual, and to my knowledge anomalyous, cycle at Tor de’Specchi was commissioned in accordance with the Roman oblates’ desire to conform to monastic protocol by weaving traditional themes and iconography into the context of Francesca’s encounters with the Devil. Though, on the surface, the demon cycle appears to be a far cry from well-known images of the Last Supper, they were designed to accommodate similar ritual and spiritual practices for the oblate viewers. Finally, I examine terra verde as an effective medium for representations of the night and the demonic realm, and as a terrifying and naturalistic backdrop for the performance of ritual penance. The noblewomen-turned-oblates who commissioned the impressive body of imagery at Tor de’Specchi were at once pious servants of God and savvy consumers of art, reflecting their liminal status as residents of a monastic community and also as active participants in Roman society. The expansive cycles of their convent embody many of the ambiguities and paradoxes of late-medieval piety. The oblates’ theatre of Francesca’s demonic visions serves to initiate a conversation about how early modern women taught themselves to picture the Devil as a real and ever-present force to be vanquished and, importantly, expands our idea of images made at the behest of religious women to include the parochial communities of fifteenth-century Rome. In my final analysis, I explore the transformation and tensions between foundational images of Francesca that were central to the oblates’ lived experience and devotional practices inside their convent at Tor de’Specchi, and official representations of Santa Francesca Romana that served ecclesiastical reforming agendas in the decades around her eventual canonization by Pope Paul V in 1608. My Epilogue looks ahead to the canonization of Francesca Romana in 1608, when the oblates of Tor de’Specchi were sequestered behind convent walls. By this time, pictorial styles had been widely adapted to conform to Counter-Reformation ideals and mandates for image making and display. Here, I consider artwork and material goods commissioned to commemorate the canonization, by both the community at Tor de’Specchi and ecclesiastical officials, in order to accentuate these changes in style and to argue for a shift in patronage patterns based on them.

1. Sanctity on the Threshold: Liminality and Corporeality at Tor de’Specchi As part of the ambitious papal expansion and decoration of the Vatican complex during the fifteenth century, Pope Nicholas V (Tommaso Parentucelli, r. 1447–1455) commissioned the beatific monk-painter known as Fra Angelico to decorate his private chapel, the Cappella Niccolina, with a series of vibrant frescoes extolling the virtue of Christian charity.1 Praised by contemporaries for its extraordinary beauty, the Niccoline cycle is masterwork of pictorial hagiography made up of scenes from the lives of the early Christian martyrs Stephen and Lawrence.2 In one of the most renowned panels of the series, the Roman Saint Lawrence is depicted at the threshold of the massive portal of St. Peter’s Basilica handing gold coins to lame, blind, and hungry supplicants in a demonstration of holy munificence (Plate 1). To reinforce the immediacy of the moment, a contemporary Roman matron known locally as Santa Francesca Romana (Francesca Bussa de’Ponziani, 1384–1440) appears at Lawrence’s right side and shares the space of the basilica doorway with him. According to Giorgio Vasari, Fra Angelico painted the figure of Saint Lawrence distributing alms in the guise of his patron, Pope Nicholas, thus conflating the two figures for posterity and giving the Ligurian pope a Roman identity.3 In her role as a pious witness and contemporary ally of the saint/pope in the recreation of this most charitable act, the pious Francesca gently holds the wrist of a small child and gazes tenderly at her neighbors, who in turn beseech her intervention as they beg for alms.4 Francesca Romana’s currency as both an exemplar of female sanctity and as a model of caritas for fifteenth-century Romans is intrinsically linked to Fra Angelico’s celebrated frescoes. The appearance of Francesca Ponziani alongside her strongly Roman-identified predecessor (and the current pope) in the cycle gave Nicholas V the opportunity to proclaim his authority at a popular level. At the time the Niccoline cycle was painted, an ecclesiastical tribunal was already in the process of gathering testimony for Francesca’s canonization, and the citizens of Rome celebrated her as their homegrown saint. The representation of Francesca Romana among the worthies taking part in these scenes of important Church history gave early recognition to the role played by a resident holy woman and her community of followers in the reinstallation of the papacy and toward the legitimization of the Roman Church during the fifteenth century. Pope Nicholas was keen to establish himself as the head of an institution built around the doctrine of caritas. Through his extensive building campaigns and art patronage he endeavored to show that his actions, and those of the Church, were directed by the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity in a quest for divine salvation for all of the faithful, and not in pursuit of worldly treasure or political

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

gain for a select few.5 Almsgiving was particularly important to him, and he founded an almshouse at the Vatican as one of his initiatives to alleviate poverty during a period of widespread famine and economic depression in Rome.6 In the tumultuous religious and political climate of quattrocento Italy following the devastating papal schism, the representations of local patron saints in the pontifical chapel became powerful symbols for renewing the primacy and legitimacy of the Roman papacy, and for re-establishing the city of Rome as a New Jerusalem. Across the Tiber River from the Vatican, the Oblates of Francesca Romana were working to establish themselves as a viable charitable and religious institution in their newly acquired monastery, the Tor de’Specchi, during the same years that the Niccoline chapel was decorated. By this time, Giovanni Mattiotti had written his Vita based on his recollection of Francesca’s confessions to him and her frequent communion with him. Fra Ippolito, the Abbot of the Monastery of Santa Maria Nova, was crafting an ecclesiastically sanctioned biography of Francesca, while a papal tribunal heard and recorded testimony from a variety of witnesses in support of the cause for her canonization. An official image of “Santa Francesca Romana” was thus simultaneously shaped by disparate parties, from Pope Nicholas V in his Vatican chapel, to the Olivetan community at the Basilica of Santa Maria Nova in the Roman Forum, to the Roman citizens (both noble and poor) who testified to Francesca’s miraculous healing and intercessory powers.7 During the following decade (c. 1460–1468), the Oblates of Francesca Romana made their most significant contribution to the evolving hagiographic corpus documenting and perpetuating the legacy of their founder: they commissioned a gleaming cycle of frescoes for their community oratory at Tor de’Specchi. The resulting series of 26 multihued, jewel-toned panels covers all four walls of the chapel and represents scenes from Francesca’s extraordinary life and charitable deeds, as well as her mystical visions. The panels are parceled into discreet narrative windows by foliate all’antica borders and are underscored by descriptive captions transcribed in Roman dialect (romanesco) (Figure 2a–d).8 As far as we know, the oratory frescoes were the first images commissioned for the walls of the oblates’ private space at Tor de’Specchi, and were likely paid for by the community and by families who supported the cult of Francesca Romana.9 The cycle was completed in 1468 and is attributed to the prolific Roman painter Antonio di Benedetto Aquilo degli Aquili, known as Antoniazzo Romano, and members of his workshop.10 The remarkable events depicted in the frescoes were recorded in both the hagiographic Vita written by Giovanni Mattiotti, and in the testimony of witnesses at three ecclesiastical trials (processi) for Francesca’s canonization in 1440, 1443, and 1451. As a series, they form an impressive pictorial hagiography in their own right, and serve as further testimony toward the as yet unsuccessful cause for canonization. They also vividly bear witness to the very real dangers and upheaval of daily life in quattrocento Rome, and give us tangible evidence of women’s experience in

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Figure 2a–d: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Four walls of Tor de’Specchi oratory, c. 1468. Clockwise from top left: east wall; south wall; north wall with altarpiece; west wall. Photographs by author.

the often squalid streets of the contemporary city. With this splendid pictorial exposition, then, the oblates added their own version of events to the written testimony. Designed specifically for the community’s private oratory, the vibrant paintings in the Tor de’Specchi served a number of vital and interconnected purposes for the women who worshipped there. First, the cycle provided the oblates with a room-sized virtual picture book of the spiritual and thaumaturgic history of their founder to focus on, and interact with, during the celebration of Mass in the chapel. The oratory was used as a space for individual or collective meditation and ritual perambulation on a regular, if not daily, basis, and therefore each panel was a potential locus for lengthy contemplation and viewing.11 The oratory frescoes also represented the oblates’ official documentation of Francesca’s sanctity toward the cause for her canonization. The community’s foundation as a religious order was tied to its association with the venerated local woman who was hailed as Santa Francesca Romana – though, in 1468, her official status within the Church was still in a state of flux. At this point, the community’s future as a viable and potentially autonomous monastic institution rested on Francesca being declared a saint. Each panel showed Francesca in an act or attitude that substantiated her miraculous powers and that conformed to doctrinal criteria for canonization in the Roman Church.12 Finally, the repeated image of the venerable Francesca in the oratory frescoes modeled proper, decorous behavior for the living oblates as they prepared to cross the threshold of the Tor de’Specchi and embark on their own charitable service in the streets and hospitals of Rome.

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

The tension between women’s active participation in the service of Christian charity (caritas) – enacted for the salvation of their souls as well as for the benefit of those they cared for – and their heretofore restricted appearance in public spaces across the city is powerfully embodied in the frescoes of the Tor de’Specchi oratory. In this chapter, I examine the images of Francesca Romana’s thamauturgic work and charity in the streets of Rome not for what they tell us about Francesca Ponziani but to illuminate how they represented, inspired, and served the women who commissioned and lived with them during the second half of the fifteenth century.

Doorways, Liminality and Ritual Many of the images in the Tor de’Specchi oratory show Francesca Romana in front of a portal, framed by a doorway, or standing on a threshold between one place and another. Throughout the oblates’ chapel, exceptional moments of grace, transition, and transformation are revealed within the frame of a painted doorway. While the oratory frescoes depict stories and moments from the Vita of Santa Francesca Romana and from the canonization trials, they also embody the tensions and struggles inherent in the model of piety and charitable service adopted by her followers. An examination of the iconography of the doorway, and its symbolic value in Rome, reveals much about the ritual and actual transformations, passages, and transitions performed by the oblate community in order to address those tensions. The historical symbolism associated with the decoration of doors and doorways, pictorial representations of doorways, and indeed doors themselves was widely understood among the Christian community in quattrocento Rome.13 On the most basic level, doors represent entry and exit and are transitional spaces often demarcating public from private, invitation or exclusion, beginnings or endings. From antiquity on, Roman authorities endowed portals with political significance and transformative power, and invented ceremonial rites that involved crossing thresholds and the opening and closing of doors. For the nascent Roman Church, these rituals were adapted for liturgical and processional purposes, drawing on metaphor and allegories from the lives of Christ, the Apostles, and saints.14 Fifteenth-century popes renewed and expanded the use of doors and doorways as key religious symbols, most notably in Eugenius IV’s commission for the great bronze doors cast by Filarete (Antonio Averlino) for the central portal of St. Peter’s Basilica in 1434.15 A fifteenth-century chronicler noted that the far right door of St. Peter’s Basilica was understood to be the “Golden Gate” of Jerusalem through which Christ had passed on Palm Sunday. Tradition held that the door had been brought to Rome by the emperors Titus and Vespasian after their conquest of the Jewish capital, and is commemorated in a relief sculpture on the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum. At various times, pilgrims and the faithful in Rome were allowed to file through the

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Vatican door to gain indulgence and the remission of all sins, regardless of the severity of their transgressions. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, this practice was confined to jubilee years, but during the fifteenth century it was a regular occurrence.16 Specific moments depicted in the fresco cycle of the Tor de’Specchi oratory represent the community’s role in the shifting dynamics between communal government and the papacy during the first half of the fifteenth century. They can be interpreted in relation to the community’s early desire to realign itself with the Pope and the official ecclesiastical culture of the city. The work of anthropologist Arnold van Gennep and, more recently, Victor ­Turner on liminality and community gave us the terminology to analyze how and why ­representations of doorways were utilized during a transitional period for both the nascent community of oblates and the cause for Francesca’s canonization. Van Gennep, who coined the now commonplace phrase “rite of passage,” defined rites executed during a transitional stage (i.e. those between one state of being or place and another) as “liminal” or “threshold” rites. Building on van Gennep’s model, Turner affirmed that liminal entities are those in a transitional phase between culturally recognized states or positions assigned them by law, custom, convention, or ceremony. Consequently, they are outside of established patterns and paradigms of society allowing them, through ritual action or ruptures in socially sanctioned behavior, to make a transition from one state of being or status to another by effectively crossing a limen or threshold.17 Turner called attention to monastic communities, and to the Rule of Saint Benedict (Regula Benedicti) in particular, as noteworthy markers for the “institutionalization of liminality” in the Western world.18 As pinzochere, the oblates of Tor de’Specchi occupied a liminal space in the Church hierarchy; they were neither professed nuns nor secular laywomen. Yet, as Mario Sensi elucidated in a recent article surveying Italian female religiosity of the period, the oblates of Tor de’Specchi were singularly linked to the papacy as a semireligious community, a status that would last beyond the Council of Trent.19 Though they were officially under the pastoral care of the Benedictine Olivetan community at Santa Maria Nova from the outset, they had obtained papal permission to govern and discipline themselves. In the spring of 1444, Pope Eugenius IV conceded to the Oblates of Francesca Romana at Tor de’Specchi the right to choose the priest who would be their confessor and who would celebrate Mass for them “with open doors” (con le porte aperte) in their private oratory.20 This pivotal decree further stipulated that the prelate that they selected should be of impeccable reputation and of mature age, and that if he did not perform his clerical duties to the oblates’ satisfaction the community had license to dismiss him and hire another. He would hear the oblates’ confessions, grant absolution for sins, and administer requisite sacraments for the order.21 Even after the decree was issued, the community’s relationship with the Olivetan monks was often contentious, and the oblates struggled to maintain the rights granted to them by the Pope.22

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

The phrase porte aperte raises questions as to its significance within a papal document issued to the newly formed community. As Lugano and others have suggested, it indicates that their domestic chapel was officially recognized as a semi-public oratory, where Mass could be said without the oblate community requesting special permission from ecclesiastical officials.23 During these crucial early years, the Oblates of Francesca Romana sought to establish a formal religious and charitable presence in the city at large while maintaining societal ideals for proper and pious behavior. The practical and ideological program of the oratory panels is best examined, then, as a collection of individual scenes, carefully chosen and arranged by the oblates themselves. The cycle as a whole should be understood in relation to the interior spaces of the Tor de’Specchi complex and in the context of the city of Rome, both real and imagined, beyond its confines. The iconography and symbolism associated with doors in quattrocento Rome provide practical and theoretical models for understanding the repeated image of Francesca in a doorway as a charged visual metaphor.

A Community on the Threshold The Oblates of Francesca Romana were linked by papal decree to the Benedictine order of Olivetan monks housed nearby at the Church of Santa Maria del Foro.24 A fresco panel in the Tor de’Specchi oratory illustrates this association, showing Francesca and several female followers making their formal oblation in the eyes of God and in the presence of the Olivetan Abbot and Francesca’s ecclesiastical biographer, Fra’Ippolito of Rome (Plate 2). The painted scene takes place inside the Church of Santa Maria Nova, which is depicted here with verde antico columns and a clerestory punctuated with biforate windows. A gilded monstrance and crucifix, pictorially emphasized by an apsidal niche, is singularly positioned atop an altar covered with a rich lace cloth. Fra Ippolito, who is shown in exaggerated scale to underscore his authority, raises his hand to bless the oblates while tonsured monks seated on wooden benches look on. The Abbot’s face is less schematically rendered than those of the monks and oblates in this panel, and was likely meant to be a portrait. The caption beneath the image of the community’s oblation reads, “How the beata Francesca, with all of her spiritual daughters [both] present and future, offered themselves to the monastery of Santa Maria Nova of the order of Monte Oliveto under the Rule of Saint Benedict.”25 Here, the phrase “both present and future” clearly avows that the oblates who commissioned the frescoes in 1468 were meant to see themselves in the oratory images, reinforcing their link with the community’s origins and corroborating their ongoing mission as followers of Francesca. The formal oblation depicted in the fresco took place on August 15, 1425, during the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin. This date is highly significant. Francesca and her initial followers were particularly devoted to the Virgin Mary (before Francesca’s

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death, they called themselves the “Oblates of Mary”). On the Feast of the Assumption, Rome staged nocturnal processions that included staged “visits” between the miraculous icon of Christ (Acheropita) kept in the Sancta Sanctorum at the Lateran Palace and venerated Marian icons around the city, including an early miracleworking Madonna at Santa Maria Nova.26 In the Tor de’Specchi fresco, the group of oblates (young and old) headed by Francesca bow as pious postulants before the collective body of monks and, more importantly, to the body of Christ represented in the crucifix and communion wafer on the altar. Francesca occupies the center of the scene, bridging the segregated figural groups. Her austere black dress and gleaming white mantle chromatically connect males to females, monks to oblates. Haloed, and rendered slightly larger than the other women, she kneels before an open doorway that reveals a crenellated wall and blue sky in the distance. The representation of Francesca Romana before the doorway in Santa Maria Nova distinctly accentuates her formal oblation, and frames her as the link between the Benedictine monks at the Roman Forum and her oblate followers. It also signifies her position on the threshold between the sanctified domain of the Church and the secular world represented by the cityscape beyond the door – the same position that the oblates found themselves in at the time that the frescoes were painted. The hierarchical arrangement of the panel closely resembles Giotto’s fresco of Pope Innocent approving the Rule of the Franciscan order, from his magisterial cycle of the life of Saint Francis in the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi.27 In Giotto’s painting, Francis and his followers kneel before a group of bishops and Pope Innocent, who looms over the scene from an elevated throne. Like Francesca, Francis is shown in slightly larger scale than his followers, and mediates between the two figural groups within a fictive space that, in this case, is meant to represent a papal chamber. The unmistakable parallels between the Tor de’Specchi fresco of Francesca’s oblation and Giotto’s venerable cycle in Assisi demonstrate a desire to lay claim to official backing of the oblate community at the highest levels of the Church, and to a life ordered according to a common set of statutes (Figure 3). The image of the community’s formal oblation is one of five scenes on the northern wall of the oratory that together embody an active ministry in the temporal realm, and the rewards of divine grace in the heavenly sphere. The wall is arranged in three vertical sections. A sumptuous altarpiece depicting the Madonna and Child enthroned, flanked by Saints Benedict and Francesca Romana occupies the center of the wall, while four smaller panels, two on each side, fill the adjacent spaces (Plate 3). The altarpiece, and indeed the entire wall behind the altar, was the backdrop for the rite of Holy Communion in the oratory, and was therefore the center of liturgical activity in the chapel. During this period, it was customary for a church or chapel altar to be oriented toward the east. The Tor de’Specchi altar and altarpiece are oriented to the north, however, most likely because the oblates converted and adapted an existing urban space for their monastery.28 The east-facing wall in the oratory is

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

Figure 3: Giotto di Bondone, Pope Innocent III Confirming the Rule of the Order of Saint Francis, c. 1300, Upper church, basilica of San Francesco, Assisi. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

perforated by a horizontal band of windows, making the placement of a central altar and altarpiece difficult without costly renovations. Further, the east wall faced the nearby Theatre of Marcellus (Teatro Marcello), whereas the northern wall was oriented toward the church of Santa Maria Nova in the Roman Forum. It is also plausible, then, that the oblates chose the plain northern wall for the altar placement and for the scene of their oblation, as a nod toward the site of their own foundation as a community and to the location of Francesca’s tomb and the community’s burial chapel (discussed in detail in the next chapter). The five paintings on the altar wall are separated into discrete panels, but can also be viewed as an array of images revolving around the central figure of the Virgin Mary. In the altarpiece, the Madonna is seated on an elegant marble throne surrounded by a brocade cloth of honor, and is depicted wearing an elaborate trilayered crown as described in Mattiotti’s Trattati.29 Portrayed in an attitude of maternal affection, she gazes tenderly at the infant Jesus while he strokes her face and nurses at her breast (Figure 4). Here, then, Mary is simultaneously represented as the Queen of Heaven and the Madonna lactans to signify both her divine and human nature.30 The oblates, as communicants at the altar, would have meditated on the image of the Madonna nourishing their Savior at her breast as they were simultaneously nourished by the body of

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Figure 4: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, The Virgin Mary nursing the infant Christ, c. 1468, detail, altarpiece, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

Christ in the Eucharist. They likely associated the Virgin’s agonizing sacrifice of her son with that of their spiritual mother, Francesca, who had suffered the anguish of seeing two of her own children die of the plague. The beata’s guardian angel, who was brought to her in a vision by her dead son, Evangelista, appears in the foreground of the altar panel to reinforce this point. Here, the child-like angel looks up at Francesca in the same way that the infant Jesus is transfixed on the Queen of Heaven, foreshadowing his death, but also promising the reunion of mother and child in Heaven. For the viewer facing the altarpiece, Francesca Romana stands to the right of the Virgin and next to the figure of the infant Christ. She holds an open book in her hands, which is inscribed with the following passage from Psalm 72: “Thou hast held me by my right hand; and by thy will thou hast conducted me: and with thy glory thou hast received me.”31 This Psalm is a reminder to the faithful that good works done in the service of God – Christian caritas – lead to divine salvation, whereas pridefulness born of temptation leads to eternal ruin and damnation. To reinforce this point, pictorial examples of the types of good works prescribed in the psalms, as well as visions showing the path to divine salvation, are represented on either side of the altarpiece on the altar wall and repeated throughout the oratory cycle.

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

The two bottom panels either side of the altarpiece depict scenes of Christian charity in the form of miraculous healing. To the left of the altar we see Francesca and her sister-in-law, Vanozza, who are dressed in the habit of the oblate community, standing on a bridge and recoiling in horror at the sight of a man whose arm is bleeding profusely and is so deeply wounded that it appears to be hanging only by the threads of the shredded sleeve of his tunic (Plate 4). According to Mattiotti, this shocking scene occurred when Francesca and Vanozza were returning from a spiritual pilgrimage to hear mass at the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano and walking back toward Trastevere to the Palazzo Ponziani. He relates that as they crossed the Ponte Santa Maria (now the Ponte Rotto) to Trastevere, they chanced upon the man who was all but dead after his arm had been nearly severed in half in a sword fight.32 In the mid-quattrocento, the trek from Trastevere to the Lateran and back would have been quite arduous; the basilica of San Giovanni is located in what was then a largely uninhabited section of Rome, requiring Francesca and Vanozza to traverse rugged, overgrown terrain to reach the church. They would have had to walk over the Capitoline Hill, where goats foraged and wolves sometimes roamed, and cross the Roman Forum, known then as the Campo Vaccino because it served largely as a cow pasture.33 Francesca’s recounting of their subsequent encounter with the man wounded in a sword fight underscores the often brutal nature of the fifteenthcentury city, and brings the potential dangers that the two women faced sharply into focus. In the oratory fresco, Francesca and Vanozza’s peril is made clear in their recoiling gestures and stunned poses, yet we quickly learn that higher powers prevailed in this scene. On the opposite side of the same fresco panel, and as a pendant to the gruesome encounter, we see Francesca, Vanozza, and the injured man standing at the foot of the bridge, gathered in front of a constellation of houses in Trastevere. A young man has joined them as a witness to the spectacle. In contrast to her flinching horror on the bridge, however, Francesca firmly grasps the injured man’s elbow to demonstrate to the viewer that she has miraculously healed his life-threatening wound. In order to emphasize the thaumaturgic nature of her powers, the beata is also shown blessing the site of the gash, which, like the man’s sleeve, is now clean, stitched up, and free of blood. The presence of the divine in this scene is signified by cross-mullioned windows set into two of the houses in the background. Naturalistic details in the panel such as the swirling Tiber, the stone bridge, and the series of houses rendered in receding perspective effectively ground the image in the streets of quattrocento Rome. In this fresco, the moment of miraculous healing takes place in front of the open portone of a red house with a biforate window, which the oblate viewers understood to be Francesca’s marital home, the Palazzo Ponziani.34 The figure of Francesca, in particular, is framed by the open doorway; her golden halo and gleaming veil stand

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out against the dark recesses of the house interior. This motif is repeated in a pendant scene of healing on the opposite side of the altar wall, and in eight other panels throughout the cycle. Each of the images of miraculous healing in the Tor de’Specchi oratory depicts Francesca Romana as a healer in the tradition of Jesus as Christus Medicus.35 St. Matthew recounted several instances when Christ, by the power of his healing touch and prayer, miraculously cured supplicants who came to him with various physical and spiritual afflictions.36 His gospel narrative also recalls the moment when Jesus sent out his twelve apostles to preach, and bestowed the power of healing on them, saying: But go ye rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And going, preach, saying: The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils. Freely have you received: freely give. (Matthew, 10:6–8)

It is in this passage that Matthew defines the apostolic mission, or Vita apostolica, of spreading the good news of salvation and dispensing charity through healing and exorcism. Throughout the oratory cycle, oblates appear and serve as perpetual witnesses to a variety of Romans who beseeched Francesca Romana to heal critical injuries and cure congenital illnesses. In every instance the afflicted are shown to be restored to health as a result of the beata’s healing touch and her fervent prayer. This was particularly effective, graphic evidence of Francesca’s extraordinary thaumaturgic powers in the tradition of Jesus and his Apostles, commissioned by the oblates and rendered by the Tor de’Specchi painter as visual testimony in the cause for Francesca’s canonization. Mattiotti’s account of Francesca’s healing of the wounded man on the Ponte Santa Maria, though hagiographic and labeled “miraculous succor” (Aliud Miraculum) in his treatise, also contains details that indicate genuine medical treatment by Francesca. Throughout the fifteenth century, medical care and poor relief fell largely under the aegis of the Church and was dispensed in a variety of ways. In Rome, confraternities populated by citizens of diverse social classes and representing various segments of the city (parishes, rioni, and guilds, for example) provided spiritual assistance in the form of prayer and devotional processions, and material sustenance in the form of food, dowries, and clothing. Confratelli staffed hospitals and hospices across the city, offering care for both Roman citizens in need and to the scores of pilgrims that populated the papal capital annually. Women’s roles in confraternal life and devotion were regulated by corporate statutes, and often varied widely according to institutional tradition and leadership.37 As Anna Esposito demonstrated, semi-religious women living in case sante, like the oblates of Tor de’Specchi, played an increasingly key role in charitable initiatives and poor relief in quattrocento Rome. The very fact of their liminal status as neither professed nuns living in clausura nor as laywomen living under the protection of a husband (most were widowed or unmarried) meant

38 

Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

that they could “combine practical charitable work among their neighbors with the intense spiritual activity characteristic of the true religious who were the models of Christian perfection.”38 In recounting the miraculous healing depicted in the oratory “severed arm” fresco, Mattiotti related that when Francesca and Vanozza first encountered the bleeding man lying on the bridge, Francesca asked him why he had not gone to a doctor to be treated. The man replied, “Because I don’t have money to pay [him].” Hearing this, and moved by pity, the two women carried the man to their home at the Palazzo Ponziani (propriam domum), where Francesca washed his wounds and stitched them up as best she could. Afterwards, according to Mattiotti, they all praised God, and a short time later the man left, strong and restored to good health.39 While Mattiotti’s account asserts that God was called upon to intervene in saving the wounded man’s life, he also tells us that Francesca had the medical knowledge and skill needed to successfully save the man’s arm. During the years of Francesca’s charitable ministry in Rome, the professionalization of medicine in Italy was slowly codified through the guild system and in growing numbers of prestigious universities (in Bologna and Salerno, for example), both of which largely excluded women.40 Consequently, healers like Francesca who learned to make ointments and other herbal preparations at home with recipes handed down through oral tradition from one generation (usually of women) to the next came under increased scrutiny of ecclesiastical and civic authorities, and were often suspected of consorting with the Devil rather than doing God’s work. It was not considered proper or pious behavior for a noblewoman to interact with a man, and especially a poor man, in the streets of fifteenth-century Rome.41 The idea of Francesca and Vanozza carrying an injured man home to wash and dress his wounds would have been highly suspect at that time. Accordingly, though the event described by Mattiotti was both an act of Christian charity and a bona fide medical treatment, the frescoes had to show Francesca doing God’s work in the Christological and apostolic tradition. The caption painted below the fresco corroborates this assertion. It reads, “While returning from the church of Saint John, Francesca found a man on the Ponte S. Maria whose arm was almost totally cut off; she was moved by compassion and, touching him, he was healed right away.”42 This description indicates that saving the man was indeed a miraculous event, facilitated on the spot through Francesca’s access to divine powers of healing in the apostolic tradition outlined by Matthew in his Gospel. For the oblates who were familiar with the Trattati, however, the appearance of Francesca in front of the portone signified that the wounded man was, in fact, brought to the Ponziani home and received hands-on treatment there. The move from the public space of the bridge to the private Ponziani casa is also indicated by the length of the veils worn by Francesca and Vanozza in the two scenes depicted in the fresco; according to tradition, the oblates at Tor de’Specchi donned a long, more protective veil when they were outside the convent and wore a short,

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less bulky veil when they were in their private quarters.43 Francesca’s simultaneous blessing and hands-on healing of the wounded man at the Palazzo Ponziani, as indicated by her short veil, places this scene in the context of divine intervention and, equally significant, within the bounds of proper decorum and conduct befitting a noblewoman. Viewed as a whole, the panel is emblematic of the oblates’ own charitable work with the poor – work that originated at home (now the Tor de’Specchi) but was often carried out in public spaces beyond its confines and security. Article 44 of the community’s Rule – the Ordinationi Statuiti per la Beata Francesca – states that when oblates were outside of the house there should always be at least two or three of them together (see Appendix). Punishment for transgression of this decree was a scourging in front of the community for the time it took to say five Patre nostri (Our Fathers) and an Ave Maria (Hail Mary).44 In every scene of Christian caritas in the Tor de’Specchi oratory, Francesca is shown with one of her sorelle by her side. The second oblate acted as a witness to corroborate the extraordinary events shown in the cycle. Equally crucial, her presence signified that the community stringently followed the statutes handed down by Francesca, and that they had a legitimate – and pious – reason for being outside the Tor de’Specchi. The oratory images of miraculous healing also demonstrate that Francesca passed on her knowledge of medical practices and preparations of medicinal herbs to her oblates, in effect bequeathing the potential for miraculous healing to them (to this day, the community at Tor de’Specchi prepares a curative unguent that is made from a recipe handed down from the fifteenth century). In the pendant panel to the scene of Francesca healing the severed arm on the oratory altar wall, the beata is shown healing the potentially fatal wound of a servant in the Ponziani household after he accidentally cut off part of his foot while chopping wood in their forest (Plate 5).45 Here again, the painter depicted both the moment of the grisly accident and a scene showing Francesca in front of the Ponziani home, blessing the man she has miraculously healed. In this case, however, we see tangible evidence of Francesca’s actual medical treatment portrayed in conjunction with the moment of thaumaturgic healing. Three soiled bandages, one of which is covered with dried ointment and blood, are strewn on the ground in the foreground of the panel in order to emphasize the earthly as well as the divine nature of the miracle (Figure 5). The same is true in a painting on the opposite (south) wall of the oratory which shows Francesca healing a young man named Gianni after he had lost the use of one of his legs (Plate 6).46 This scene is framed as a view into Gianni’s bedroom, where the stricken boy sits up on a raised wooden bed and prays for Francesca’s assistance. A crimson blanket is peeled back to reveal Gianni’s scarred and festering leg to Francesca and to the viewer. As the boy’s mother gestures in wonder, the beata Francesca stands at the foot of the bed making a sign of blessing over the bloody leg. At the same time, she looks down at a pile of stained bandages that have just been removed from it. Her blessing hand also points

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

Figure 5: Bandages with dried blood, detail of Plate 5. Photograph by author.

to an apothecary jar set in a recessed niche above the bed, indicating the medicinal ointment Francesca used to heal the boy’s festering wound. A folded piece of parchment covered in hand-written script is depicted on top of the jar, documenting Francesca’s recipe for the miraculous unguent and emphasizing the vital role of her hand-made remedies in the service of her divine powers of healing (Figure 6). The composition of this fresco is reminiscent of Fra Angelico’s predella panel from the San Marco altarpiece, showing Saints Cosmas and Damian healing a young woman named Palladia.47 Fra Angelico similarly portrayed the San Marco scene of healing as an open view into Palladia’s bedroom, where the twin physician saints attend to their patient while a man and woman (presumably her parents) look on. Palladia sits upright on a tall bed set on a wooden platform. She is shown wearing a bedcap and nightgown, and is covered up to her waist by a sheet and woolen blanket; there is no indication of her injury or illness in the scene. St. Damian makes a sign of blessing over Palladia, and offers her a drink from a sparkling pitcher of water set in a basin on a stool next to the bed (Figure 7). In contrast to the sanitized scene of mirac�ulous healing in Fra Angelico’s panel, however, the depiction of the fetid leg, bloody bandages, and apothecary jar in the Tor de’Specchi fresco gave the oblate viewers a vivid and more naturalistic account of Francesca’s work with the poor and infirm.

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Figure 6: Bloody bandages and apothecary jar, detail of Plate 6. Photograph by author.

Figure 7: Fra Angelico, The Healing of Palladia by Saints Cosmas and Damian, c. 1440, predella panel from the San Marco Altarpiece, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1952.5.3).

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

The depictions of miraculous healing combined with evidence of bona fide medical treatment portrayed within the oratory cycle signify the tensions inherent in the oblate community’s charitable mission. The repeated motif of Francesca Romana in a doorway was also emblematic of the oblates’ position on the threshold between secular and religious life. When her female followers left their homes to join the community at the Tor de’Specchi, they adopted a lifestyle that was at once sheltered and public. They consecrated themselves to a regimen of religious devotion, under a Rule that imposed strict guidelines for proper dress and behavior. At the same time, they dedicated themselves to a life of charitable work and service that took them outside the convent and put them in direct contact with the poor, diseased, and afflicted of their city.

Transition and Vestition Francesca Ponziani divided her time between the convent of Tor de’Specchi and her family’s palazzo in Trastevere while her husband was still alive. After his death in 1436 she went to live with her community full time and served as Madre Presidente until she died four years later.48 Francesca’s transition from matrona of a noble household to retirement – and leadership – in the Tor de’Specchi is marked on an engraved plaque on a wall just inside the original convent door, at the base of a stairway leading to the oratory. It reads: In this place on the [feast] day of St. Benedict, 1436, [our holy mother] Francesca came to find her spiritual daughters; she stopped at the foot of this stairway, [and] closed the door [behind her]; she took off her shoes, she placed a rope around her neck and, prostrate and in tears, she begged to be received into the congregation founded by her as the least of all of them.49

Whether it happened or not that Francesca actually crossed the threshold of Tor de’Specchi on the feast day of St. Benedict, in making this assertion the community aligned itself and its founder with the Benedictine tradition and the order of Olivetans at Santa Maria Nova. This association is emphasized in the altarpiece of the Tor de’Specchi oratory, where the life-size figure of St. Benedict is portrayed opposite the pendant figure of Francesca Romana. Looking at the north wall of the oratory again, we see that the figure of St. Benedict in the altarpiece is depicted next to the panel showing the community’s oblation at Santa Maria Nova (Plate 3). Here, he is shown in the white habit of the reformed Benedictine order – the same habit worn by the reformed monks at Santa Maria Nova – and holds a golden crosier in one hand and the book containing his Rule in the other.50 The top half

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of his body in the altarpiece lines up with the scene of Francesca’s oblation before Fra Ippolito, and his pastoral staff rests against the frame of the panel, next to the oblates who are kneeling behind their founder. In effect, Francesca’s community is shown here as twice blessed, and also tightly contained, by Benedict and his Olivetan followers in the nearby Roman Forum. According to Benedictine tradition, a new member of the community was required to prostrate himself before each monk, asking for his prayers and renouncing all worldly goods for the community. When this was done, he exchanged his clothes for those of the order. For a time, the old clothes of the inductee were kept in a wardrobe in case he was persuaded by the Devil to leave the monastery, in which case he would have been stripped of his habit and expelled.51 Ceremonies of vestition and profession for religious women in Italy often took place in quasi-public outer rooms of a convent, such as a guest parlor.52 However, as a recreation of the fifteenth-century complex at Tor de’Specchi makes clear, there was no designated parlor or reception room in the convent at that time (see Figure 1). Instead, a quattrocento fresco covering the large wall at the base of the stairway, adjacent to the plaque, offers compelling evidence for the entryway as the site for formal induction and investiture (Plate 7). This painting is nearly identical to the oratory altarpiece, with the Madonna and Child flanked by the figures of St. Benedict and Francesca Romana. In the entryway image, however, the Virgin is not enthroned or crowned, but is shown instead with her plain blue mantle draped modestly over her head. The baby Jesus is not nursing, but sits upright and looks out at the viewer. He holds a shining orb in one hand and makes the sign of blessing over the viewer with the other. St. Benedict is represented on the side of the panel closest to the street and, as on the altar wall, in the direction of the monastery at Santa Mara Nova. Opposite him, Francesca stands next to the doorway and stairs leading to the Tor de’Specchi oratory, and displays an open book that we understand to contain the statutes that she crafted for her oblates. Her guardian angel stands at her side and looks up the stairway toward the chapel, inviting the oblate to enter the monastery and welcoming her into the community. Processions were often part of monastic induction ceremonies in Renaissance Italy, ranging from ritual perambulations within the confines of a convent to public parades from a postulant’s home to a monastery, often in the company of family members.53 The placement of the record of Francesca’s formal transition in the entryway of the Tor de’Specchi and the description of it on the entrance plaque offer persuasive evidence for a similar ritual at Tor de’Specchi. It is conceivable that, like their founder, the new oblate(s) would cross the threshold from secular life to religious profession in the same manner. Closing the door behind her, she would be welcomed by her sorelle in the presence of the Virgin and Child, St. Benedict, and Francesca Romana as represented in the fresco. She would replace her secular clothing with the

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

garments of the order, after which she would be led up the stairs and into the convent to live according to the Tor de’Specchi statutes. By adopting rituals and practices that conformed to those of traditional monastic communities, the oblates asserted their institutional identity as well as their commitment to a life dedicated to Christian service. The ritual exchange of secular clothing for community garb at Tor de’Specchi also relate to symbolic entries and rituals of investiture and induction outside of the strictly monastic context. Renaissance hospitals were staffed by a variety of volunteer laborers, many of whom were women dedicated to a life of Christian charity in caring for the sick and impoverished.54 In many cases, these women participated in an investiture ceremony during which they would don a habit and receive a blessing by the hospital chaplain.55 While the garb of the hospital volunteers often resembled those of professed nuns, the volunteers did not take formal monastic or religious vows. However, as Eunice Howe demonstrated, hospital architecture was strictly segregated according to gender, class, and social status, and residents adhered to a Rule delineating specific duties and obligations for both sexes.56 Following a recognizable model set by prior holy women and saints, Francesca and her oblates at Tor de’Specchi were especially committed to caring for the sick and poor in Rome’s hospitals – most notably at the papal Hospital of Santo Spirito, the hospice at Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, and the hospital of Santa Maria in Cappella.57 The latter was situated near the Palazzo Ponziani in Trastevere, and was founded in 1391 by Francesca’s in-laws, Andreozza and Cecilia Ponziani. As the donor family, the Ponziani would have endowed the hospital and perhaps decorated it with their coat of arms, leaving the work of caring for patients to employees. As a member of the founding family, Francesca Ponziani transgressed the boundaries of her social station and took on many of the daily chores at the institution – feeding the infirm, washing their clothes, and treating their wounds.58 In the tradition of pious mystics such as Angela of Foligno and Catherine of Siena, she also reportedly sucked pus from patient’s wounds – an act of extreme penitential devotion that is difficult to imagine in our disinfected modern world.59 The Tor de’Specchi frescoes of Francesca’s miraculous healing represent the beata working in the service of God, placing humility and piety above social rank. Though they do not specifically portray hospital service, the oratory images pictorially sanction the idea of a noblewoman caring for a domestic servant or an impoverished citizen in need. Francesca is portrayed as a disciple of Christ in the streets and spaces of Rome, and her oblates are shown alongside her as the legitimate successors of her charitable mission. In 1445, with the consent of the Ponziani family, Pope Eugenius IV transferred official patronage of the hospital at Santa Maria in Cappella to the community of oblates at Tor de’Specchi, an appointment they held until it was passed to the Doria-Pamphili family in 1655.60 This was a significant step toward giving the order an ecclesiastically

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approved public presence beyond the façade of the Tor de’Specchi, and confirms that individual oblates performed charitable service that required them to travel through the streets of Rome. Considered in relation to the community Ordinationi which set down stringent rules for the locking and guarding of the doors to the main portal and to the dormitories, a clearer sense of the movement of the oblates begins to emerge. The Tor de’Specchi statutes center on tightly controlling the flow of the oblates, and certainly outsiders, in and out of the house. They do not indicate a cloistered or enclosed community, but rather dictated regulations for the oblates’ proper and pious behavior when working outside of the monastery.61 The inscription describing Francesca’s affecting entry into the Tor de’Specchi indicates an act of humility and penitence that is in accordance with guidelines for pious behavior expected of new members as set down in the Rule of Saint Benedict. It also relates to several statutes in Francesca’s ordinations, which called for individual discipline and prostration in the presence of the entire community. The Benedictine Rule outlines steps of humility and discipline that must be taken in pursuit of one’s religious vocation; pious members of the community were cautioned to guard against evil thoughts and bodily desire, as Death (and surely a gruesome death) was believed to be lurking at the “doorway to pleasure.”62 The consequences of a life given over to bodily desires were made abundantly clear in a wall-sized fresco painted in a recessed niche of the western wall of the Tor de’Specchi oratory (Plate 8). In bold relief, the fresco elucidates a protracted, detailed vision of a journey through Hell related by Francesca Romana and recorded by Mattiotti in one of the longest tracts of his Vita (Tractato dello Inferno).63 Frightened, yet bolstered by the Archangel Raphael who was sent by Christ to accompany her on the journey, Francesca witnessed a multitude of demons – and Satan himself – torturing all manner of the damned for eternity. The terrifying oratory image of the vision is divided into six horizontal bands, five of which represent a schematic arrangement of Hell where the condemned are segregated into red-hot cells of fire and labeled according to their particular vice or sin. At the top of the painting, Archangel Raphael and Francesca Romana stand on a flimsy, floating cloud set against a clear blue sky. Beside them, colorful acrobatic demons hurl naked figures – the souls of the damned – from the terrestrial realm into the gaping jaws of the Hell-mouth, portrayed here (and described in Francesca’s vision) as a thick, green, fire-breathing serpent with jagged fangs and dragon’s wings. The angel Raphael presents Francesca with scores of sinners who have been sentenced to torture and eternal punishments that include tearing their tongues out with hot pincers, burning on the gridiron, flaying, and boiling in a cauldron. Satan reigns triumphantly over the grisly hellscape, seated on a perch of crackling red flames. He is charred and monstrous – with horns, claws, a hooked nose, and bat wings – and is so menacing and looming as to inhabit all five layers of his infernal kingdom.

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

Figure 8: Grate at the base of oratory fresco of Hell, detail of Plate 8. Photograph by author.

Sometime in the fifteenth century, a small iron grate was strategically placed into an opening cut into the wall at the base of the oratory vision of Hell (Figure 8). The grate is also visible from the Tor de’Specchi entryway, atop the painting of the Madonna, Saint Benedict, and Santa Francesca, and therefore mediates between both spaces.64 The caption beneath the oratory painting of Hell appears as a broken text rather than a continuous narrative, with the end of each line painted below the grate. The entire caption reads, “How the beata Francesca was guided by the angel Raphael to see the atrocity of Hell/showing her the ways that souls were punished and tormented for each sin.” 65 It is surely no accident that the phrase, “the atrocity of Hell” (l’oribilità dello inferno) and the word “sin” (peccato) appear on the two lines set apart from the rest of the text at the base of the grate. In accordance with their statutes, the barred window in the oratory wall served as a potential means of security for the community, so that an oblate could sit by the grate and guard the door at a safe distance from the public and without being seen.66 As the only window from the interior of the Tor de’Specchi oratory to the entryway, the grate also offered a view of the doorway leading to the Roman streets outside. The vision of Hell above the window and the snippets of text below served as perpetual reminders of the potential

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dangers beyond the community’s confined space, and as confirmation of their decision to adopt a religious mantle in order to avoid the eternal fate of the damned.

Donne Oneste Among the multitude of sinners presented to Francesca Romana in her vision of Hell were foolish virgins (vergine pazze), foolish widows (vedove pazze) and frivolous or idle women (femine vane). The foolish virgins in particular were deemed guilty of being “virgins according to the body, but not of the mind” and, as punishment, were whipped unendingly by demons with red-hot chains and seared with pieces of fiery iron for their offenses.67 In fifteenth-century Italy, a woman’s worth – to her family, in society, and in the eyes of the Church – was unequivocally linked to her reputation as donna onesta, a good and pious woman in both body and soul. For an unmarried daughter, this meant virginity; for a married woman, fidelity; and for a widow, continence. The overall character of the female population of any city was deemed a reflection of the community itself, particularly in Rome as seat of the Church. Visible markers of corporeal virtue and vice, often manifested in terms of women’s dress, were codified in various legal forms such as sumptuary laws and statutes enacted to identify and institutionalize prostitutes.68 With the prospect of infernal floggings by demons branded in their minds and the terrifying abuses meted out in Hell emblazoned before their eyes, the Oblates of Francesca Romana were compelled to view the Tor de’Specchi as a fortress for the protection of their earthly honor as well as for the salvation of their immortal souls. The architectural nucleus of the monastery of Tor de’Specchi was a house rented by Francesca Ponziani and the first group of oblates from the wealthy Roman Clarelli family in 1433. The building was soon thereafter willed to the community as their permanent residence, and is located on what is now via Teatro Marcello in the Campitelli district.69 The banks of the Tiber and the bridge to Trastevere (Ponte Santa Maria), both of which are portrayed in the oratory frescoes, were within sight of and an easy walk from the oblates’ home at Tor de’Specchi. To the east, their monastery abutted the ancient Theatre of Marcellus (Teatro Marcello), begun by Julius Caesar and completed in ad 13 by the Emperor Augustus. During the late-medieval period and into the seventeenth century, the Teatro Marcello was the stronghold of the powerful Savelli clan, who eventually built a palace on the top level of the ancient structure in order to control the surrounding area from a commanding, symbolic vantage point. Several archways on the ground level of the Teatro were occupied by poor families, while others were leased by butchers who opened a market on the premises.70 Most notoriously, the archways were reputed to be frequented by prostitutes, posing a stark contrast to the women behind the doors of the nearby Tor de’Specchi who were striving to be models of Christian virtue.

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

Figure 9: View of eastern wall, oratory, Tor de’Specchi. Photograph by author.

The eastern façade of the Tor de’Specchi oratory is adjacent to the Teatro Marcello, and every fresco panel on the corresponding interior wall of the oratory represents Francesca Romana performing miraculous healing or giving extraordinary succor to cittadini in need (Figure 9). Based on events recounted at the first canonization proceedings and also recorded in Mattiotti’s Latin Vita, the eight panels successively show Francesca restoring speech to a mute girl; multiplying and distributing wine and grain; curing a hunchback; making a paralytic person walk; reviving a suffocated infant; and healing the head wounds of two different men.71 Each of these miracles took place in the Campitelli or Trastevere districts of the city, where Francesca and the majority of the noblewomen who joined her community (and, in fact, all of the initial oblates) lived. Further, in each of the images Francesca is depicted in a doorway or on the threshold between one space and another. As pious women and caregivers who walked to and from the local hospitals of Trastevere, Francesca and her followers worked in the service of their neediest neighbors “out of doors” throughout the fifteenth century. The tension that these situations created was made visual in the repeated representation of Francesca Romana as a pious matron and thaumaturge sheltered by a doorway yet, at the same time, exposed to the public. The image of Francesca perpetually on a threshold reminded the oblate viewers of their own transition from noble households governed by the constraints of class and social convention to servants of God protected by the convent and living according to the example and guidelines set out by their founder.

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As the frescoes of miraculous healing discussed earlier in this chapter lay claim to, the streets were considerably perilous for respectable women in quattrocento Rome. Feuding was prevalent, men were armed, and, above all, an honorable woman would never venture outside without a chaperone or suitable companion.72 The 73 house rules of Tor de’Specchi derive from practical experience, covering in some detail highly significant matters such as the proper mode of conduct for the oblates when outside of the convent. The statutes were not only taken from life, but were also meant for daily use.73 Accordingly, the community’s Ordinationi explicitly stipulated that when the oblates were outside of the Tor de’Specchi there should always be at least two or three of them together. Several of the statutes also addressed proper public behavior for the oblates, warning them that when they were outside of the house they should be “prudent and circumspect according to the time and place so as not to bring scandal [upon the house].”74 Allowing a priest, or any male, inside the house presented a different kind of danger: All of the doors of the house will be locked by night and by day, and no man over the age of five is ever allowed to enter, except for the confessor when necessary, and the doctor in case of sickness, and masters of wall and wood (plasterers and carpenters) to modify the house; and when they are in the house, it will always be with doors open and, if possible, in the company of others.75

Presumably, then, only males under the age of five and priests of “good reputation and mature stature,” as stipulated in the papal decree, did not pose a significant sexual threat. The use of the phrase “with doors open” recalls the verbiage in the papal decree for saying Mass in the oratory. In the case of the statutes, however, it is a clear reference to both safety and the preservation of the honorable status of the oblate community. It noteworthy that during the canonization proceedings the women of Tor de’Specchi were addressed or described as bonae dominae (“good women”) or honeste mulieres (“honest women”).76 Though the Oblates of Francesca Romana were largely women from noble families, their unadorned black dresses with modest necklines set off by simple white veils resembled the customary dress for older women of the lower classes, and worked to present them as unobtrusive and as inoffensive as possible.77 However, humble dress and preventative statutes did not guarantee safety from the threat of physical violation or from condemnation as one of the foolish virgins or widows from Francesca’s vision of Hell. Often described as wantonly sexual, a woman’s essential and inescapable corporeality was deemed to be the defining characteristic of her sanctity during the latemedieval period. In polemical sermons and literature, women were portrayed as relating to God and Satan through the senses rather than through the mind; religiosity was built

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around the body.78 The notion of specific parts of the body, particularly the mouth, as a “doorway” or “portal” for demonic forces was also a contemporary literary trope. In the writings of several mystics, the ears, vagina, and anus were also referred to as doorways for demonic possession and exorcism, and demons were described as having been vomited or spit out of the body. Medieval etymologies derived the Latin word os (mouth) from ostium (door), and emphasized the mouth as the primary site of exchange between the inside and the outside of the body.79 The widespread fear of the Devil entering the body was expressed in a variety of metaphors, including one Frenchman’s advice to his wife to “guard the castle doors, so that the devil cannot enter […] into the body.”80 The transition from conjugal fidelity to chaste oblation was one that Francesca and all of her previously married devotees made when they crossed the threshold of the monastery. Upon entering the Tor de’Specchi, the Oblates of Francesca Romana pledged “to remain in the community forever, to reform their character and to obey in conformity with the custom of the community.”81 Though they did not take formal vows of chastity, they were effectually re-consecrating their bodies to a state of purity and a life of religious observance by statutorily locking themselves inside their monastery. The choice to join the community and to vow to adopt its statutes implicitly indicated a renunciation of sexual activity. At the same time, by performing charitable works in public institutions and on the streets of Rome, all of the oblates would have been continuously battling the ever-present threat of sexual violation. The ideology of transformation and possibility associated with the doorway, as repeatedly represented in the Tor de’Specchi frescoes, is tightly interwoven with the limited options available to pious women of the late-medieval period. By depicting Francesca Romana as miraculous healer in the doorway of the Palazzo Ponziani, or as a mystic on the threshold between communion with the Divine and the Devil’s snare, the oblates used a charged, recognizable symbol to express the tensions and dualities inherent in the life that they adopted as pinzochere in fifteenth-century Rome.

From the Papal Chapel to the Tor de’Specchi Oratory The deep, receding frame, apse-like niche, and carved scallop shell that make up the Virgin’s throne in the Tor de’Specchi altarpiece are taken directly from Fra Angelico’s perspectival view into St. Peter’s Basilica from his painting of St. Lawrence distributing alms in the Chapel of Nicholas V. (Plate 1). In both images, figures that epitomize the virtue of Christian caritas are surrounded by an architectonic structure representing the seat of Roman Catholicism and the authority of the fifteenth-century Church. Fra Angelico’s symbolic rendering of the portal of St. Peter’s was transferred from Pope Nicholas’s chapel at the Vatican and reinterpreted for the Tor de’Specchi altarpiece, effectively giving the oblates visual access to the papal basilica each time they received communion in their oratory.

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The pictorial connection to the Niccoline Chapel was further reinforced in a fresco panel on the east wall of the oratory, set diagonally opposite the altarpiece and showing Francesca Romana’s miraculous distribution of grain outside the Palazzo Ponziani (Plate 9). The caption below the panel reads, “Similarly, [to a corresponding wine miracle] the beata Francesca, having given to the poor some remaining wheat left over [during a famine] in the [Ponziani] granary, later miraculously found 40 rubbi [8 tons] of excellent grain in the same granary.”82 In this painting, as in several others throughout the series, Francesca is depicted twice. On the right side of the panel we see her emptying the last morsels of wheat from the Ponziani granary into the bowl of a hungry young man. As a growing multitude of poor supplicants gathers in the piazza outside the palazzo, Francesca stands in the doorway and faithfully distributes what is left of her noble in-laws’ stockpile of grain. A view into the Ponziani granary on the left side of the panel reveals a golden mound of fresh wheat, miraculously restored and replenished by God after Francesca’s charitable sharing of food with her neighbors. Francesca’s husband, Lorenzo, appears in the doorway of the granary dressed in a refined, ermine-trimmed tunic that stands out in stark contrast to the humble appearance of the impoverished Romans begging outside the door. Initially prepared to chastise Francesca (according to canonization testimony, the Ponziani did not condone Francesca emptying the family granary), he is instead caught by surprise and gestures in wonder at the heavenly supply of grain piled at his feet. As evidenced by the two scenes in this panel, Francesca fruitfully navigated the simultaneous pull between marital obligations and religious loyalties, a common hagiographical theme in saints’ Lives.83 In this case, she chose almsgiving over hoarding grain, clearly the correct path as substantiated by the appearance of two cross-mullioned windows, shown on the second story of the Palazzo Ponziani and directly above the depiction of Francesca’s charitable distribution of wheat. The Tor de’Specchi scene of Francesca’s miraculous multiplication and distribution of food also has precedents in the pictorial program of the papal chapel of Nicholas V. In a companion fresco to Fra Angelico’s image of St. Lawrence distributing alms, St. Stephen is shown handing golden coins to men, women, and children who have gathered outside a church to ask for his assistance (Figure 10). Compositionally, the scene is strikingly similar to the grain miracle depicted in the Tor de’Specchi oratory, with the saint standing on a threshold dispensing charity to the deserving poor of the city. Here again, imagery is transposed from the papal chapel to serve the oblate audience, in this case to show Francesca in the role of almsgiver for her own community. As indicated in the caption below the oratory panel, Francesca’s distribution of grain took place in Trastevere, on the threshold of the portone of the Palazzo Ponziani, effectively redirecting the font of miraculous charity from the institutional hierarchy of the Church to a local woman’s home and food supply. The depiction of the grain miracle also bears witness to an overall increase

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Figure 10: Fra Angelico, Saint Stephen Receiving the Diaconate and Distributing Alms, c. 1448, Chapel of Nicholas V, Vatican Museum, Rome. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

in women’s charitable involvement across the fifteenth century, and to substantial testamentary bequests by women to provide for the basic needs of hospitals and impoverished citizens of Rome.84 Pious noblewomen of the Renaissance traditionally distributed alms before the gates or doors of their palaces or estates. In Rome, Felice della Rovere Orsini, daughter of Pope Julius II, stood in the gateway of the family palace at Monte G ­ iordano to give alms to the poor during the Christmas season.85 In the fifteenth-century illuminated Hours of Catherine of Cleves, the Tuesday Hours of the Holy Ghost are illustrated with an allegorical image of Piety, represented as a lady distributing alms (Figure 11). In the manuscript rendering, the representation of Piety is a depiction of Catherine herself, shown here wearing a red velvet robe trimmed with ermine. She stands in front of the open doorway of her palace to distribute coins to a group of beggars, one of whom is crippled and all of whom are depicted in soiled, tattered clothing. A banderole above the beggars’ heads carries a quotation from the Gospel of Luke (11:41), which reads, “Give alms, and all things are clean unto you.”86 In contrast to the resplendent clothing of Catherine of Cleves, however, the munificent Francesca

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Figure 11: Piety as a lady distributing alms, detail, The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, c. 1440. The Morgan Library and Museum/Art Resource, NY.

Romana wears the modest garb of her oblate order when she distributes her family’s riches, demonstrating her humility as well as her will to give succor to those most in need. The willful production and generous distribution of food was an indication of saintly munificence and a recurring theme of hagiographic narrative. According to the Legenda aurea, Saint Benedict prayed for, and received, 200 measures of flour for his depleted monastery during a period of famine.87 Similarly, Saint Dominic summoned two angels (in the guise of young men) who miraculously appeared bearing an abundance of bread to feed the hungry friars of his church.88 In an analogous oratory fresco that would have resonated deeply with the oblates, Francesca Romana miraculously provides food for her community at Tor de’Specchi (Plate 10). Pictured within a room that is understood to be the community refectory, fifteen oblates sit on the same side of a long, L-shaped table that is covered with a pressed linen cloth and set with ceramic dinnerware and pitchers. Two standing oblates serve a modest meal; one ladles out soup while the other discovers that there is not enough bread to feed the community. Hearing this, Francesca makes a sign of blessing over a bowl containing the only crumbs to be found in the house, and prays for divine relief. Immediately,

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Figure 12: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Miraculous appearance of grapes in winter, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

the empty bowl is transformed into a breadbasket brimming with more than enough rolls to feed the oblates at her table. The basket of abundant rolls is shown in the foreground of the painting, set on a stepstool that resembles a makeshift altar.89 The arrangement of figures around the Tor de’Specchi table recalls iconographic representations of Christ and his Disciples at the Last Supper. Francesca’s miraculous multiplication of bread also alludes to the biblical miracle of the loaves and fishes, when Jesus transformed five barley loaves and two fishes to feed 5000 hungry people – with twelve baskets of broken loaves left over.90 Images of the Last Supper were painted in monastic refectories across Italy during this period (though not at Tor de’Specchi, as we shall see), and the biblical narratives of both the Last Supper and the miracle of the loaves and fishes were read aloud during meals. Like Saints Dominic and Benedict who founded monastic orders, and in the tradition of Christ, Francesca not only shares a meal with her disciples; she also actually and yet miraculously provides it, giving both spiritual and corporeal sustenance to her consorelle. A less canonical image of miraculous sustenance in the Tor de’Specchi oratory sheds a more contemporary light on the daily lives and concerns of the oblates. In a scene depicted on the western wall of the chapel, Francesca causes nine bunches of luscious, ripe grapes to grow in the middle of winter (Figure 12).

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According to canonization witnesses recounting this miracle, Francesca and eight oblates went to a vineyard to collect wood to burn in their stove on a bitter day in January, 1438. When they were tired and thirsty from the task of gathering sticks, God miraculously produced nine bunches of ripe grapes on a dormant vine in answer to Francesca’s prayers for relief.91 In the painted representation of the miracle, Francesca kneels on a dirt path and prays in front of a now-bountiful grapevine. Four oblates have dropped their bundles of corded sticks to shake the luscious grapes off of the vine as three others watch and gesture excitedly. The eighth oblate walks toward the others, balancing a bundle of sticks on her head. Set apart from the rest of the scene, she is emblematic of the difficult labor and fervent belief that led to God’s miraculous production of the grapes for the weary oblates. Surely the appearance of the unseasonable grapes on the stark vine was meant to evoke Christ’s blood and sacrifice on the cross, and the ritual of Holy Communion demonstrated at the Last Supper. In addition to the religious significance of the scene, however, notarial records of the fifteenth century also tell us a more secular story about the oblates and the vineyard. Several testamentary bequests describe property – including shops, houses, and vineyards – inherited by women who became Oblates of Francesca Romana.92 The vineyard depicted in the oratory and mentioned anecdotally in canonization testimony thus represented a place of labor and a true source of revenue and sustenance (fruit, wine, wood) for the oblates at Tor de’Specchi. In fact, the original noblewomen who made up the oblate community were largely from a new class of cattle owners and agricultural entrepreneurs in Rome, and were thus familiar with farming and land cultivation.93 Since the Oblates of Francesca Romana made no vow of poverty when they entered the Tor de’Specchi – they only promised to remain chaste and humble – oblates and female members of their families bequeathed real estate and other assets, including dowries and jewelry, for the community’s benefit and use.94 As a result, the oblates at Tor de’Specchi quickly amassed a substantial endowment, giving them economic security early on and allowing them to systematically expand their monastic complex on the Capitoline and to accumulate various holdings across the city.95 On the surface, the humble appearance of Francesca and her oblates, and their identification with Rome’s poor in the oratory frescoes, belied the community’s real accumulation of material goods and property. Certainly, the oblates needed income to provide for basic necessities, and they donated much of their time and resources (both spiritual and actual) to their charitable work outside the Tor de’Specchi. By all accounts (and in accordance with their statutes), they ate, dressed, and behaved modestly and with proper, pious restraint. Yet, they richly embellished the spaces they lived in with monumental fresco cycles, prompting them to hire the most sought-after painters in Rome; they contracted with carpenters and masons to enlarge their convent fabric, subsequently abandoning the original architectural nucleus at Tor de’Specchi for more expansive accommodations and a lavishly

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appointed church on the premises – ultimately accounted for in the service and glorification of God.96

The Death and Funeral of Santa Francesca Romana On the evening of Wednesday March, 9, 1440, after she had recited Vespers of the Little Office of Our Lady, God came to take the soul of Francesca Ponziani. Her death was predicted in a vision that she recounted for Giovanni Mattiotti three days before she died.97 Once the Ponziani had mourned her death privately in their palazzo, Francesca’s body was carried in a solemn procession from Trastevere to the church of Santa Maria Nova in the Forum, and was laid out for three days of public viewing and veneration. Her funeral was presided over by the Olivetan abbot, Fra Ippolito of Rome, and her pious deeds were lauded before throngs of worshippers by such prominent contemporaries as San Bernardino of Siena and San Giovanni of Capistrano. On March 12, Francesca Romana was interred in a sepulcher next to the high altar of Santa Maria Nova, an honor accorded to only the most important figures of the Church.98 Francesca’s sanctified passage from her earthly life to the heavenly realm was pictorially documented for her oblates in two of the most populated and colorful frescoes in the Tor de’Specchi oratory (Plates 11, 12). The pivotal and transitional moments depicted in these panels marked the end of Francesca’s physical presence among her sorelle and signified the beginning of the community working autonomously according to her model, as well as what ultimately would be a lengthy process devoted to the cause for her canonization. In the panel depicting Francesca’s death, the beata is shown sitting rigidly upright in bed, with a red blanket tucked around her legs and her back supported by a tall oak headboard (Plate 11).99 She is not dressed in bedclothes, but is fully clothed in the garb of her order; her face is ashen and her eyes are closed as she murmurs her final prayers. By the foot of her bed, a group of oblates kneel as devoted witnesses to the transformative event of their founder’s passage from this life to the next. Their rosy faces and hands seem to glow opposite Francesca’s deathly pallor as they, too, pray for the salvation of her immortal soul. Earth and Heaven are distinctly compartmentalized in this image, divided by a swath of intertwined white clouds that form a ropelike arc sweeping through the panel. The figures in this fresco were made to occupy discrete pockets of space; only Francesca – and the oblate viewers in the oratory – have access to the celestial vision depicted. Francesca’s room is shown as spare and unadorned, demarcated only by the floor, two plain walls, and a coffered wooden ceiling on the left side of the panel. In sharp contrast, Heaven occupies the upper right half of the painting, and is so crowded as to break the barrier of the fictive ceiling and push into the bedroom space. Bridging the two spheres, Francesca’s soul rises up toward Heaven on a pathway of

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flowers that makes visible the sweet odor of sanctity emanating from her body. A row of tiny flaming lamps illuminates her journey to the divine realm. Here, the Tor de’Specchi painter faced the challenge of depicting the departing soul, whose form, gender, and (in)corporeality had long been a matter of theological debate.100 In traditional iconographic representations of the Assumption of the Virgin and the Resurrected Christ, both figures appear in their earthly bodies but surrounded by either a mandorla or heavenly rays to denote that they have assumed their ultimate spiritual forms. In Fra Angelico’s near-contemporary panel paintings depicting the death of Saint Francis (1429) and the death of Saint Nicholas (1437), the corpses of the saints are shown laid out on their biers for veneration while angels spirit their souls to Heaven in the sky above. In both cases, the soul of the saint is rendered as he appeared at the end of his life – fully clothed (Francis in his brown habit and Nicholas in his bishop’s attire) and kneeling on a cloud surrounded by beams of light.101 In the Tor de’Specchi fresco, we see instead the fleeting liminal moment between this life and the next, when the soul is on the threshold of Paradise and thus has not assumed its final spiritual form. To make this distinction, Francesca’s soul is shown as a small, childlike figure that is semi-nude and appears genderless. Wearing only a white cloth around the waist that resembles Christ’s winding sheet at the Crucifixion, the soul kneels on a cloud at the threshold of Heaven and emanates golden rays of light, indicating that it is indeed saved. At the decisive moment of the scene, Francesca’s soul gazes heavenward and stretches its arms across the cloudbank that separates Heaven and Earth. The resplen­ dent Christ, encircled by a mandorla of brilliant red cherubim, takes hold of the soul and lifts it into His celestial kingdom (Figure 13). Jesus clasps Francesca’s wrists and cradles her hands – the hands that healed so many – as a sign of recognition and assurance. Her arrival in Paradise is heralded by a band of twelve colorfully garbed angels playing a myriad of lustrous instruments. At their feet, Saints John the Baptist, Peter and Paul, Mary Magdalene, and Benedict (all shown in their earthly guises) welcome the pious woman who is about to join their exclusive ranks. This is the image of the good and peaceful death that could be earned through a life of charity, piety, and chastity, and is the antithesis of the rendering of tormented souls in Francesca’s vision of Hell across the oratory. From the point of view of both the kneeling oblates in the fresco and those viewing the scene in the oratory, vigilant observance of Francesca’s fervent model in this panel clearly directed them toward the path to eternal salvation. In the Tor de’Specchi cycle, scenes from Francesca’s funeral and subsequent public veneration are conflated in a long horizontal panel on the western wall of the chapel.102 As noted above, the earthly body of Santa Francesca Romana was laid out for three days of public viewing following the official obsequies in Santa Maria Nova (Plate 12). Here in the oratory, the beata is depicted in peaceful repose on her bier, surrounded by a crowd of mourners made up of both lay and religious devotees. Fra

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Figure 13: Christ takes hold of Francesca Romana’s risen soul, detail of Plate 11. Photograph by author.

Ippolito, who is again rendered in enormous scale as in the scene of the community’s oblation, offers a blessing as representative of the Benedictine order. A group of Olivetan monks stand around him, their white robes set off by the deep blue cloth draped over the catafalque. Several oblates of Tor de’Specchi kneel at the head of the platform and pray over Francesca’s corpse. All around them, Roman men, women, and children of every social class gather to beseech Francesca’s intercession as they move in succession to lay their hands on her miracle-working body. At the foot of the bier, the spontaneous exorcism of a young man dressed in a red tunic and cap – he twitches involuntarily and spits tiny black demons from his mouth – c­ onfirms ­Francesca’s posthumous intercessory powers. At the edges of the panel, a blind man stepping cautiously with his cane, a stooped hunchback leaning on a walking stick, and a lame youth supporting himself with crutches are near exact visual quotations of the humble supplicants appealing to St. Lawrence in Fra Angelico’s scene of miraculous almsgiving from the Cappella Niccolina (Plate 1). A singular standing oblate depicted in the image of Francesca’s funeral quietly commands our attention. She is bathed in light and appears as a figure of serenity and grace next to the youth expelling demons. She modestly gathers her long white veil above her heart, and gently holds the wrist of a small boy at her side. She is the

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Figure 14a: Figure of Francesca Romana in the Chapel of Nicholas V, detail of Plate 1.

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Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500

Figure 14b: Figure of standing oblate at the funeral of Francesca Romana, detail of Plate 12.

mirror image of Fra Angelico’s depiction of Santa Francesca Romana in the papal Chapel of Nicholas V, the reincarnation of the beata’s pious soul embodied in the guise of any and every one of her followers (Figure 14a, 14b).

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Here, Francesca was effectively rendered as both dead and resurrected in the oratory fresco of her funeral. The image of the beata reborn as one of her oblates represented the proliferation of her charitable mission through the ongoing work of the community that she founded, and effectively transferred her agency as a healer and almsgiver to her followers. When the oratory of Tor de’Specchi was decorated in 1468, artist and patron looked to Fra Angelico’s fresco cycle for the Chapel of Nicholas V as a model for representing the ideals of Christian charity and saintly munificence in a Roman context. By including Francesca Romana in the program for his private chapel, Nicholas V likely surmised that the proceedings for her canonization would be successful. Fra Angelico’s frescoes indelibly linked his papacy to the most celebrated holy woman of quattrocento Rome and, in effect, memorialized her as his ally in dispensing alms to the city’s poor. As discerning patrons, the oblates capitalized on the prestigious position that their founder occupied within the papal chapel by incorporating specific iconography from Fra Angelico’s frescoes into the scenes of Francesca’s charitable work in their own oratory. In doing so, they cemented a visual and ideological connection between their monastery at Tor de’Specchi and the papal residence at the Vatican, and solidified their presence as a collective charitable body in Rome.

2. Painted Visions and Devotional Practices at Tor de’Specchi Fervent devotional practices that included ritual penance, daily prayer, and focused meditation underpinned the public charitable mission of the quattrocento Oblates of Santa Francesca Romana. Images documenting and replicating the miraculous works and ecstatic experiences of Francesca Ponziani played a crucial role in defining and directing these practices. In the last chapter, I examined frescoes from the Tor de’Specchi oratory portraying Francesca Romana’s charitable work throughout the city of Rome as models for the ongoing labors of her oblate community. Here, I focus on painted renderings of Francesca’s mystical visions that challenged artists to recreate the liminal (between states of consciousness), metaphysical world of ecstatic events. Three gilded panel paintings depicting scenes from Francesca’s celestial visions are at the heart of this chapter. Here, I argue that these panels were commissioned by the oblates at Tor de’Specchi shortly after their founder’s death, and represent the community’s initial contribution to the lasting legacy and image of Santa Francesca Romana (Plates13–15). As we shall see, the gilded paintings originally formed a series that was likely part of a multi-paneled altarpiece (much of which is now lost), and were the clear inspiration for frescoed representations of Francesca’s visions in the community oratory cycle introduced in the previous chapter. Together, the panels formed the pictorial foundation for a type of meditative viewing practice that was carried forward – and refined over time – in the decorative program at the monastery at Tor de’Specchi. As a fledgling religious order, the oblates were obliged to shape and perpetuate their founder’s identity. Under their patronage, the richly sensual and material details of Francesca’s visions sketched by Mattiotti in his written Trattati were translated into vivid and accessible painted form on the panels, and later in the frescoes, and served to excite both the corporeal and inward senses of the oblates. These “visual visions” were made to epitomize and embody Francesca’s Roman-ness as emblematic of a unique spiritual and communal model for her female followers as they established themselves as a viable and visible entity in the papal city. The three panels – two of which are currently owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and one by the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore – are called Santa Francesca Romana Holding the Christ Child (Plate 13), Francesca Romana Embraced by the Virgin (Plate 14), and The Communion and Consecration of Francesca Romana (Plate 15).1 All three paintings are rectangular, with vertically oriented compositions and measure approximately 22 × 15 inches (56 ×38 cm). For continuity, I am using the titles given to the panels by the museums that house them, with the exception of Plate 14, which I have changed to “Francesca Embraced by the Virgin” (rather than

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“Francesca Clothed by the Virgin”), for reasons that will be discussed later in this chapter. Stylistic and forensic analysis and thematic similarities between the panels confirms that they were painted as a group, and dates them to approximately 1445.2 The series was rendered in bright, jewel-toned tempera set against sumptuous gilding on wood panel, made more elaborate still by intricate tooling and delicate punch work that pick out the main figures of the compositions. The commissioning and design of the panels played a critical role in shaping the devotional and meditative practice of the quattrocento Oblates of Francesca Romana during their foundational years as a community living in the Tor de’Specchi. Specific details in the depictions of Francesca’s heavenly visions can be connected to the ways in which the oblates navigated the thorny politics of promoting the canonization of their founder. They also give us insight into their spiritual needs as a monastic community, and allow us to better situate their role and status as sophisticated patrons of art and architecture. Close analysis of the pictures discussed in this chapter demonstrates how the spiritual practices of the Tor de’Specchi oblates depended on memorization, through repetition, of the pious deeds and mystical life of their founder, Francesca Ponziani. The images commissioned by the community at its inception were intended to stimulate and preserve those memories, and the panels could only have been commissioned by the oblates for close, devotional viewing, and for building and asserting communal identity around the figure of Santa Francesca Romana. Finally, visual cues in the images allow us to analyze them in the context of medieval theories of optics, memory, and the imagination (imaginative faculties) in order to understand their theological and mnemonic significance for the oblates, at a pivotal moment for their community and for the city of Rome.

Material Beginnings Prior to the Metropolitan Museum’s purchase of the Lehman panels in 1975, George Kaftal identified the subject matter of all three paintings as derived from the texts of Francesca Ponziani’s ecstatic visions as they were recorded by her confessor, Giovanni Mattiotti, in his Trattati. Kaftal demonstrated their unmistakable relationship to, and direct influence on, the frescoes of the Tor de’Specchi oratory painted by Antoniazzo Romano and his workshop approximately 20 years later (1468).3 Considering the size of the panels and their thematic connection, it is probable that they were originally part of an altarpiece or retable.4 The vertical orientation of their compositions suggests that they may have been arranged one above the other, flanking a larger central image of Santa Francesca (as yet unidentified) as in, for example, Pietro Lorenzetti’s Altarpiece of the Beata Umiltà made for the convent of San Giovanni Evangelista in Faenza (Figure 15).

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Figure 15: Pietro Lorenzetti, Stories of the Beata Umiltà (Saint Humility Altarpiece), c. 1315, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

The provenance of all three vision panels has been traced back to the Basilica of Santa Maria Nova in the Roman Forum, the site of Francesca’s formal oblation before the Olivetan community of monks in 1425.5 As discussed in the previous chapter, Francesca Ponziani was buried next to the main altar of Santa Maria Nova shortly after her death in March, 1440, an honor accorded to very few women in early modern Italy. Prior scholars put forth the idea that the gilded vision panels were originally displayed on or near the high altar of Santa Maria Nova, and thus in close proximity to Francesca’s tomb.6 However, tradition holds that a widely venerated early icon of the Virgin – ambitiously attributed to St. Luke and possibly moved from the church of Santa Maria Antiqua, the oldest Christian building in the Forum – had long been displayed on the high altar of the church.7 Francesca, like many pious women during this period, had a particular devotion to the Marian icon at Santa Maria Nova and, according to at least one source, she and her initial followers made their monastic oblations while kneeling before it.8 Yet, even though Francesca Ponziani had inspired a fervent local following and cult among her contemporaries, and was nominated for sainthood immediately following her death, it is highly unlikely that her image would have displaced a long-venerated icon of the Virgin, to whom the basilica was dedicated and which played an integral part in Rome’s annual celebration of the Feast of the Assumption. In an earlier study,

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I suggested that the vision panels were more likely part of an altarpiece that adorned a funerary chapel in Santa Maria Nova, granted to the oblate community in 1442. Documents recently published by Beatrice Cirulli support this hypothesis.9 A notarial deed dated April 14, 1442 and a concession made by Fra ­Battista da Poggibonsi, the Benedictine abbot general of Monte Oliveto who oversaw Santa Maria Nova in Rome, granted the oblates of Tor de’Specchi the right to maintain a funerary chapel within the basilica. Donna Agnese di Paolo Lello, the Madre Presidente of Tor de’Specchi in that year, donated two houses to endow the chapel construction, under stipulation that no one but the oblates were to be buried there without the community’s express consent.10 Patronage of a private burial chapel in Santa Maria Nova and in proximity to the tomb of their founder was a pious undertaking that publicly affirmed both the status and wealth attached to the fledgling community.11 Reciprocally, the presence of the oblates in the church, as donors of the chapel and as successors to the blessed Francesca who had been eulogized and entombed there, lent honor and prestige to the basilica. Along with insuring proper burial within the church for individual members of the community, memorial masses for the souls of the dead would regularly be said within the chapel. According to St. Antoninus, the Archbishop of Florence during this period, there were three reasons for being buried in a sacred place: the intercession of the saints in whose honor the church (or chapel) was built; the fact that the faithful, when coming to church, would see the tomb and offer prayers for the deceased; and, finally, the dead would be assured of rest undisturbed by demons, who would not intrude on sacred ground.12 As chapel owners, the oblates would have provided the necessary furnishings for the Mass, including an altar table, crucifix, and objects for the liturgy: missals, candlesticks, chalices, patens, bells, ewers, censers, and even priestly vestments.13 Additional embellishments to a chapel – such as frescoes, stained glass, or an altarpiece – not only attracted the attention of the faithful who regularly visited the church, but also served as striking and aesthetically pleasing reminders to the surviving patrons of their own moral obligation to pray for the souls of the dead. It follows, then, that the first oblates would have decorated their chapel with a resplendent object such as a rich altarpiece containing identifying imagery like the three vision panels, as both a public assertion of communal association with the blessed Francesca and as a tool for their own spiritual edification. Funerary chapels are by nature commemorative, and indeed the oblates would have utilized their private burial space within Santa Maria Nova for traditional purposes. Both for casual church visitors and for the oblates, the vision panels memorialized the sanctity of Francesca Ponziani as founder of their order and as intercessor for the dead, and declared the oblates as her legitimate successors – subjects that befitted their placement within the burial chapel. However, only the oblates were likely to have paid attention to the particular details in all three panels that correspond directly to specific moments from Francesca’s ecstatic visions as recorded by

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Mattiotti or, in some cases, as she personally recounted them for her sorelle prior to her death. In fact, witnesses at the canonization hearings opened immediately following her death, including Mattiotti and various oblates, described Francesca’s visions as they were recorded in the Trattati in great detail.14 A discerning patron with intimate knowledge of the substance of Francesca’s visions, and with an interest in repeated contemplation of a detailed visual account of them, must have advised the painter of the panels on precise specifications for the most essential visual elements. The community of oblates was such a patron. The three panels of Francesca Romana’s visions date from what Hans Belting called “the era of the private image.” This period coincided with the increasing popularity of small panel paintings and portable statuary as aids to personal devotion and as supplements to images made for public veneration.15 Quattrocento viewers understood that the purpose of religious images was, first, to be instructive in the same way as information conveyed by books would be; second, to bring examples of the saints into active memory through daily presentation before the eyes of the viewer; and, third, to excite feelings of devotion, which were aroused more effectively by things seen than by things heard.16 Individuals expected an image to “speak” to them in person, just as the saints had been spoken to in communion with the divine. A painting of this type was intended produce a private dialogue, as if between living persons, within the imagination of the viewer, thus bringing him or her closer to the somatic and mystical experiences of the saints.17 Pictures of a saint’s visions were particularly effective in exciting this inner dialogue, working to make the experience of the venerated person come alive for the beholder and, as a consequence, providing a potential substitute for the vision.18 In effect, the oblate viewer would strive toward a virtual re-enactment of Francesca’s mystical experience each time she me­­ ditated on one of the images. This phenomenon must have been particularly powerful for the initial Oblates of Francesca Romana, as Francesca (the protagonist in the visions) had, until recently, been a tangible presence in their own lives. As a result, the oblates’ daily meditation on the painted panels not only would have recalled to them the experience and relevant details of their founder’s visions, but would also have kept Francesca manifestly present by stimulating personal memories of their lived interactions with her.

Vision, Memory, and Late-Medieval Viewing Practices The prevailing physiological basis for the workings of memory during the latemedieval period held that memory was considered to be the final process in sensory perception. As Mary Carruthers described it, “[memory] begins with the stimulation of the five senses and becomes the material of knowledge through the activities of a series of internal functions, known to the Middle Ages as the inward sense(s).”19

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The inward (internal) senses, or “faculties,” were believed to be located in the brain and corresponded to the five external senses.20 Medieval philosophers and commentators debated the location, number, and various properties of the faculties. Vision (sight) was deemed the center of cognition and the most important of the five senses, and became the subject of intense philosophical and theological debate with regard to theories of optics and the transmission and reception of light and color.21 Contemporary scholars were divided among theories of intromission, by which visible “species” were transmitted from an object to the eye, and extramission, which purported that visual perception was accomplished by rays of light emanating from the eyes, or, looking back to Plato, a combination of both.22 Seeing or vision was therefore not passive, but understood to be an active process involving the body and the whole person.23 In late-medieval psychology, imagination – or the imaginative faculty – was considered to be an essential instrument of memory.24 Based on the Platonic tradition, the storing of images in memory was believed to be integral to devotional processes in which the faithful drew upon interior reflection or insight in the pursuit of divine knowledge or vision.25 Despite regular flare-ups of iconoclastic movements, the prevailing power of religious imagery lay in its capacity to provoke vivid imaginative or even visionary responses.26 The imaginative faculty could therefore be deemed an essential instrument in the process of perception, remembrance, and mediation between material images and mystical visions, and could provide the foundation for a contemplative event that went beyond the corporeal senses. On the other hand, an untrained imagination could lead to dangerous distraction, resulting in immoral conduct.27 For the Oblates of Francesca Romana, the function of commissioned images would have been to train their imaginative faculties, through repetitive viewing, to ultimately move beyond the material representation on the painted panels and into the viseo Dei as already achieved by Francesca. The Met’s panel depicting Santa Francesca holding the Christ Child was conceived to be precisely this type of image (Plate 13). Set against a rich gold background that negates any sense of naturalistic space or perspective and bathes the figures in resplendent light, it is a crowded, composite rendering of recurrent motifs from Francesca’s divine visions as recorded in Mattiotti’s Vita. In the lower portion of the panel, a symbolic representation of earth and the heavens confirms that the figures occupy the celestial realm that lies beyond the physical world, in the place where the sacred order of the divine is revealed. Directly above the cosmos, and among the ranks of God’s elect, Francesca Romana kneels at the feet of the Virgin Mary and cradles the Christ Child in her arms. She is dressed in the monastic garb of her order – a long white veil over a black woolen dress – and her head is surrounded by the rays of a beata which, in this panel, end in stars. She exchanges a tender look with the chubby, naked, infant Jesus as he reaches up to stroke her face. In the upper-left corner of the panel, bright red seraphim form a

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Figure 16: Francesca Romana and the infant Jesus, detail of Plate 13.

makeshift throne to support the Madonna; she is cloaked in a vibrant blue-grey mantle fitted over a pale yellow dress as she watches protectively over Francesca and her son. Shown here in her role as Queen of Heaven (Maria Regina), Mary wears an enormous, bejeweled crown in the shape of a large wedge-like fan that nearly eclipses her intricately tooled halo. Pairs of colorful angels fly beneath her feet and by her side. Francesca’s guardian angel, depicted as a child dressed in a red dalmatic with extended, multicolored wings, hovers beneath the Virgin and offers the beata a bouquet of flowers. Behind Francesca, Saints Paul, Mary Magdalene, and Benedict – rendered in half-length and in exaggerated scale – are meant to be viewed as both Francesca’s heavenly protectors and as eyewitnesses to her vision of this divine and miraculous meeting.28 The miracle of Francesca receiving the Christ Child in her arms occurred many times throughout the course of her mystical life, and is recorded in several of the vision narratives in Mattiotti’s Vita.29 In the painted panel, the moment of affectionate tactile interaction between Francesca and the infant Jesus appears at the center of the image, clearly articulating the beata’s unmediated access to him (Figure 16).

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All other figures in the panel (with the exception of two conversing angels) turn toward and gaze at the central characters of Francesca and the baby, making them the clear focal point of the composition. The Virgin, angels, and saints are not only divine eyewitnesses of the miracle, but are also portrayed as figures in an attitude of fixed, devotional seeing which was meant to be emulated by the viewers of the panel. As noted in the previous chapter, Christian theologians debated the appearance and form that spiritual beings (especially the blessed deceased) took on after the death of the earthly body, particularly in terms of their (in)corporeality and gender.30 Ideas about whether spirits could appear to and for the living, and about what different types of spirit (divine, demonic, or something in between) were able to perceive in both the physical and otherworldly realms, varied widely according to official and local traditions. When the panels of Francesca’s visions were painted, the artist portrayed a heavenly realm in which saints were embodied in their previously human forms and where they had the ability to see and interact with one another. Individual saints are distinguished by their well-known iconographic attributes (Mary Magdalene’s ointment jar, St. Paul’s sword, Benedict’s Rule) and angels by their illuminated, jewel-toned wings. As the focal point of the composition, the paired figures of Francesca and the infant Christ became a portal into the celestial world of Francesca’s vision for the meditative viewer, in a manner that the theologian known as Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius) described centuries earlier: those beings and those orders which are superior to us are incorporeal. Their hierarchy belongs to the domain of the conceptual and is something out of this world. We see our human hierarchy as nature allows, pluralized in a great variety of perceptible symbols lifting us upward hierarchically until we are brought as far as we can be into the unity of divinization. The heavenly beings, because of their intelligence, have their own permitted conceptions of God. For us, on the other hand, it is by way of perceptible images that we are uplifted as far as we can be to the contemplation of the divine.31

In the vision panels, then, it is through the perceptible corporeality of Francesca and the baby Jesus that the viewing oblates were led on their own contemplative path toward the divine. During the fifteenth century, saints’ bodies, and particularly that of the Virgin Mary, were viewed as channels of communication with the spiritual world.32 This idea was powerfully and widely conveyed through the status and cult of relics, and medieval mystics sought to authenticate their visions by associating them with the bodies of Christ and the saints.33 For the women of Tor de’Specchi, the painted pair of Francesca (whose recent death made her presence still manifest) and the infant Christ (the Word made flesh) provided the tangible visual tools necessary for them to strive for a mystical state that mirrored the experience of their founder. If only through their gender and common monastic dress, the oblates saw in Francesca

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the mirror-image of their own corporeality; as their spiritual leader, she represented a local, identifiable channel into the hierarchical, mystical pathway toward metaphysical union with the Divine. Religious visions seem to have played a much greater part in the lives of Christian women than of men.34 According to this hypothesis, women were portrayed as having more elaborate internal visions, in which they participated more directly; and textual evidence supports the notion that women were much more likely than men to be moved, inspired, or tempted by looking at external images.35 During the period of the religious crisis of the Great Western Schism (1378–1417), more sophisticated means for personal spiritual elevation and ecstasy came into being, often in the form of literature and images directed toward, and sometimes crafted by, religious women.36 Precepts for monastic reading during this period, which will also prove relevant for the subsequent fresco cycles commissioned by the oblates at Tor de’Specchi, were concerned as much with meditation (meditatio) as study (lectio). Meditatio was understood to be contemplative and penetrating – indeed the consummation of lectio.37 By building layers of knowledge through repeated meditatio, the monastic reader or viewer would reach ever deeper levels of spiritual understanding. Meditation and memorization were deemed to be active processes that were deliberate and cumulative, performed in the service of knowledgeable interpretation.38 Reading out loud during meals was a regular monastic practice, one that was traditionally followed by Francesca’s oblates, so that the listener was provided with both corporeal and spiritual sustenance at the dining table. In the monastic tradition, memory and meditation were related through metaphors of eating and digestion; one would consume a text or image as one would consume food. The reader, listener, or viewer would purposefully ruminate on and digest information in the process of meditating on what he or she had read, heard, or seen in pursuit of edifying knowledge. Specific cues in the textual narratives of Francesca’s visions as recorded in Mattiotti’s Vita directed the reader, or listener, toward their own interior reflections. Cynthia Troup analyzed the grammatical structure of Mattiotti’s treatises, both his recounting of Francesca’s celestial visions and his recordings of her encounters with demons, in order to elucidate their function as devotional literature intended for use by the oblates of Tor de’Specchi. By comparing Mattiotti’s Trattati with popular religious texts such as the Meditations on the Life of Christ, Troup demonstrated that his treatises were written to instruct the oblate, whether as a listener or as a reader, to imagine herself participating in the vision.39 The following passage from one of Francesca’s heavenly visions is a good example: [The Virgin] fitted in resplendent light, with her usual crown, holding in her arms the tiny Lord (baby Jesus), of nearly eight months old, so beautiful and lovable, as you can imagine, reader, so that you hold him together with the writer, [and] with all the devoted listeners.40

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In this case, as in others throughout the Trattati, the reader or listener is enjoined to imagine the scene along with others, as would befit both individual and communal experience of meditation on Francesca’s visions. Considered along these lines, the painted panels functioned in a similar fashion and were intended to supplement or even replace the text for those most familiar with it. Three scrolls, or banderoles, held by the Virgin, Mary Magdalene, and the guardian angel in the scene of Francesca holding the Christ Child are inscribed with texts that are not original to this panel. However, the inscriptions on scrolls in the other two extant vision panels are intact, and derive from Mattiotti’s transcriptions of the visions. It seems plausible to surmise, as George Kaftal did, that this panel would have contained similar passages, aiding the viewer in reflecting on the texts of the Trattati.41 Mnemonic passages from the Trattati were translated into pictorial vignettes and charged visual cues to prompt the viewer toward recollection and interior visualization of the saintly narrative. For example, in the scene of Francesca holding the Christ Child, purposeful, focused looking and contemplation of the corporeality of the infant Jesus, witnessed through the central figures of Francesca and the baby, is ultimately meant to command the viewer’s attention and direct her thoughts and recollections toward the appropriate passages of the Trattati. This idea can be clearly demonstrated by examining a lengthy vision tract dated Christmas, 1432 (die della sancta nativita dello Signore) in which Francesca witnessed and participated in the miracle of the Nativity. After describing the extraordinary scene of Christ’s birth to Mattiotti in great detail, Francesca recalled a moment when the Virgin placed the newborn Jesus in her arms and prompted her to contemplate the “glorious humanity” of the “precious body of the Lord.”42 According to the narrative, the Virgin assigned a particular significance to each anatomical feature of the infant’s body, which Francesca simultaneously lauded in ecstasy with joyful singing and praise.43 For example, the baby’s head signified, “all that He has done and would do, and all that He has undone and would undo”; his forehead symbolized the principles and light of the intellect; his ears, the inclinations and humility of petitions that souls make justly; his hands, the good works done and to be done, as all good works proceeded from Him.44 Curiously, the infant’s eyes are not singled out as points of reference. Mattiotti’s recounting of Francesca’s vision of the Nativity, as well as the panel illuminating moments from it, repeats or emulates several iconographic details and mnemonic passages found in a copiously illustrated fourteenth-century Italian manuscript of the Meditations on the Life of Christ.45 Originally attributed to Saint Bonaventure (1221–1274) and widely circulated in the fifteenth century, the treatise was authored as a guide to meditation, and was specifically addressed to a Clarissan nun.46 The text of the Meditations is full of sensory detail and specific moments from the life of Jesus that prompted readers to construct mental images and to imagine themselves participating in the scenes described.47 When supplemented with

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illustrations – as, for example, in an Italian manuscript which contains 193 pen drawings (many supplemented with color washes) – the images subsequently constructed in the mind of the audience would have presumably been guided by those displayed in the book. The Meditations on the Life of Christ devotes several pages to the Nativity and, like Mattiotti’s Trattati, prompts the female reader to picture and contemplate the body of the infant Jesus in somatic detail as follows: Kneel and adore your Lord God […]. kiss the beautiful little feet of the infant Jesus who lies in the manger and beg His mother to offer to let you hold Him a while. Pick Him up and hold Him in your arms. Gaze on His face with devotion and reverently kiss Him and delight in Him.48

A drawing accompanying this passage in the illustrated Meditations depicts the seated Virgin Mary gazing intently at the sweet face of the tightly swaddled infant Jesus. She hugs him close to her breast, and her forehead touches his as she draws him toward her face. In order to recreate the biblical narrative of the Nativity, Mary is portrayed sitting atop a wooden platform inside a cave that is bracketed by palm trees, with Joseph, the ox, and the ass in the manger looking on. The Virgin and Child are shown in a similar pose and setting in a drawing attached to the meditation on Christ’s circumcision on a subsequent page. Here again, Mary gazes tenderly at the baby Jesus as he reaches up with both hands to stroke her face, in a pose that more closely resembles that of the figures of Francesca and the infant Jesus in the Met’s panel painting. Yet while the images in both the manuscript version of the Meditations and the panels of Francesca Romana were meant to inspire quiet contemplation and fixed viewing of particular events by a female audience (in this case surrounding the Nativity), it is evident that the painted panel of Francesca holding the Christ Child was purposefully constructed to represent a mystical vision and not a historical scene. In the panel, the Virgin is highlighted in her role as Queen of Heaven. Otherworldly light is cast by the gilding, and there is no sense of naturalistic setting or perspective. Rather, the celestial cosmos is surmounted by colorful, fluttering angels and flaming seraphim, with the half-length bodies of saints bursting from the golden background and the Virgin barely contained within the picture plane. All aspects of the composition are oriented – both literally and technically – toward showcasing the rotund, naked body of the infant Jesus, as beheld by Francesca in ecstasy. Contemplated correctly, this panel was meant to lead the oblate viewers closer to the mystical state experienced by their founder, by imagining themselves in the same rapturous state. Mattiotti relates in his narrative of Francesca’s vision that, when considered as a whole entity, Christ’s body was given for our comfort and salvation and the promise of eternal life, because He is life eternal.49 In the panel of Francesca holding the

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Christ Child, the central message of Christianity – eternal salvation – is signified in the corporeality of the infant Jesus as beheld by Francesca. The intimate interaction between the two figures in the painting vividly recalls similar portrayals of the Madonna and Child (like those in the Meditations), and foreshadows the Virgin’s suffering at the Crucifixion. For the oblates of Tor de’Specchi, the added association with Francesca Ponziani’s motherhood (and perhaps with their own) and to the deaths of two of her young children during a devastating plague in Rome lent even more pathos and credence to the scene. The tender rendering of maternal affection brings to mind the tradition of noblewomen, and nuns in particular, who commissioned, owned, and at times, crafted life-size dolls, called bambini, representing the baby Jesus. A near contemporary of Francesca Ponziani named Caterina de Vigri (Saint Catherine of Bologna, 1413–1463) was the mystical abbess of a Clarissan convent, a painter, and the author of a spiritual treatise entitled Le sette armi spirituali. Along with painting several versions of the Madonna and Child, she also handcrafted a bambino for her personal use.50 While the ritual use of these dolls is still a matter of debate, their function as meditative aids for contemplating the humanity and body of Christ is compelling. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber proposed that the dolls “broke down the transparent wall that separates reality from its figuration,” which could be tied to meditation but also implied a kind of wish-fulfillment for nuns who longed to have children of their own.51 However, this does not account for the scores of women who retired to the convent after marrying and bearing children, and opens up the possibility of a wide range of uses for the holy dolls, especially when considered in the context of meditative imagery.52 The oblates of Tor de’Specchi would have been familiar with the figure of the Santo Bambino housed in the nearby church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, a life-size effigy of the Christ Child believed to be carved in olive-wood from Gethsemane by a Franciscan friar in Jerusalem (c. 1400), and reportedly painted by an angel. Following a long-standing custom in Rome, the bambino of the Aracoeli was carried from the church on the Capitoline to the bedside of the sick, and was credited (and still is) with salvific powers as if emanating from the body of Christ himself.53 In the painting of Francesca adoring the infant Christ, the saint’s own miracleworking body is all but obscured by the bulky fabric of her dress and pendulous white veil as she nestles the baby Jesus to her bosom while simultaneously offering him to the viewer’s gaze. Only her radiant face is visible; she stares fixedly and tenderly at the child who, as Mattiotti’s text reminds us, embodies the Divine Word.54 By portraying Francesca in this attitude, the painter made the image conform to Mattiotti’s text which stated that Francesca never lifted her eyes from the baby in her arms, and which explicitly prompted the reader to think (pensa lectore) about the joy and comfort that she experienced in this state.55 The rosy figure of the baby Jesus in the panel, shown with the plump belly and pudgy thighs of a robust eight-month-old

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Figure 17: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana holds the infant Christ, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

child, was therefore made to draw the viewer into the composition. His pink flesh is set in relief against Francesca’s pure white veil and black dress; his head is framed by a cruciform halo made of delicate punch work and tooling. Understood as a link between the physical world of the oblates and the metaphysical realm of the vision, ritual contemplation of his body – literally from head to toe – brought the viewer into communion with the Divine Word as revealed through the rapturous narration of Francesca Ponziani. The combination of fixed gazing and deliberate meditation was employed to bring the viewer into the imagined state of Francesca’s vision, with all of the somatic and emotional benefits attached to it. A comparison of the painted panel and a later oratory fresco depicting the same vision of Francesca cradling the infant Christ points out the visual modifications made to the meditational image to convert it from an intimate panel painting to part of a full-scale narrative fresco cycle. In the fresco panel which is painted on the south wall of the Tor de’Specchi oratory (opposite the altar wall), the Virgin, Francesca, and the Christ Child, the guardian angel and protector saints are all located in the same positions relative to the schematic version of the cosmos below (Figure 17).

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Their gestures and poses also approximate those in the painted panel. However, in the oratory fresco, the colorful angels around the figure of the Virgin have been eliminated and the scrolls are gone, leaving the viewer with a sense of clarity and order that was not evident in the earlier depiction of this vision. Set against a more naturalistic background of cool sky-blue, the oratory vision is divided into five distinct figural groupings. Each group is rendered in approximately the same scale and is set in a clearly defined space denoted by elongated bands of clouds. The figures on the periphery of the panel are oriented toward, and focused on, the central figures of Francesca and the baby Jesus, indicating the latter figures’ prominence in the composition and perpetually leading the viewer’s eye back toward them. Though this fresco is located on the upper register of the oratory wall, significant details such as the Virgin’s crown and the angel’s bouquet are again prominent and clearly articulated, making them readily visible to the viewing oblates. In contrast to the naturalistic setting and narrative structure of the images of Francesca’s earthly miracles, the frescoed visions should be interpreted as a series of mnemonic hooks meant to be meditated on as individual vignettes. Memory images from contemporary manuscripts defined the manner in which the frescoes were made to be viewed. Manuscript pages were not arranged according to any narrative sequence or chronology, but rather to prompt the viewer to meditate on the relationship between peripheral vignettes and central images. For example, a scene of the expulsion of Adam and Eve depicted in one corner of the manuscript page prompted the learned viewer to reflect on (and remember) Christ’s Crucifixion, shown in the center of the page, as redeeming original sin. In the same fashion, the much clarified and ordered composition of Francesca’s vision in the Tor de’Specchi oratory fresco lead the oblate viewers to interpret the symbolism encoded in both the figural groups as an entity and within particular details (the Virgin’s crown, for example) as they were specifically described in the Vita of Francesca Romana. Thus, a viewer could fully appreciate and experience the image as it was meant to be seen only if she were apprised of its mnemonic significance through familiarity with Mattiotti’s Trattati, and by knowing how to interpret specific visual cues associated with them.

Spiritual Agency and Authority The rendering of Francesca Romana holding the infant Jesus embodies a form of mystical agency or contemplative authority conveyed from the Madonna to the oblate community through the person of their founder, Francesca. It should be understood as commemorating a spiritual inheritance, a reward for the oblates’ ardent devotion to the Virgin and avowed dedication to a life of humility and service as modeled by Santa Francesca. The hierarchical arrangement of figures in the Metropolitan’s panel depicting the Virgin embracing Francesca Romana – and the oratory fresco based on it – decisively articulates the transfer of agency from the Madonna to the oblates (Plate 14).

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Figure 18: Piero della Francesca, Madonna della Misericordia from the Altarpiece of the Misericordia, 1460–1462, Pinacoteca Comunale, Sansepolcro. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

According to Mattiotti’s written account of the vision represented on this panel, Francesca was in holy meditation, secluded in her room at the Palazzo Ponziani, when she was led by a great light toward the Virgin Mary. Rapt in ecstasy, she saw the Madonna swathed in a golden cloak, accompanied by Saints Paul, Benedict, and Mary Magdalene and surrounded by a multitude of angels. Mattiotti then relates that Francesca laid her head against the Virgin’s breast while, at the same time, the Queen of Heaven enveloped the beata within her golden mantle. He goes on to say that beneath the golden cloak, the Virgin wore a second mantle made of pure white (candidissimo) cloth. After embracing Francesca with her golden mantle, Mary subsequently wrapped her oblate followers in the white mantle and offered them all to God as “her elect.”56 The account of this vision in Mattiotti’s Vita denotes a clear separation between Francesca’s direct proximity and access to the Virgin (laying her head on her breast and sharing the golden mantle) and the more limited reach of her oblates, who were gathered within the lower and lesser white mantle. This presented a conundrum for the panel painter, who, charged with representing this particular vision, simultaneously had to show Francesca and her community united under the protection of the Madonna yet divided between her gold and white cloaks.

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Figure 19: The Virgin embracing Francesca Romana, detail of Plate 14.

By the early fifteenth century, the image of the Madonna of Mercy (Madonna della Misericordia) who stood sheltering the faithful under her voluminous mantle was ubiquitous in pious institutions across Italy (Figure 18). In Rome, the Madonna of Mercy became the symbol of the charitable confraternity of the Gonfalone, which was renowned for giving dowries to indigent young women and was entrusted with the care and protection of venerable Marian icons across the city.57 The panel depicting Francesca’s vision recalls traditional Misericordia representations, but departs from them in significant ways. In order to understand the subject matter and significance of the panel, the viewer had to be familiar with the Trattati account of Francesca’s vision. Further, the composition of the panel sets up a hieratic continuum, from the Virgin through Francesca to her oblates, in order to illustrate the community’s unique pathway toward mystical access to the divine realm. Commanding the upper half of the panel, we see the Maria Regina wearing her opulent crown and draped in a cloak that shimmers with gilded lilies and swirling punch work arabesques (Figure 19). She is seated atop a cloud among flame-red sera�phim, and balances the swaddled Christ Child on her lap while drawing the reverent, kneeling Francesca to her right side. Her golden mantle is wrapped securely around

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Figure 20: Mary Magdalene and Saint Benedict envelop oblates, detail of Plate 14.

Francesca’s back and shoulder, and is held in place by St. Paul in his role as heavenly witness. The black lining of Mary’s glittering cape matches Francesca’s plain woolen dress, linking the two figures. It is noteworthy that Francesca’s praying hands are covered by the folds of her own bleached linen head cloth, which is made to blend with the pure white fabric of the Virgin’s lower cloak. The composition of the lower half of the panel is equally striking. Flanking the right side of the painting, Mary Magdalene and St. Benedict hold up a wide band of luxurious white damask cloth, and envelop 20 oblates within what is understood to be the extension of the Virgin’s lower cloak (Figure 20). Stacked in a vertical arrange�ment, the figural group is meant to be looked at from top to bottom. Mary Magdalene stands next to the clouds that support the Virgin and stretches the tip of the pure white mantle up to the heavenly seraphim, whose fiery wings match her vibrant red robe. Below her, the assembly of identically veiled oblates is gathered under the white mantle; only their faces are visible, and we see them gazing up in unison at Francesca and the Virgin Mary. St. Benedict stands on the ground below and secures the other end of the mantle around the oblate community. Protected within the Virgin’s cloak and anchored by St. Benedict, the group of oblates occupies both celestial and

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Figure 21: Angel, cats and dogs, detail of Plate 14.

earthly space, and appears as a bridge of sorts between the two realms. As in the panel of Francesca and the Christ Child, all figures represented in this scene – the Virgin, the baby Jesus, angels, saints, and oblates – are turned toward and looking at the figure of the kneeling beata. Here, the oblate viewer would understand that Francesca and her community enjoyed divine protection and the Virgin’s favor, but also that access to these privileges was to be gained through unceasing attention to their founder’s pious example. This point is made explicit in the lower-left portion of the panel, where a single angel spins golden thread on an oversized loom that leans heavily against the wall of a chapel-like structure. A group of dogs and cats, traditional symbols of evil, circles menacingly around the angel’s warp in an attempt to interrupt his work and break the precious threads of his weaving (Figure 21). This highly unusual, if not unique, iconography would have been understood only by the viewer with knowledge of the Trattati and, in this case, of Mattiotti’s recounting of Francesca’s vision on the Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin in August of 1439. In this vision, the beata’s guardian angel began to spin silk threads in order to weave cloth, and labored at this task ceaselessly even when assailed by “certain dogs

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and cats.”58 Ludovico Ponzileoni, a nineteenth-century biographer of Santa Francesca Romana, gave a symbolic explanation of the scene, according to which the oblate community was formed (woven) by means of Francesca’s heavenly visions. He surmised that though assailed by evil from the outset, the community’s spiritual bond was understood to be as strong and precious as silk thread, and therefore could not be broken.59 The oblates as viewers also would have known that the angel depicted in this scene was Francesca’s second guardian angel, brought to her on the feast day of Saint Benedict (July 11) in 1436. The timing of this bestowal is highly significant, as the beata received this guardian angel only after her husband’s death, on the day that she moved into the Tor de’Specchi as her permanent residence.60 It was at this point that Francesca was able to fully commit herself to her sorelle and to the work and devotional life of the community, bringing an end to the conflict between her conjugal and spiritual obligations.61 As a result, her new guardian angel was of a higher rank than the first, delivered to her by an archangel and belonging to the highest order of the heavenly choir.62 By showing the guardian angel standing firmly on the ground, where evil is dangerously at hand, the painter suggests that he is performing his work in the earthly realm where the oblates faced daily temptation. He reminds them to keep their eyes on Francesca and the Virgin, who, according to sources such as the Meditations on the Life of Christ, did not spend time in vain occupation or frivolity – the pathway to evil – but occupied herself with honest work like spinning.63 In fact, Mattiotti recounts in his Trattati that this guardian angel never took his eyes off his work of spinning, but always kept them fixed heavenward as a lesson to Francesca and her followers.64 He is depicted exactly this way in the panel, with his hands unremittingly curled around the golden threads and his eyes perpetually gazing up at the beata and the Virgin. His giant loom rests against the chapel structure in order to show that good works bolster the Church, and reciprocally that the Church supports those who perform them. Though the cats and dogs do their best to distract him, the angel appears wholly unaffected by their devilish antics. The painter of the subsequent oratory fresco recreating the same vision carried the remarkable iconography of the loom forward and made it even more precise (Plate 16).65 Here, we see the cats and dogs baring sharp teeth and glaring forebodingly at Francesca’s guardian angel; one cat even attempts to snatch a loose thread from the angel’s hands. To compensate for this, the loom, threads, and guardian angel are rendered in larger scale and therefore more imposing in the fresco, modeling a more significant, and ultimately effective, challenge to the animal assailants. The act of seeing or imaginative vision itself was suspect, and the punishment for an undisciplined imagination was believed to be demonic distraction or, in the extreme, possession.66 For a community of women whose foundation and reputation were intrinsically tied to the mystical life of its founder, it was imperative that Francesca’s visions be presented as irreproachable. Accordingly, the oblates are

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pictured staring upward, en masse, at their divine model and protector as she is blessed by the infant Christ. They appear to be oblivious to the ever-present cats clamoring for attention, one of whom is so insistent that he scratches at the Virgin’s white cloak. This panel therefore emphasizes the right kind of vision, looking or seeing, oriented toward pious work and eventual union with the divine, and is important for understanding the eventual commission of the frescoes depicting Francesca’s battles with the Devil (1485), discussed later in this book. By extending the Virgin’s mantle to incorporate the oblates and by portraying the community fortified by a myriad of angels and saints, the panel presented a model for imitating Santa Francesca and legitimized the community as intimately tied to the divine realm and under the protection of the Queen of Heaven.

Heavenly Communion During the late Middle Ages, the focus of female spirituality moved beyond traditional modes of expression that took the form of charity, asceticism, and pious works, to include Eucharistic devotion and the Mystical Union with Christ.67 Sanctity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was characterized by a new mystical model, when Christian perfection tended to be identified with direct contact with God. As Jeffrey Hamburger demonstrated, the Eucharist took on greater importance, and the reception of the Eucharist at the Mass was documented as the trigger or starting point for visionary experience.68 Seen as more than just the culmination of the sacrifice of the Mass, especially as chronicled in the lives of female saints, communion for religious women represented the meeting of the soul and its spouse, and the consummation of a union during which the rest of the world ceased to exist.69 This was certainly one model of piety that Mattiotti ascribed to Francesca in his Vita. In fact, he emphasized the fact that Francesca generally fell down in ecstasy after having received communion during Mass, and related that her union with the person of Christ in the sacramental communion was not only a source of great joy for her, but also represented her privileged access to the sensations (intuizione) of the central mysteries of the faith.70 The Walters panel of The Communion and Consecration of the Blessed Francesca Romana, illustrating a vision that took place at Christmas, 1433, emphatically articulates Francesca’s exceptional access to the body of Christ in the Eucharist, conflating the commemorations of his birth and death (Plate 15).71 While in ecstasy, Francesca not only received Holy Communion from Saint Peter in his role as the first pope and vicar of Christ, but also was purified (in effect, re-baptized) by him with water from a holy font, or spring, which was called the “river of mercy” (fiume de misericordia).72 The importance of the sacraments in this and other visions transcribed by Mattiotti in the Trattati must also be considered in the context of papal reassertion of Petrine

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succession and renewed emphasis on the sacraments as manifestations of divine grace during the early to mid-quattrocento, and especially under Pope Nicholas V.73 The panel depicting Francesca’s Holy Communion is arranged in a pyramidal, hierarchical configuration against a gold leaf ground, with the Maria Regina seated at the pinnacle. Mary holds the blessing Christ Child in her lap and looks straight out of the panel to engage with the viewer. As in the other two vision paintings, she is supported by a throne comprised of a multitude of fiery red seraphim. On either side of her, colorful angels recline on wispy clouds, posed in attitudes of wonder and humility. At the center of the panel, the hem of the Virgin’s resplendent blue mantle rests on an altar that is outfitted for a heavenly Mass. The table is furnished with a cross, candlesticks, a chalice, ampullae, and a cushion – trappings that the oblates as patrons would have provided for masses said in their own burial chapel. The golden chalice, which contained the blood of the crucified Christ, is depicted on a cloth in the center of the altar, and mid-way between the physical incarnation of the infant Jesus and a communion wafer in St. Peter’s hand. Before this celestial altar, two discrete moments from the celebration of the sacrament of the Eucharist are acted out concurrently, with Francesca Romana and St. Peter each depicted twice. Peter, as the Bishop of Rome, is dressed in pontifical vestments (se vesti pontificale) including the tri-layered papal tiara, a critical detail that is included in the painted image but not mentioned in Mattiotti’s Trattati. In the scene on the viewer’s left, Francesca kneels on an intricately patterned carpet as St. Peter, who is shown standing above her on a marble step before the altar, bends to place a glittering communion wafer on her tongue. Here, Peter is depicted in a crimson cope with a golden halo framing his tonsured head; his tiara has been placed on the altar as he performs the ritual of the Eucharist. Behind the blessed Francesca, St. Paul holds a candle to illuminate the moment of Holy Communion, and gazes down at the wafer that appears to emanate its own light. On the right side of the panel, Francesca again kneels before St. Peter and bows her head reverently. St. Peter, shown here in full papal regalia, lays his right hand on Francesca’s veil as he reads a blessing over her. Saints Benedict and Mary Magdalene stand off to the side as witnesses to the consecration; Benedict swings a censer and gestures toward the beata to emphasize the scene. Beside him, Mary looks down on an assisting angel who props open a book containing scripture to be read by St. Peter. Francesca’s guardian angel is shown in the foreground of the panel, raising his hand to alert the viewer to the wondrous vision behind him. Frequent communion (more than a few times a year) by the laity was a matter of intense debate within the late-medieval Church. Growing suspicion surrounding the extreme asceticism of some holy women and their refusal to eat anything other than the Eucharist led to accusations of fraud and abuse of the sacraments.74 As André Vauchez demonstrated, manifestations of “Eucharistic starvation” (esuries) represented the mirror image of women’s intense desire to receive the body of Christ

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Figure 22: Giovanni di Paolo, The Miraculous Communion of Catherine of Siena, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

in the form of bread and wine as often as possible and, as a result, ran up against the censure of the Church.75 Francesca Ponziani, as a married woman and still a member of the laity, was clearly associated with a fervent Eucharistic observance. However, her frequent communion was framed in terms of her attachment to the Roman Church, a devotion that was closely monitored and sanctioned by her spiritual father, Mattiotti.76 This was an important distinction at the time that was plainly articulated in both the Trattati and commissioned imagery. The picture of Francesca taking communion from St. Peter effectively asserted her spiritual and corporeal identification with the highest echelons of Heaven, yet – equally important in this context – affirmed her prominent social, political, and religious association with the temporal papacy and, by association, with Rome itself. Her proximity to Peter, the first Pope, reconfirmed her ties with early Christian Rome, an association that would have been keenly felt in the church of Santa Maria Nova in the nearby Forum. Comparison with a panel from Giovanni di Paolo’s Pizzicaiuolo altarpiece depicting The Miraculous Communion of Saint Catherine of Siena clearly highlights this proximity and distinction (Figure 22).77

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Figure 23: Communion wafer stamped with the Holy Name of Jesus, detail of Plate 15.

Here, Saint Catherine receives communion from Christ within a space that is deliberately demarcated as separate from the temporal church where a priest celebrates Mass. Catherine’s miracle actually occurs behind a priest’s back, and thus separate from the ritual of the Eucharist at the altar. In contrast, Francesca’s miraculous communion takes place in full view of, and therefore emphatically sanctioned by, the papacy from its very inception in St. Peter. Further, Francesca’s devotion as articulated in the vision panels appears to be linked less with the adult Christ in His role as heavenly bridegroom (as is the case with Catherine of Siena) and more closely with Jesus as divine savior and redeemer.78 To emphasize this point, the communion wafer in the scene of Francesca’s heavenly Eucharist is shown to be stamped with a symbol that resembles the image of the Holy Name of Jesus, made popular during this period by the itinerant Franciscan preacher, San Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444) (Figure 23). Further, the wafer is not depicted as a solid mass, but is shown surrounded by shimmering beads or points of light which make it appear to be illuminated. In her study on vernacular preaching, Lina Bolzoni demonstrated that San Bernardino used the image of the Holy Name of Jesus as “the memory image par excellence, the key that would

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Figure 24: Sano di Pietro, Saint Bernardino Preaching in the Piazza del Campo in Siena, 1445, Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana, Scala/Art Resource, NY.

unlock all the doors to knowledge, meditation and contemplation.”79 Contemporary images of San Bernardino show him preaching in an open square and displaying the Holy Name emblazoned on an azure background surrounded by rays of gold (Figure 24). The fifteenth century saw a revival of connections between oratory and memory through the rise of vernacular preaching, as well as in the wide dissemination of religious texts that employed mnemonic devices.80 San Bernardino of Siena was a contemporary of Francesca Ponziani, and effectively employed fiery rhetoric, theatrical play, and recognizable imagery in his public preaching. In order to leave an indelible impression on his listeners and convince them of the truth of his messages, he would incorporate local landmarks and commonplace metaphors into his sermons. Through repeated use of familiar iconography, San Bernardino hoped to access the experience and visual memory of his audience to create a kind of web or grid onto which the lessons of his sermons would be retained.81 In the wake of ecclesiastical protests, the eminently memorable preacher was summoned to Rome in 1425 (the year of Francesca’s formal oblation at Santa Maria Nova) to face charges of heresy. After pleading his case before the Roman Curia he was subsequently exonerated and, at the request of the

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Pope, stayed on to preach to throngs of Romans in St. Peter’s Square for 80 days.82 It is likely that Francesca and her followers were among his listeners. Scholars have made compelling connections between the vivid language of San Bernardino’s sermons and distinct verbiage and visual metaphors found throughout the beata’s mystical visions.83 Though clearly not the only or even a dominant source of specific details drawn from Francesca’s visions, Bernardino’s sermons provide an important model for understanding the oblates’ early art patronage. His strategies for illuminating theological and moral discourse with ideas and imagery that were immediately recognizable to a contemporary audience can be compared to the striking additions or amendments to traditional iconography or motifs in the vision panels discussed in this chapter. The appearance of the Holy Name emblem in the vision panel of Francesca’s miraculous communion can be explained by considering it in relation to the following passage from one of San Bernardino’s sermons of 1424: Everything that God has done for the salvation of the world is hidden in this name of Jesus […] As the apostle Saint Paul said in a few words: ‘God wrote above the earth the very name of Jesus.’ Just a few words and of great substance, so that both children and adults can learn and remember them, and with them be saved […]. When you remember this name, Jesus, cleanse your mouth so that you may remember it with clarity and purity […] And whoever recalls it, it would be fitting that he recall it with reverence so that he can feel the sweetness that it contains; such that if he remembers and considers the word in itself, he will enter into a state of contemplation.84

The detail of the communion wafer is not readily apparent within the complex composition of the vision panel; this in itself is an indication that the painting is meant to be looked at closely and contemplatively. By conflating the image of the Name of Jesus with the manifestation of his corporeal presence in the wafer, Francesca is shown to be receiving not only the body of Christ at this heavenly Mass, but also the sum of his embodied wisdom and knowledge. The figure of St. Paul, who proclaimed the authority of Jesus’s name in his letter to the Philippians, reinforces this point as witness to Francesca’s Holy Communion. The pictorial association between the Eucharist as spiritual nourishment and San Bernardino’s call to taste the sweetness of the Holy Name as entrée into a meditative state would not have been lost on the oblate viewers. Further, the fiery preacher offered the Name of Jesus as fortification against demonic temptation, and as an alternative to magic or superstitious practices. He reminded his listeners that by calling upon Jesus instead of “spell makers” who served the Devil, the pious person could rid himself of evil and attain salvation, an assertion that is powerfully articulated in a panel painting of San Bernardino exorcising demons from the faithful.85 In this instance, Bernardino holds up a tablet painted with the Holy Name of Jesus while preaching to a crowd in an open piazza. In response to the image,

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Figure 25: Francesca Romana’s guardian angel, detail of Plate 17.

demons – shown in this painting (as in the oratory fresco of Francesca’s funeral) as tiny, black, bat-winged creatures – are expelled from the mouths of a man and a woman while throngs of believers who have come to hear the preacher look on in awe. This notion was fundamental for understanding the evolving image of Santa Francesca Romana, who, as a mystic, could have been accused of black magic or diabolic practices. In his Trattati, Mattiotti repeatedly emphasized the fact that Francesca called out for Jesus during all of her demonic battles. By showing that St. Peter offered Francesca the communion wafer impressed with the Name of Jesus – the Word made flesh – the painter demonstrated her miraculous access to divine knowledge and power. At the same time, he acknowledged her obeisance to, and recognition by, the temporal pope by depicting St Peter in the garb worn by the quattrocento pontiffs. Francesca’s vision of her communion and consecration in Heaven was transposed from the small gilded painting and enlarged in a fresco panel adjacent to the altar in the Tor de’Specchi oratory (Plate 17). Though the arrangement of figures in both images is virtually the same, the golden background, richly patterned carpet, and brocade altar front in the panel have been eliminated in the oratory fresco to give the viewer a more clarified, though less splendid, account of the vision. In the fresco, the

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viewer was meant to focus on the slightly enlarged figures of Francesca and St. Peter, who, in this version, appears in both a deacon’s dalmatic and in full papal regalia. The figure of Francesca’s guardian angel is much more prominent in the oratory fresco as well. Here, he stands slightly in the foreground of the scene, and holds up a sheaf of wheat and what appears to be a small loaf of bread or roll that he has taken from a bundle fastened around his waist (Figure 25). The addition of wheat and rolls ties the frescoed vision of Francesca’s heavenly Mass to the earthly ritual of the Eucharist as performed in the oratory, and alludes to the distribution of alms in the form of daily bread. The Tor de’Specchi painting of this vision emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between the Church, which dispenses the body of Christ in the bread of the Eucharist, and Francesca, who distributes food to her neighbors in need. Indeed, in Fra Angelico’s scene of St. Lawrence distributing alms in the Chapel of Nicholas V, Francesca holds the wrist of a small child who clutches a loaf of bread to his chest, once again linking the oblates as patrons in their own oratory to the Vatican commission for the papal chapel, and cementing the relationship between charity and devotion.

The Virgin’s Crown and the Papal Tiara Various strategies were devised to train or discipline the mind for the practice of committing large amounts of material or crucial information to memory. Through deliberate meditation on texts and images (or a combination of both) medieval readers learned how to “mold” their minds by creating a schema or map of places (loci) where memories could be stored. Memory systems often called for the mental construction of assemblages that included numeric and architectural grids, ladders, chains, libraries, or files. By inventing an image or mnemonic “hook” that was meant to evoke the recollection of a thing (or things) the trained practitioner would be able to recall stored information at will.86 Depending on individual contexts or needs, specific visual motifs had the power to fix themselves in the minds of the viewer or beholder, especially after repetitive consumption or experience. The more striking or distinctive the image, the more memorable it would be. According to the Rhetorica ad Herennium, the most widely used handbook on rhetoric during this period, one critical feature of a memory image is that it be striking and idiosyncratic enough to be clearly recalled. Drawn from the earlier rhetoric of Cicero and Quintilian, this anonymous Roman treatise was designed to train readers in the art of public speaking.87 Book III of the ad Herennium addresses the issue of images intended to stimulate the memory: Now, since in normal cases some images are strong and sharp and suitable for awakening recollection, and others so weak and feeble as hardly to succeed in stimulating memory, we must therefore consider the cause of these differences,

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Figure 26: Tri-layered crown of the Virgin, detail of Plate 17.

so that, by knowing the cause, we may know which images to avoid and which to seek […] nature herself teaches us what we should do […] When we see in everyday life things that are petty, ordinary, and banal, we generally fail to remember them, because the mind is not being stirred by anything novel or marvelous […] ordinary things easily slip from the memory while the striking and novel stay longer in the mind […] We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in the memory. And we shall do so if we establish likenesses as striking as possible.88

The panels commissioned for the first Oblates of Francesca Romana were composed precisely to awaken specific recollections for the community by rendering familiar iconographic motifs in innovative and striking ways. At the uppermost limit of all three panels the seated Virgin, in her role as Queen of Heaven, is depicted wearing an enormous crown (corona). It is an elaborate trilayered headdress, which was described down to the minutest detail in a lengthy passage from the above-mentioned vision of Christmas, 1432, and is painstakingly rendered in the painted images (Figure 26).89

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Though a golden, tooled halo softly illuminates the Virgin’s face, the massive crown overshadows it and is crisply delineated with a bold, black outline that is absent in the rest of the composition. Successive layers of the weighty headpiece are visually defined in strict accordance with Mattiotti’s text. Paraphrased briefly, the first layer of the crown, made of pure white roses, denoted the humility and purity of the Mother of Christ. The second layer, a gold band adorned with twelve golden lilies, signified her virginity, charity, and prudence.90 Each lily contained a star that sent forth rays of great brilliance, individually emitting a number of beams that related directly to particular theological gifts or matters of faith. Finally, the third and uppermost part of the crown denoted the Virgin’s greater glory, courage, justice, and mercy, and was encrusted with twelve precious stones, again with each one singularly endowed with rich symbolism.91 The story of Mary’s death, dormition, and ultimate ascent into Heaven became widely popularized during this period through the Legenda Aurea, and is tied to the doctrine of the Assumption, where Mary is crowned Queen of Heaven.92 Her crown is the memento of her triumph; yet its appearance symbolizes not only the glory of Mary the individual, but also the power of the Church itself, for which the Virgin often stands.93 The triumph of Mary has ancient Roman precedents; the first known image of Maria Regina was painted in the sixth century on a wall of the church of Santa Maria Antiqua in the Forum, in close proximity to the oblates’ parish of Santa Maria Nova.94 The basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, where Francesca frequently went to pray and make confession, boasted a large icon of Maria Regina in the guise of a Byzantine empress, with Pope John VII prostrated before her, and contained a glittering apse mosaic of one of the earliest images of the Coronation of the Virgin (Figure 27).95 In fact, the image of Mary as Queen was to be found all over fifteenth-century Rome: for example, in the grand and impressive apse mosaics of the early Christian and Carolingian churches of SS. Cosmas and Damian in the Forum, Sta. Cecilia, S. Prassede and S. Clemente.96 As Francesca is documented as having prayed or communicated in many of these churches (she and her sister-in-law, Vanozza, frequently made spiritual pilgrimages by visiting Roman basilicas in succession), it seems clear that the rich Marian imagery in them had an impact on the vivid pictorial language used in describing the Virgin of Francesca’s visions. Alessandra Romagnoli, in particular, cites the apse mosaics and Cavallini’s mosaic cycle of the Life of the Virgin in Santa Maria in Trastevere as the pictorial sources for much of the visual language of Francesca’s visions.97 However, this does not fully explain the acute attention to descriptive detail associated with the crown in Francesca’s visions; nor does it illuminate the reasons for the scriptural, doctrinal, and dogmatic significance attached to it. Giulia Barone reflected on the deliberate construction of the spiritual persona (or reconstruction of the personality) of Santa Francesca Romana through hagiographic typologies recorded in the quattrocento canonization proceedings and in the vernacular edition of Mattiotti’s Vita.98 She concluded that the recounting of Francesca’s visions in particular were:

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Figure 27: Christ and the Virgin, detail, mosaic of the apse of the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, c. 1140–1143, Rome. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

training in the core truths of the Faith because these visions, which were so closely linked to the liturgical cycle, contained all of the doctrinal lessons so that the [envisioned] images, painstakingly described, must have been [constructed] to fix them materially (plasticamente) in one’s memory.99

The painted panels of Francesca’s visions were conceived and constructed with the same goals in mind. They are deliberately non-narrative, and therefore should be seen as mystical and mnemonic. Accordingly, they are meant to be viewed as a series of highly charged, yet static, vignettes; and each vignette is meant to be meditated on as both a single entity and in terms of the significant details that each presented to the viewer. When contemplating the Virgin’s crown, for example, the tri-layered construction should be considered both as a unified whole and in terms of its composite parts (Figure 28). Described by Francesca in her vision as constructed of three crowns (fabricate de tre corone), the rendering of the crown in the painted panels as an oversized, almost architectural, fan-like headdress balanced on the Virgin’s head commands the viewer’s attention.100 The use of the verb fabbricare rather than fare in this instance implies deliberate construction of the crown in Francesca’s imaginative vision state,

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Figure 28: The Virgin’s tri-layered crown, detail of Plate 15.

rather than simply relating to its material form. The crown’s unusual size and shape bring to mind the type of striking likeness called for in the ad Herennium as a mnemonic lead-in to the vision narrative. Here, the novel rendering of a recognizable subject (the crown of the Queen of Heaven) is employed to produce a memorable re-invention of it as well as its pictorial association with a related object – which, in this case, would be the papal tiara. Beginning with the papacy of Boniface VIII (r. 1294–1303), the tri-layered tiara came to symbolize pontifical hieratic claims to spiritual, temporal, and imperial power.101 Over time, the papal crown – often made of gold and encrusted with gems – was increasingly modeled to eclipse all others in magnificence as an outwardly splendid sign of the popes’ unmatchable jurisdiction among secular monarchs, and to re-establish Rome as caput mundi.102 Initially, the tiara was worn solely for ceremonial occasions, but by the mid-fifteenth century, the popes were also wearing it for liturgical functions, and it appeared on the papal seal as well as on coins and medals of the period.103 Filarete’s bronze doors at St. Peter’s (c. 1445), which include an image of Pope Eugenius IV wearing the triple papal tiara as he receives the keys to Heaven from St. Peter, date to approximately the same year as the vision panels commissioned for the oblates of Tor de’Specchi.

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Figure 29: St. Peter wearing the papal tiara, detail of Plate 17.

In the panel of Francesca’s heavenly communion and consecration, the appearance of St. Peter wearing the papal tiara as he celebrates Mass surely relates to the iconographic and ideological symbolism increasingly attached to it, especially as the papacy was re-establishing itself in Rome after the Great Schism (Figure 29). It is also a visual assertion and commemoration of the filial and political links between the papacy and the Francescan community. Indeed, Pope Eugenius had links to the Olivetan monks at Santa Maria Nova, and his support of the cult of Santa Francesca Romana can be understood as his attempt at unifying popular devotional practices with monastic reform.104 Yet the hieratic composition of the communion panel decisively affirms the Virgin’s elevated status for the community. Her massive crown is triple the size of the papal tiara, and serves as the apex of her weighty, triangular form. Two replicas of Pope Eugenius’s crown as depicted by Filarete – one sitting on the altar and one on St. Peter’s head – are also strategically positioned on either side of the Virgin’s feet, effectively filling out the corners at the base of the triangle and metaphorically rendering the papacy as pivotal, yet ultimately under the jurisdiction of Heaven. It is within the minute details of the three crowns of Maria Regina, then, that the central tenets of the Roman Church and, at the uppermost level, that the most

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laudable virtues of the Virgin – most surely to be emulated by the oblates – were to be meditated upon. As noted above, the first crown signified humility, the second virginity, and the third glory. The passage describing each individual detail of the tre corone takes up four folios in the manuscript of Mattiotti’s Trattati. Here, I will focus on one important aspect of the crown as described by Francesca and as painted in the panels to illustrate its mnemonic and meditative importance; that is, the rays of light emitted from the stars described as being in the second crown of the Virgin. There were twelve stars in the second crown of Francesca’s vision: each star sent forth “rays of great brilliance,” with some of the rays refracting into beams. All of the rays and beams were imbued with a particular doctrinal significance. For instance, the first star shone three rays, by which was understood the holy undivided Trinity; the ray of the seventh star sent forth twelve beams, representing the twelve articles of the holy Catholic faith; the ray of the eighth star emitted five beams, representing the five wounds of Christ and the Virgin’s pain when she saw her son on the cross, and so on.105 The painter of the Santa Maria Nova panels was laboriously faithful to the description of the crown in Mattiotti’s text, and painstakingly rendered each star, ray, and beam in its proper order within the approximately 1 × 1 inch (2.5 × 2.5 cm) space of the pictorial crown. This strict attention to detail worked to consciously create a sophisticated network of visual cues meant to be examined, counted, and checked at close range. Though the crown as a whole did make a strong visual impact when seen from a distance, its deeper layers of meaning were only to be gleaned from purposeful, meditative, and knowledgeable viewing. Here, we must take note of the language of optical theory within the narrative of Francesca’s visions. Mattiotti’s use of the term “ray(s)” in the transcription of Francesca’s vision of the Virgin’s crown (radium maximi splendoris in the Latin edition and ragi de grannissimi splendori in the vernacular treatise) calls to mind St. Augustine’s writings on the connections between physical and spiritual vision.106 Whether Francesca used the word “ray” when she related the substantive imagery of her visions to Mattiotti or to her oblates is unknowable, but that is how her confessor transcribed her description. Further, metaphors of light in relation to both Christ and the Virgin are ubiquitous in the Christian tradition. However, in the context of exploring the possible ways in which a quattrocento painter might have made an image of a mystical vision visible and legible for his audience, we can turn to an analysis of medieval optical theory. Margaret Miles examined Saint Augustine’s writings in order to illuminate the ways in which his model of physical vision (“the eye of the body”) made an impact on his nuanced understanding of spiritual vision (“the eye of the mind”).107 Augustine subscribed to the classical “visual ray” or extramission theory of the physics of vision, which hypothesized that a ray of light, energized and projected by the mind through the eye toward an object, actually touches its object, thereby connecting viewer and object.108 He used this theory as a model for his account of the possibility of the interaction of God and the human soul, stating in one instance that rays “shine

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through the eyes and touch whatever we see.”109 However, the possibility of divine illumination (spiritual vision) for human beings was dependent on rigorous preparation through faith, cleansing, and strengthening the eye of the mind. In short, just as in physical vision the viewer and object are united through rays of light projected through the eye of the body, in spiritual vision the soul is united with God through spiritual longing, which, Augustine claimed, is the visual ray of the eye of the mind.110 For the oblates of Tor de’Specchi, the interconnectivity between familiarity with Mattiotti’s text and meditation on the painted panels appears congruent with Augustine’s prescriptions for preparing one’s soul for divine illumination. Here, they would have recalled the textual accounts of Francesca’s vision of the crown that emitted splendid rays of light; viewed them with the eye of the body as they were translated pictorially into the painted panels; and finally meditated with the eye of the mind on the significance of each individual star, ray, and beam in the image. The painted version of Francesca’s mystical vision was ideally meant to stimulate both a somatic and a spiritual experience for the viewer. Every inch of the panel makes imagery available that would aid the oblates in their unending obligation to remember and imitate the sanctity of their founder. Each minute detail is meant to bring to mind a specific passage or reference from the vision narratives of her Vita. The themes both overtly and subtly evoked through the images – humility, purity, virginity, motherhood, charity, and sacrifice – would have had deep resonance for pious women, and particularly for those adopting the mantle of religious life. Placed within the privileged space of the oblates’ burial chapel, they provided the women of Tor de’Specchi with an outwardly splendid, yet intimately relevant visual reminder of the mystical life of their founder and the divine origins of their community. Clearly meant to be contemplated at close range, the visual cues embedded in the painted panels acted as an aid to private devotion for the oblates, much in the way that illuminations in a Book of Hours would have brought a specific text or scriptural passage to mind for its female readers.111 As they meditated on the significance of each golden ray, or the embossed communion wafer or the body of the infant Christ, Francesca’s oblates were drawn further into their founder’s visionary experience, and therefore closer to the holy life and eternal salvation that they hoped to one day attain. As patrons of art, the oblates of Tor de’Specchi accomplished much with their commission for the gilded panels of Francesca’s mystical visions. The panels represent their collective initial contribution to the hagiographic corpus that would shape the identity of their founder. As such, it provided the fledgling community, as well as the faithful who would visit the church of Santa Maria Nova, with an impressive set of images to commemorate the sanctity of Francesca Ponziani. Set within a funeral chapel, the panels (or altarpiece) proclaimed her intercessory powers through the depiction of Francesca’s direct access to the divine realm. By legitimizing her mystical experience and her role as the founder of a religious community with strong ties

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to the Pope and the Roman Church, the panels could be viewed as pictorial witnesses toward the cause for Francesca’s canonization and the city’s claim to a local saint. They offered splendid visual proof of Francesca’s piety and, by extension, that of the oblate community, while at the same time eliminating suspicion of dark magic or demonic influence that could have been associated with her role as a prominent mystic. As highly detailed and thoughtful renderings of Francesca’s visions recorded in Mattiotti’s Trattati, the panels represent the beginning of a pattern of commissions and communal devotion that was uniquely tied to the image of Santa Francesca Romana. They give us insight into the skills in which the mostly noble oblates were trained in terms of approaching their life in common as a monastic order, and to their sophisticated patronage networks. These skills were carried over and refined throughout the second half of the fifteenth century as the oblates began to decorate the Tor de’Specchi. By the time the unsettling terra verde frescoes were made for the community’s refectory in 1485, the oblates had discovered even more powerful and authoritative ways of meditating on and accessing Francesca’s mystical life, by pictorially recreating her nocturnal encounters with the Devil.

Plate 1: Fra Angelico, Saint Lawrence Distributing Alms to the Poor, fresco, c. 1448, Chapel of Nicholas V, Vatican Museum, Rome. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Plate 2: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana and her followers make their formal oblation at Santa Maria Nova, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

Plate 3: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Altar wall (north wall) and altarpiece, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

Plate 4: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana heals a man with a severed arm, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

Plate 5: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana heals the foot of a man injured while chopping wood, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

Plate 6: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana heals a young man who had lost the use of one eg, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

Plate 7: Artist unknown, Madonna and Child with Saint Benedict and Francesca Romana, fifteenth-century fresco, Tor de’Specchi entryway. Photograph by author.

Plate 8: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana’s Vision of Hell, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

Plate 9: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana distributes grain to the poor, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

Plate 10: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana miraculously multiplies bread for her community, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

Plate 11: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, The death of Francesca Romana, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

Plate 12: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca’s obsequies in Santa Maria Nova, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

Plate 13: Attributed to Antonio del Massaro da Viterbo, Santa Francesca Romana Holding the Christ Child, tempera on panel, c. 1445, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Plate 14: Attributed to Antonio del Massaro da Viterbo, Santa Francesca Romana Embraced by the Virgin, tempera on panel, c. 1445, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Plate 15: Attributed to Antonio del Massaro da Viterbo, The Communion and Consecration of the Blessed Francesca Romana, tempera on panel, c. 1445, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Plate 16: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, Francesca Romana embraced by the Virgin, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

Plate 17: Attributed to Antoniazzo Romano, The communion and consecration of Francesca Romana, fresco, c. 1468, Tor de’Specchi oratory. Photograph by author.

Plate 18: Artist unknown, Terra verde fresco cycle, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author.

Plate 19: Artist unknown, Francesca Romana confronts the Beast of the Apocalypse, fresco, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author.

Plate 20: Artist unknown, The Devil disguised as Sant’Onofrio, fresco, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author.

Plate 21: Artist unknown, Man of Sorrows in passageway from oratory to refectory, fresco, c. 1475, Tor de’Specchi. Photograph by author.

Plate 22: Artist unknown, Demons beat Francesca Romana with animal tendons, fresco, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author.

Plate 23: Artist unknown, Demons whip Francesca Romana with dead snakes, fresco, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author.

Plate 24: Artist unknown, The Devil pushes Francesca Romana onto a rotting corpse, fresco, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author.

Plate 25: Artist unknown, Demons tear up Francesca Romana’s prayer books, fresco, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author.

3. Dining and Discipline at Tor de’Specchi: The Refectory as Ritual Space When the oblates of Tor de’Specchi sat down for communal meals in their private refectory, they faced a wall that was completely covered with unappetizing images of Francesca Romana’s incessant battles with the Devil and his infernal accomplices. Rather than meditating on a painting of the Last Supper, as was typical in monastic refectories of the period, the Roman oblates chose to dine before ten violent and sexualized frescoes of their founder’s struggles against the netherworld of temptation and sin.1 Each vivid rendering of one of Francesca’s nocturnal visions or battaglie was framed in an annotated, life-size panel for better meditation and comprehension, and included depictions of vicious physical assaults amid scenes of hellish depravity.2 In contrast to the golden light and sky-blue hues of Francesca’s heavenly visions painted for the Tor de’Specchi oratory, the refectory visions were rendered in terra verde, a green monochrome technique that encouraged the perception of volume, movement, and shadow. As a result, the jarring refectory frescoes effectively – and eerily – came to life for the oblates who viewed them in their candlelit dining hall as they broke their daily bread (Plate 18). The hagiographic imagery in the Tor de’Specchi oratory suggests that both patron and artist were aware of, and sought to emulate, recently completed pictorial cycles located in some of the most important papal and ecclesiastical spaces in the city of Rome. During the decades covered in this study, the papal Chapel of Nicholas V was decorated, the Vatican Library was established, the Hospital of Santo Spirito was renovated, and the Sistine Chapel was built and richly frescoed. We have seen that the oratory frescoes at Tor de’Specchi paralleled these projects in scale and ambition by adopting visual motifs related to papal initiatives for reviving the quattrocento city. Several oratory scenes depicting Francesca Ponziani’s miraculous works exemplify pictorial conventions for representing hagiographic narratives of saints’ lives. At the same time, they feature local people and places that had practical, everyday significance for the community of oblates, and illustrate parochial events that substantiated the ongoing cause for Francesca’s canonization. Pictorial precedents for the unusual content and style of the disturbing terra verde fresco cycle of the Tor de’Specchi refectory appear to be more difficult to establish. Comparisons with other convent commissions, particulary refectory frescoes of the Last Supper, raise questions about what was at stake in the Roman oblates’ decision to embellish their private dining quarters with life-size scenes of Francesca’s battles with the Devil and demons. Though they bear no pictographic resemblance to pictures of the Last Supper, however, the Tor de’Specchi demon frescoes share ideological underpinnings and devotional interconnectivity with them. Refectory images

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in general were designed to make viewers acutely aware of their physical bodies; to remind them of Jesus’s corporeal suffering and ultimate sacrifice for mankind; and to encourage them to practice continence and temperance when confronted with physical temptation. My discussion of the significance and function of the Tor de’Specchi demon frescoes, then, depends less on how they compare graphically with depictions of the Last Supper and more on how they were constructed and presented to align with contemporary notions of the monstic refectory as a multipurpose ritual space, designed to choreograph a series of coded ritual processes.3 The terra verde cycle of Francesca’s battles with demons covers the entire w ­ estern wall of the refectory and is comprised of ten indiviual panels, each measuring approximately 5.5 × 5.5 ft. (1.7 × 1.7 m).4 They are arranged in two horizontal bands of five panels, one on top of the other, and are separated by fictive painted pilasters capped with ornate composite capitals. Rendered entirely in green monochrome, with the important exception of occasional red accents denoting infernal flames, the grim scenes depicted take place within pared-down settings that compelled the viewer to focus intently on the life-size figures of the beata Francesca and the Devil in various guises. Most fundamentally, the representation of Francesca’s struggles against demonic temptation completes the pictorial articulation of the saint’s mystical life as it was recorded in Mattiotti’s written Trattati. Following patterns established in the Lives of early Christian saints, Francesca Ponziani was simultaneously imbued with thaumaturgic gifts and plagued by persistent demonic provocation. Mattiotti’s codex begins with his account of Francesca’s biography and her miraculous visions (Tractate della vita e delli visioni) and ends with a lengthy tract outlining her ongoing battles with demons (Tractato delle battaglie).5 Canonization witnesses simultaneously testified to Francesca’s extraordinary healings and charitable work among the citizens of Rome, as well as to her private encounters with the Devil.6 Thus, echoing contemporary written sources, the paradoxical contrast between the colorful oratory paintings and the eerie refectory images represent the two spiritual poles of Francesca’s life. For the oblate community, the two fresco cycles at Tor de’Specchi collectively embodied the perpetual struggle between good and evil in the quest for eternal salvation, exemplified in the miraculous life and extraordinary actions of their founder. Consequently, moving between their private oratory and refectory at Tor de’Specchi was akin to re-enacting Francesca’s Vita through the acts of looking at, meditating on, and indeed reading the stories of her spiritual journey. Historians have placed Francesca’s mystical visions within the context of established archetypes of hagiographic narrative, comparing her demonic encounters with those of contemporary female saints and mystics. Weinstein and Bell interpreted the textual accounts of Francesca’s demonic visions as “connected with the frustrated spiritual impulses of her childhood,” referring to her virulent opposition to marriage, pronounced aversion to conjugal relations and documented abhorrence

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Figure 30: Florentine, Saint Catherine of Siena and Four Scenes from her Life, c. 1465. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

of the male touch. They compare her mystical experience with that of Catherine of Siena, citing that although both women experienced ecstasy through prayer, Catherine (who never married) defeated her demons by the use of her mystical imagination and a union with the “divine household.”7 A fifteenth-century woodcut entitled Saint Catherine of Siena and Four Scenes from Her Life (c. 1465) shows a monumental representation of the saint standing triumphantly on top of the equally large figure of a reptilian, horned demon. Here, the Devil was definitively vanquished, rendered flattened beneath St. Catherine’s feet and conquered for all eternity (Figure 30). Francesca, on the other hand, continued to be tortured by demonic beings in a variety of forms throughout her life.8 Accordingly, the frescoes of Francesca’s demonic visitation show her as perpetually confronted by the Devil and his cohorts in many forms, in order to give visual expression to the very real and ever-present forces of temptation in the temporal realm. For the oblates dining with them, they provided a tangible and vivid reminder of their own need for constant vigilance against the ever-present danger of succumbing to a life of sin that would lead to certain damnation.

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Temptation and Discernment: How to Recognize Your Enemy Entering the refectory from the convent stairway, either directly from the street or from their adjacent oratory, the oblates immediately confronted the provocative demon frescoes looming on the wall to their right. In a composition that is crowded with figures, the top panel closest to the entry represents a pivotal battle between Francesca and the Devil, and lays out the spiritual and ideological foundation of the series (Plate 19). Here, Francesca Romana grapples unflinchingly with an enormous seven-headed beast in a scene of temptation, metamorphosis, and redemption. According to the Mattioti’s account of this battle, Francesca was in holy meditation one night in her room when demons appeared to her in the form of various animals; attempting to frighten her, they thrust a deadly scorpion at her body.9 Without fear, the saint grabbed hold of the scorpion, which then “transformed itself into a monstrous seven-headed serpent” (se muto in forma de terrebile serpente lo quale aveva secte capora). At precisely the moment of the beast’s transformation, the Apostle Paul appeared and assured Francesca that if she put her faith in Jesus, she would remain free of fear and protected from demonic possession.10 The term “possession” is not explicitly stated in the text, but it is clearly implied in the action described in it. In this particular vision, Francesca takes physical hold, and therefore control, of the demons. They never, as the frescoes make visible, take physical or spiritual possession of her. Francesca’s power and control, attained through her heroic faith, is plainly stated in the vision narrative as transcribed by Mattiotti, and is even more forcefully articulated in the corresponding refectory fresco, serving as an effective model to be emulated by the oblates. The terra verde panel of this vision (hereafter referred to as the beast panel) depicts simultaneous moments of metamorphosis and salvation. The mutated sevenheaded beast writhes forebodingly under Francesca’s grip; and, though described as a serpent in Mattiotti’s written account of the battle, the refectory painter rendered the creature as a hideous amalgamation of forms. All seven slithering heads of the monster are indeed serpentine, with gleaming fangs aimed to strike at the beata and tongues of red flame that appear to crackle and hiss. Yet, they have pointed ears and wolf-like snouts, and the body of the creature resembles a dragon with enormous wings and a long, coiled tail. It has shaggy patches of fur on its back and legs, and stands on two leonine paws. Grafted together like a hellish mosaic, the beast cannot be properly categorized and is therefore an anomalous, liminal creature, suspended between states of being.11 In representing Francesca’s vision, the painter recalled the terrifying beast of the Apocalypse, as described in the book of Revelation. According to scripture, there appeared in Heaven a vision of a woman in the throes of childbirth, who was persecuted by a seven-headed dragon. A terrific battle ensued between the Archangel Michael and the dragon, both of whom were aided by angels. In the end the “great

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dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world […] and he was cast unto the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Revelation 12:1–9). In this passage, the Devil’s name and physical form are revealed, and his expulsion from Heaven is explained. He is exposed as the central demonic character and tempter of the Apocalypse, truly the embodiment of evil on earth. In fact, Satan and his cohorts are described in various ways throughout the Bible, proclaiming their ability to assume a host of guises in order to fool their victims. The Devil appears in scriptural passages as a serpent and a dragon, but also as a wolf, lion, cat (leopard), sea monster, and bird – creatures that had been associated with evil and the monstrous since antiquity.12 Visual interpretations of the demonic in medieval apocalyptic imagery or Last Judgment scenes – from portal sculpture to manuscript illumination – have incorporated all of these bestial forms in various incarnations.13 In the elaborate relief of the Last Judgment on the façade of Orvieto Cathedral, for example, enormous serpents and furry, bat-winged demons torture sinners in Hell. In the illuminated Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves, the dragon that St. Michael battles is depicted with goat’s horns, talon-like feet, a lion’s tail, and reptilian scales rippling up his back.14 Drawing on these traditions, the refectory beast embodies notions of the Devil’s wily nature and mutability, as well as his desire to tempt and deceive even the most devout believer. In the Tor de’Specchi panel with the seven-headed beast, the Apostle Paul appears as Francesca Romana’s savior, and as heavenly reinforcement for her ever-present guardian angel. He emerges from a bank of wispy clouds, and seems to be floating heavenward as his halo bumps up against the top of the fresco picture plane. Yet, he forcefully thrusts the sword of his execution downward into the mouth of one of the serpents, effectively joining Francesca as a divine defender in her ongoing battles with the Devil.15 The rendering of this particular serpent with a gaping, upturned mouth forms a visual parallel to the reptilian Hell-mouth portrayed in the Tor de’Specchi oratory fresco depicting Francesca’s vision of the Inferno (Plate 8). In the oratory panel, the cavernous jaws of the serpent expand to devour the naked bodies of sinners cast into Hell by demons, here represented in hues that signify lust (red), anger (black), and envy (green).16 Always insatiable, the Devil kept his larder stocked with freshly damned souls, evidenced by the array of contorted figures (most notably tonsured monks) that, in the oratory vision, are corralled by legions of toads and snakes (Figure 31). In contemporary imagery, the Hell-mouth was emblematic of gluttony and uncontrolled consumption, and was understood as a metaphor for the fear of being devoured by temptation or sin for eternity.17 Transposed into the refectory where the oblates consumed their daily bread, the image of St. Paul piercing the mouth of the serpent represents the opportunity to avoid such a fate among the damned. The picture of Francesca and the Apostle simultaneously confronting and attacking the beast became a symbol of individual responsibility and control over one’s spiritual destiny. Though only depicted once in the refectory cycle, the Apostle Paul’s presence

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Figure 31: Sinners in Hell with toads and snakes, detail of Plate 8.

in the entry panel (as one enters the room from the oratory) indicates the level of intervention and heavenly support afforded to Francesca and her followers when properly focused and fortified in the face of temptation. An oblate walking into the Tor de’Specchi refectory was meant to imagine herself as the figure of Francesca Romana as depicted in the beast panel. Shown striding into a room, Francesca’s exceptionally tall figure is pictured directly in front of a darkened doorway, with her guardian angel hovering closely at her back (Figure 32). The billowing fabric of her skirt clings to her long legs as she takes a purposeful step forward to confront the demonic beast. She reaches out to seize the neck of one of the serpents with hands that are also rendered as disproportionately large. These are the same hands that, in the oratory images, were highlighted to emblematize Francesca’s miraculous powers of healing. Here, they are emphasized to convey the beata’s heroic ability to effectively face down and ward off the Devil when properly fortified by divine assistance. The efficacy of fervent devotion and vigilance during moments of uncertainty and temptation are reinforced in the panel directly below the beast image (Figure 33). Though this fresco has been compromised by flaking and damage over time, it is still possible to understand its subject matter and significance.18 This panel measures about half the width of the beast image above in order to accommodate an adjacent doorway. In a condensed composition, Francesca is shown kneeling in prayer while

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Figure 32: Francesca Romana strides toward the seven-headed beast, detail of Plate 19.

a thick, venomous snake coils around her skirt and waist. Her guardian angel hovers protectively by her side as a group of dog-like animals jump and lunge at the beata and the serpent. This image represents a vision in which seven docile and humble sheep appeared to Francesca, praising her virtue and declaring themselves to be the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (enumerated in the book of Isaiah 11:2–3 as wisdom, understanding, prudence, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of offending God).19 According to Mattiotti’s transcription of this vision, when the beata was in the presence of the sheep, she heard a voice booming like thunder and, perceiving darkness, immediately discerned that the animals were demons. Once their true nature was revealed, the sheep mutated into ferocious wolves that threatened to devour Francesca; they assailed her mercilessly until her guardian angel, who was surrounded by divine light, illuminated the scene and came to her rescue.20 The Devil’s ability to alter his physical appearance is again apparent in the depiction of the diabolical animals as ambiguous creatures – in this case as neither sheep nor wolves. Rather, they are shown with wisps of fuzzy lambs’ wool on their otherwise smooth heads and backs, articulated by swift curling brushstrokes of white paint (Figure 34). They bare large fangs and unfurl unnaturally long tongues; red-hot flames shoot

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Figure 33: Artist unknown, Francesca Romana assaulted by demons disguised as sheep, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author.

out of their deceptively velvet-like ears. In both panels, the fiery tongues and infernal flames of the demons stand out as solitary slashes of incandescent color against the cool terra verde palette. Stylistically, the pseudo-sheep of the Tor de’Specchi refectory resemble the rows of pastoral lambs, representing the Apostles and Christ, which border the apse mosaics of the neighboring basilicas of Santa Maria in Trastevere and Santa Cecilia. Though lined up in much the same fashion and shown with similarly elongated bodies and necks, the refectory creatures ultimately form a demonic wolf pack that is the antithesis of the depiction of Jesus (the Lamb of God) and his followers. Most importantly, these diabolical creatures stand in for the incarnate evil that Christ warned against in his Sermon on the Mount when he said, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matthew 7:15). In order to evoke this passage, the refectory wolves in sheep’s clothing that threatened to devour Francesca are situated within a sparse landscape with a single mountain visible behind her guardian angel. The landscape and solitary mountain were indeed meant to recall the Sermon on the Mount, and further alluded to the Devil’s temptation of Christ in the desert. The oblate viewer was cued to remember that, as a final temptation, the Devil took Jesus to a high mountain and offered to give him all of the kingdoms of the world in exchange for his loyalty.

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Figure 34: Demonic sheep, detail of Figure 33.

Meditating on this image, she would also recall Jesus’s response to this enticing proposal, which prompted the Devil to flee, saying, “Begone, Satan. For it is written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:8–11). In order to link Francesca in pictorial fashion with Christ’s ultimate temptation on the mountain, the painter(s) of the refectory frescoes used a number of strategies. She is depicted at the moment of confrontation with the demon-wolves, and also entwined with “the old serpent” himself, which slithers ominously up her skirt. The head of the serpent, with a lupine snout and pricked, pointed ears, is identical to the seven heads of the beast of the Apocalypse (Satan) shown in the painting above. This iconographic link between the two panels reinforces the notion that they are meant to be understood in relation to one another, and solidly identifies the serpent in the lower panel as the Devil incarnate. Neither the serpent nor the mountain of Christ’s temptation is mentioned in the textual account of Francesca’s encounter with the demonic sheep. Thus, the close attention to scripture as well as to the vision narratives in the scheme of the fresco program demonstrates that the oblates as patrons, viewers, and readers most familiar with Francesca’s Vita would have also possessed the range of knowledge necessary to understand the complex layers of meaning expressed in the refectory images.

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Figure 35: Artist unknown: First two scenes of terra verde cycle, c. 1485, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author.

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Francesca’s heavenward gaze and attitude of ecstatic supplication in the wolf panel also establishes a crucial visual connection with the beast panel above it. Here, her face is shown in three-quarter view, with both eyes fixedly gazing beyond her guardian angel and the bounds of the panel, toward the figure of the Apostle Paul in the uppermost corner of the panel above (Figure 35). Her enormous hands are clasped in prayer and raised to the level of her face. The angle of her arms is such that they are directly in line with the Apostle’s sword, creating a visible channel for the combined spiritual force of the two figures in the struggle against the Devil. It is within this connection that the full meaning of the sheep posing as the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit can be understood. According to Mattiotti’s text, Francesca was secluded in her room reciting her evening prayers when the demons in the form of sheep accosted her.21 As a devout believer, she would have prayed for the continued gifts of wisdom, fortitude, etc. that were promised by the prophet Isaiah to those who longed for the kingdom of Christ.22 Yet, as a person of extraordinary faith and piety, Francesca was also endowed with charismatic gifts, as outlined by the Apostle Paul in his epistles where he states: And the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man unto profit. To one indeed, by the Spirit, is given the word of wisdom: and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit: To another, faith in the same spirit: to another, the grace of healing in one Spirit: To another the working of miracles: to another, prophecy: to another, the discerning of spirits: to another, diverse kinds of tongues: to another, interpretation of speeches. But all these things, one and the same Spirit worketh, dividing to every one according as he will. For as the body is one and hath many members: and all the members of the body, whereas they are many yet one body: so also is Christ. (1 Corinthians 12:7–12)23

It is clear from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians that it is possible for every man, through faith in Christ, to be imbued with one of these gifts. However, as is evident in Mattiotti’s Trattati and the Tor de’Specchi frescoes, the saintly Francesca was, by God’s grace, imbued with all of them. The Apostle Paul frequently appeared to Francesca while she was in ecstasy, and is depicted in several of the oratory frescoes of her miraculous visions alongside a host of heavenly protectors. In the refectory cycle, he alone appears as the herald of her extraordinary gift of discernment when faced with the Devil in his various guises, and in his role as spiritual defender in her struggle against temptation. Mattiotti established Francesca’s extraordinary ability to perceive the Devil in his initial tract of the Battaglia series. He reounted the first time Francesca had a diabolic vision – in her home at the Palazzo Ponziani – when a demon appeared to her in the form of a hermit with a long beard. While in the throes of this demonic vision, she was simultaneously engaged in conversation with her husband, Lorenzo, and her

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sister-in-law, Vanozza. Vanozza immediately and astutely observed that Francesca was in great distress, though neither she nor Lorenzo could see or hear the demon. On the other hand, Lorenzo did not perceive his wife’s anguish, and was therefore shown to be deficient in discernment, empathy, and grace.24 Here, Mattioti sets up a clear, and perhaps gendered, hierarchy in this scene with regard to spiritual discernment and access to otherworldly presence. The sanctified Francesca clearly perceives the demon; Vanozza, a devout follower of Francesca, perceives a change in Francesca’s demeanor and understands the significance of it; Lorenzo perceives nothing and is therefore deemed spiritually deficient and, by implication, in danger of succumbing to a demonic assault. When the oblates of Tor de’Specchi entered their refectory and assembled around their dining table, they were called to pray for Francesca’s power of discernment. They understood that their extraordinary founder was not fooled by docile lambs that claimed to be gifts from God, and remembered that in their presence she heard thunder and perceived darkness. Consequently, the oblates too were put on guard for the warning signs of Satan’s duplicity and presence, and sought to achieve a heightened spiritual awareness. In the frescoes, they saw Francesca in the Devil’s stranglehold, but also that she was able to take control of – and ultimately conquer – her demons through fervent prayer and divine assistance.

Knowing the Rules In accordance with a model for living (forma vivendi) dictated by the Virgin Mary to Francesca Ponziani in a heavenly vision, the oblates at Tor de’Specchi followed an ascetic daily regimen that included regular fasting and rigorous self-discipline, reinforced when necessary with penance mandated by the Madre Presidente of the monastery. The pious behavior that Francesca modeled for and with the women of her community while she was alive was codified after her death in a written series of 73 statutes and, as we have seen, in the oratory frescoes depicting her extraordinary charity. The written statutes, called the Ordinationi Statuiti per la Beata Francesca, are preserved in a manuscript at Tor de’Specchi which begins with the declaration, “These are the statutes of ordination of the Beata Francesca to her daughters in Christ, who will be in her congregation, present and future.”25 The rules for comportment prescribed in the written statutes appear to be even more stringent than those in the forma vivendi handed down by the Virgin Mary in Francesca’s vision. This likely reflects the community’s desire to conform to contemporary monastic reforms that called for the return to strict adherence to a Rule; though, as previously discussed, the relationship between the oblate community and their Olivetan overseers was often contentious.26 The prominent presence of Fra Ippolito and the church of Santa Maria Nova in the oratory panels of the community’s oblation and Francesca’s funeral implies that the association with the monks was still integral to the community of oblates

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in the fifteenth century – at least in terms of their official status or the cause for Francesca’s canonization. Petitions by religious women regarding the issue of pastoral care by male ecclesiastical bodies were common during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Though prior scholars pinpointed sexual activity, or the fear of sexual activity by religious women, as the root cause of legislation and controversy in these petitions, Katherine Gill proposed that women’s dissent was more about agency regarding the crafting of Rules, meting out punishment and religious observance (self-governance) and movement outside of the convent.27 For the women of Tor de’Specchi, it was a mixture of both. The Oblates of Francesca Romana clearly sought to emulate monastic rites and a conventual mode of religious worship in their daily devotional practices. Yet they simultaneously and vehemently endeavored to continue Francesca’s charitable work outside of the monastery and throughout the city with autonomy and purpose. The ordinations for the Roman community at Tor de’Specchi may best be understood, then, as a synthesis of the Rule of St. Benedict, the community’s formal link to monastic tradition, and the more tangible, organic precepts handed down in direct succession from the Virgin Mary to Francesca Romana to the women who followed her. According to their statutes, the Roman Oblates of Francesca Romana were to dine in silence while one member of the community read aloud to the others. Though reading out loud from scripture was common monastic practice, mealtime reading at Tor de’Specchi traditionally included the texts of Francesca Ponziani’s visions and battles with the Devil, leading to an interactive and multilayered sensory experience that was intimately linked to the particular devotional and ritual practices of the community. The refectory at Tor de’Specchi functioned as both a dining room and as the place where the Madre Presidente assigned and oversaw the punishment of oblates who were guilty of breaking community statutes. Disciplinary action favored by female communities of the period combined food deprivation and bodily subjugation that often surpassed the practices of their male counterparts.28 This was certainly true at Tor de’Specchi, where disciplinary measures included scourging (flagellation), eating one’s meals on the floor of the refectory, and kneeling or lying prostrate in the form of the cross while the rest of the community dined. Thus, silence and a penitential attitude were required during mealtimes in the Tor de’Specchi refectory. According to community statutes: When bread is broken, everyone should be silent and those who know how to say the penitential psalms will say them; those who don’t know them will say other prayers; otherwise, they will lose wine and their main meal for one day.29

The observance of silence during mealtimes was common practice for both male and female religious communities. The Rule of Saint Benedict, to which Francesca and the oblates of Tor de’Specchi were linked through their affiliation with the Olivetan

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order, explicitly mandates that all will be silent at table, and that no whispering or noise is to be heard other than the voice of the reader.30 Silence extended to every aspect of ritual dining in the refectory, including requests for passing food or drink at the table. Accordingly, the Tor de’Specchi ordinations stipulate, “Anyone who needs any small thing at the table should motion that it be given to them, otherwise they don’t eat cooked food the following day.”31 In some cases during this period, meditative spaces in Italy were decorated with images that were meant to enjoin silence among community members as, for example, in the refectory of the convent of San Domenico in Pisa or the cloister of the convent of San Marco in Florence.32 In both of these cases, the founding member of the community’s order (Sts. Dominic and Peter Martyr, respectively) is depicted with his index finger pressed against his lips to compel silence. Though a picture of this gesture is not to be found in the imagery of the Tor de’Specchi refectory, the directive for meditative quiet is made both overtly and through visual cues in the frescoes. The word SILENTIO is incised on the architrave of a doorway that separates the first and second panels of of the refectory frescoes (Figure 36). On a cornice above this inscription, the date ANNO SALVTIS MCCCCLXXXV is also inscribed, which coincides with the date of the frescoes.33 Documentary and visual evidence indicates that the doorway was already in place before the frescoes were painted, and that inscriptions above the door were made to commemorate their function and completion. Paolo D’Achille transcribed a document dated December 20, 1463 that outlines stipulations for a Roman builder, Mastro Salvato de Andrea de Torcho, to construct a refectory and attic at the convent.34 In the contract, Mastro Salvato promised to make all of the doors and windows in the refectory as part of the agreed-upon price.35 Based on his archeological analysis of the quattrocento complex at Tor de’Specchi, the architectural historian Carlo Cecchelli also concluded that the refectory was structurally complete by the last decades of the fifteenth century.36 The balanced compositions of two smaller fresco panels on either side of the door also indicate that the opening was already in place when the refectory cycle was painted. Because of their reduced size, these panels appear to be more crowded than the other eight panels in the series, but they do not show signs of having been reconfigured or repainted to accommodate the doorway opening. Instead, only the tips of Francesca’s fingers, skirt, and foot are cut off in the panel to the left of the doorway, and a small portion of the tail end of one sheep is lost in the image on the right, suggesting that an inch or two of fresco on each side of the door were covered when the door frame was reinforced to include the cornice with the date of the frescoes. Looking at the door today, there appear to be two distinct frames, suggesting that the inner piece bearing the Silentio inscription could have been the initial frame, and the outer, more elaborate post and cornice had the date added to it later.

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Figure 36: Doorway with SILENTIO inscription and frescoes on either side, Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author.

The monastic directive for contemplative silence in the Tor de’Specchi refectory is also indicated in the truncated panel situated to the left of the door on the frescoed wall (Plate 20). Here, Francesca is shown standing opposite a bulky figure in the guise of a bearded, elderly hermit. The panel represents a battaglia passage from Mattiotti’s treatise in which the Devil appeared to Francesca posing as the eremetic saint, ­Onofrio.37 In the vision, Sant’Onofrio asked the beata to accompany him to the desert

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and promised to show her a beautiful place, presumably his hermitage. However, Francesca immediately recognized a “wretched light emanating from him,” indicating that the humble monk was, in fact, the Devil in disguise, and she vehemently refused his offer. Frustrated and irate that he could not fool the devoted Francesca, the Devil began to beat her mercilessly with his walking stick, and to humiliate her by stuffing dirt into her mouth. Though in the refectory fresco Sant’Onofrio is depicted in monastic robes and carrying a walking stick and rosary beads, his demonic nature is made apparent by goat horns, clawed feet, and red flames shooting from his ears. In this panel, unlike the others, Francesca and the Devil are not depicted in the midst of a battle or in an overtly menacing scene. Instead, they are shown side by side in identical contrapposto stances and in a similar pose, one mirroring the other. But for his horns and claws, St. Onofrio is portrayed in much the same way as the elderly desert fathers who appeared in contemporary images known as the Thebaid. The title “Thebaid” derives from the subject of a specific genre of paintings that depict hermit monks in an Egyptian desert, the most famous of which was near Thebes.38 Popular in Tuscan painting from the mid-fourteenth through the fifteenth century, Thebaid representations typically show groups of hermits engaged in a variety of activities, and placed within mountainous landscapes with churches, hermitages, and other architectural details scattered throughout. On the whole, whether painted on panel or in fresco, Thebaid images were also depicted in a monochrome palette.39 A detail from the Thebaid image from the Camposanto in Pisa shows Saint Anthony Abbott in a pose that is nearly identical to (and perhaps the inspiration for) the figure of Sant’Onofrio in the Tor de’Specchi refectory (Figure 37). As in the image of Sant’Onofrio in the Tor de’Specchi refectory, the hermits depicted in the Camposanto are rendered with the heavy robes and voluminous beards modeled through an interplay of light and shade. Their bulky frames and the intensity of their expressions give them an aura of gravitas befitting their status as founders of the eremitic tradition. Emphasis on the contemplative aspect of the eremitical vocation was one of the central themes of the Thebaid, and was most often depicted in the middle register of the painted scenes.40 Drawing on this iconography, the Tor de’Specchi image of Francesca and Sant’Onofrio highlights the contemplation and solitary reflection required for the rigorous observance of silence in the refectory and as preparation for defending oneself against temptation. It also recalls Francesca’s first vision of the Devil disguised as a hermit at the Palazzo Ponziani, when her own extraordinary powers of discernment were established.41 This panel stands out in the refectory cycle as a moment of stillness amid chaos. Here, then, we do not see Sant’Onofrio stuffing ­ashes into Francesca’s mouth or beating her with his walking stick. Rather, the painter depicted the moment of Francesca’s discernment of the Devil in disguise,

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Figure 37: Master of the Triumph of Death, Saints Paul the Hermit and Anthony Abbott, detail of Thebaid, fourteenth century, Camposanto, Pisa. Alinari/Art Resource, NY.

as opposed to active engagement with him, to direct the viewer to draw on her own powers of discrimination in the face of temptation. In the upper-left corner of the Onofrio panel, a simple hermitage with a small belfry surmounted by a cross sits on a hilltop beneath a tall, feather-like tree (Figure 38). The hermit saint points his index finger at the threshold of the quiet retreat, indicating to Francesca that she should follow him there and thus cross into his world. Clearly meant to represent the “beautiful place” that turned out to be the Devil’s lair in her vision, it is equally evocative of the monastic, and particularly Benedictine, call to the eremitic life. Consequently, the pseudo-saint Onofrio is portrayed here in the habit of the reformed Benedictines, in a nod to the Olivetan monks of Santa Maria Nova who were the spiritual protectors of the oblate community.42 Thebaid scenes would have had particular significance for reform Benedictine communities seeking to reconnect with their roots. The monks at Monteoliveto, the Olivetan mother house for Santa Maria Nova, commissioned a monochrome ­Thebaid fresco and pictorial series of standing hermit saints (both c. 1440, now largely effaced) to adorn the walls of their fifteenth-century chapter house.43 The women of Tor de’Specchi surely garnered prestige through their corporate attachment to the

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Figure 38: Sant’Onofrio points to his hermitage, detail of Plate 20.

Olivetan order, and may have looked to duplicate imagery and decorative schemes associated with them. In her study of the Benedictine nuns at Sant’Apollonia in Florence, Andrée Hayum proposed the idea of a patronage network within the order, suggesting a pattern of sharing artists, iconography, and common decorative schemes among houses under the same monastic Rule.44 It is possible that oblates of Tor de’Specchi shared artists and imagery with the Olivetans or other Benedictine houses in their circle, though there is as yet no documentary evidence to support this hypothesis. However, the figure of Sant’Onofrio in Tor de’Specchi likely refers to reformers’ emphasis on the return to eremitic and contemplative life. At the center of the Tor de’Specchi fresco of Sant’Onofrio, a string of rosary beads hangs from the hermit’s walking stick and is set off by a stretch of bare wall depicted in the background of the panel (Figure 39). The beads, which were not mentioned in the text of Francesca’s vision, represent the mnemonic device by which a sequence of prayers offered to the Virgin Mary are counted. The prayers are meant to be said in a repeated, rhythmic pattern, not unlike the canonical hours observed by monastic communities. The rosary’s association with Marian devotion makes the appearance of the beads particularly relevant for the female community at Tor de’Specchi.45 Rosary devotion was immensely popular by the end of the fifteenth century, especially after Pope Sixtus IV – who had recently built and embellished the walls of the

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Figure 39: Sant’Onofrio’s rosary beads, detail of Plate 20.

Sistine Chapel – established hefty indulgences for reciting a rosary.46 In the fresco panel, Sant’Onofrio clutches the staff that he ultimately used to beat the beata, while Francesca brushes her finger lightly over one rosary bead, as if already in the act of reciting her prayers. She is portrayed with a faraway gaze fixed on a point outside of the panel, in the attitude of deep contemplation that would fortify her against the impending violence of her demonic tempter. Her opposite hand gestures toward the doorway of the refectory and points at the inscription commanding SILENTIO, inviting the viewer to join her in quiet meditation and edifying prayer. For the oblate viewers, attaining a meditative state through prayer and contemplative solitude was particularly relevant in the context of Francesca’s demonic encounters. Nearly all of Mattiotti’s battaglia accounts began by situating the beata at prayer in her private quarters when the Devil came to call. Generally, Mattiotti’s narratives of Francesca’s spiritual battles commenced with some version of “one night, the humble servant of Christ was in her room in holy meditation.”47 In his record of Francesca’s ecstatic experiences of Christmas, 1433, Mattiotti recalled that the saint prepared her room for her spiritual exercises by laying out branches around the floor in order to create the illusion of praying in the forest.48 By arranging her physical space to emulate a secluded and remote environment, Francesca simultaneously

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prepared her mind for solitary spiritual wandering in the form of intensive prayer and meditation. While viewing the refectory frescoes during mealtimes or at community meetings in the dining hall, meditating on the image of Francesca’s triumph over the Devil in various incarnations was a crucial step each oblate took toward her own spiritual preparation and examination of conscience.

Dining and Discipline In the fifteenth century, the convent refectory was a ritual space wherein a monastic community, through gesture, movement, silence, and prayer, gave thanks to God for all that sustained them: food, faith, charity, and grace.49 In many cases, it was also the place where statutory discipline or ritual acts of penance could be performed, in emulation of Christ’s suffering and Passion (Imitatio Christi) on the pathway to salvation. Anabel Thomas cited several examples of statutory punishment and of ritual penance performed within convent refectory spaces in her study of Italian female religious communities.50 More recently, Diana Hiller demonstrated that female ­attitudes toward food contributed to a “perceptual environment of discipline and penance” in convent dining halls which, in turn, influenced women’s responses to refectory imagery.51 Quattrocento religious communities, both male and female, largely adopted Reform standards of daily behavior, which included strict adherence to community statutes.52 The ordinations for the Oblates of Santa Francesca Romana, which appear to be similar to those guiding communities of pinzochere in Tuscany, set down stringent rules for daily behavior and strict penitential guidelines for the violation of community statutes. Anabel Thomas observed a pattern of discipline, including flagellation and enforced fasting, in the statutes of the Tuscan communities included in her study; and the combination of food and punishment appears to be a common feature of the statutes of female religious communities of this period, possibly in connection with reform or penitential movements.53 Punishment for violations of the ordinations at Tor de’Specchi ranged from admitting one’s guilt in front of the community, to the loss of food, wine, or a tablecloth for a period of time, to eating meals seated on the floor, to public scourging or disciplina by the Madre Presidente.54 The Tor de’Specchi statutes deemed that oblates who were familiar with the Penitential Psalms should say them, ostensibly to themselves in silence, when bread was broken in the refectory. These seven psalms, which to this day serve as an integral source for prayer and reflection during the penitential season of Lent, are meant to be said as spiritual preparation for the confession of one’s sins.55 They are the supplications of the wretched sinner, written to forcefully juxtapose the agony, disgrace, and misery of the sinful state and the peace, dignity, and light attached to the state of divine grace. The profoundly corporeal language of the

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penitential psalms would have been heightened by viewing the painful sensuality, bodily mortification, and vulnerability to torture and rot portrayed in the grim terra verde frescoes in the Tor de’Specchi refectory. The theological foundation for the association between food and sin lay with Adam and Eve’s fatefeul bite of the forbidden fruit, the primary moment of succumbing to the Devil’s temptation recounted in the book of Genesis (3:1–16). Here, eating was explicitely tied to Adam and Eve’s decision to turn away from God – and toward Satan – and henceforth had to be undertaken with prudence and rigorous discipline.56 Food and dining had acquired an ambivalent status in the Christian tradition by the time the Tor de’Specchi demon frescoes were commissioned: necessary for daily sustenance but also a potential source of sensory pleasure that could endanger the pursuit of spiritual perfection. Accordingly, stringent mortification of the body was called for throughout the Tor de’Specchi ordinations as the preferred mode of punishment for succumbing to temptation and for a variety of transgressions, both spiritual and material. Whether dining, performing ritual penance, or enacting daily punishment meted out by the Madre Presidente, meditation on Christ’s Passion was invoked as the pathway toward corporeal and spiritual purification in the oblates’ quest for divine salvation in the refectory space. Contemporary vernacular texts presented literary debates between metaphorical incarnations of Body and Soul. In one popular version, Soul describes herself as a noble creature blackened by Flesh (Body), which must be overcome by hunger, thirst, and beatings.57 This discourse lays down the theory for the prescribed practice of ritual mortification through enforced fasting, humiliation, and scourging of the noblewomen-turned-oblates in the refectory of Tor de’Specchi. In the 1480s, Jacobus de Teramo, Bishop of Spoleto, penned the Consolatio peccatorum or Processus Luciferi contra Jesum Christum describing a mock courtroom battle in which Jesus (represented by Moses) and Lucifer (represented by a demon named Belial) argue for rights of ownership over bodies and souls damned to Hell.58 Colored woodblock prints illustrating late fifteenth-century versions of the text depict the demon Belial as an incarnate being who interacts with earthly contemporaries at the trial. The text and woodcut images provocatively illuminate Renaissance debates on both the material existence of demonic beings and their role in contemporary religion and society, interwoven between official Church dogma and popular piety and practice.59 In one particular print, Belial argues for the souls of Adam and Eve, who, he believes, should be consigned to eternity in Hell. The image is representative of the typological connection made between Eve as enchantress, tempted by the serpent, and late-medieval witches and sorcerers under the control of demonic forces.60 As spiritual daughters of both Eve and Francesca Romana, the oblates of Tor de’Specchi faced a potential crisis of collective and individual identity hinging on the reputation of their founder. The battle for the salvation of Francesca’s soul and, by extension, those of the oblates, was waged in the refectory fresco scenes of her ongoing demonic trials and

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Figure 40: Anonymous, fifteenth century, Madonna del Soccorso (Madonna of Succour), c. 1475–1485, church of Santo Spirito, Florence. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

potential fall from grace in the same way that the eternal struggle between good and evil was mediated in the woodblock prints of Teramo’s imagined courtroom. A more domestic version of the struggle for the soul of an Innocent was circulated through the popular Italian images of the Madonna del Soccorso, which showed mothers consigning their toddlers to the Virgin in order for her to punish, through beatings, the Devil that had taken up residence in their little bodies (Figure 40).61 These scenes, most often depicted on painted altarpieces, portray the Virgin wielding a stick or paddle in her effort to expel the invading demons. In her role as mediator between mothers and satanic forces in the Madonna del Soccorso images, Mary presents an interesting parallel to Francesca in the refectory frescoes as defender of her own body and soul, and subsequently the souls of her spiritual daughters. Throughout Mattiotti’s battaglia texts, Francesca cried out for – and received – Christ’s succor and support when confronted by the Devil.62 At Tor de’Specchi, Christ’s presence as a response to the oblates’ supplications was made manifest in a mid-fifteenth-century fresco panel of the Man of Sorrows, located on a small patch of wall above the stairway in the passageway from the oratory to the refectory (Plate 21). The image of the Man of Sorrows was visible when the oblates walked

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Figure 41: Artist unknown, Man of Sorrows, c. 1475, Tor de’Specchi, detail of Plate 21.

from their oratory to the refectory, and faced them when they exited the refectory to walk back to the oratory or down the stairs to the ground level of the complex. Further, community members had an unobstructed view of this image when they looked toward the stairway from in front of the refectory wall where the demon cycle was painted, and possibly from their dining table during meals. Representations of the Man of Sorrows derived from the legendary Mass of St. Gregory. According to tradition, Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590–604) had a vision of Christ the Redeemer while celebrating Mass at the Roman church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. The image of the bleeding Christ that appeared to him was believed to have been recorded in a painting in the church of Santa Croce, inspiring many subsequent versions of this theme.63 The emphasis in all of these images was on physical suffering and on the corporeal sacrifices of Christ as a flesh-and-blood man for the salvation of mankind. The image of the Man of Sorrows had gained widespread popularity by the fifteenth century, stemming from the popular medieval cult of Eucharistic devotion (adoration of the Host) and its celebration in the Feast of Corpus Christi.64 Recollection of Christ’s suffering was, of course, heightened during Holy Week observances, culminating with the commemoration of the Crucifixion on Good Friday.

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Following iconographic tradition, the Tor de’Specchi Man of Sorrows shows Christ in half-length and standing upright in his tomb (Figure 41). Here, the image is sur�rounded by a painted architectural frame, giving the viewer an exclusive window onto the sight of the Redeemer’s tortured flesh. Christ’s naked torso appears in stark relief against a deep red background which is made even gloomier in relation to the depths of his sarcophagus, depicted below. Blood trickles down his forehead and oozes from the gash in his side and onto his winding sheet. His head lists to one side and his eyes are closed as he offers himself to atone for the sins of the world. Though pictured in silent agony, he extends his arms out to the viewer so that his pierced palms and blood-streaked wrists are plainly visible. One of his fingers is shown deliberately breaking the plane of the frame, inviting the viewer to unite with him in his suffering. The Tor de’Specchi ordinations, perhaps read aloud in the refectory, recalled and recounted Francesca’s lived observance of Good Friday as a model for the oblate community to emulate thereafter. According to Statute 72 of the ordinations, every year during the fourth hour of Good Friday evening, the beata Francesca would say the Miserere seven times while lying on the floor in the form of a cross, and at midnight would scourge herself to the point of bleeding in the time it took to recite the Miserere five times.65 Here, we must imagine the oblates carrying out Francesca’s penitential ritual with their image of the Man of Sorrows in mind, and indeed in view, when their ritual disciplina was enacted in front of the wall containing the frescoes in their refectory. In this case, penance and spiritual exercices in the refectory would have been not only an act of Imitatio Christi, but also of Imitatio Francesca – a recollection and re-enactment of the repeated, pious rituals of the community’s founder. The most conspicuously violent images in the refectory cycle are also those that are most evocative of community statutes calling for corporal punishment. Two panels situated at the far left of the cycle (when facing the frescoed wall) show nude male demons mercilessly beating Francesca Romana (Plates 22, 23). In the first of these images, which is located on the top row of the cycle, Francesca is accosted by three demons who appear in quasi-human form and beat her with animal tendons (nervi di animali) (Plate 22). The setting for this scene is ambiguous. On the left side of the panel, one demon steps through the archway of a courtyard. Francesca and the two other demons are shown in front of a closed doorway and wall that abuts the archway. Beyond the wall, we see a sloping hillside and mountains in the distance. The beata’s assailants are portrayed as naked, muscular male figures with wings that seem to sprout from their backs and curly tails that protrude from their buttocks. The demons powerfully grab hold of Francesca from all sides and beat her with cruel force. The animal tendons described in Mattiotti’s text are rendered as whip-like flagella, and therefore closely associated with the instruments of both Christ’s Passion and Francesca’s ritual disciplina. In fact, the beastly nervi di animali depicted here

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were frequently described as the demons’ weapon of choice in Mattiotti’s transcription of Francesca’s demonic encounters in the battaglia narratives.66 In a related image, situated in the bottom row of the cycle, three demons are again depicted in the act of cruelly flogging the devoted Francesca. Here, according to Mattiotti, the demons burst into her private room at home, berated her unmercifully, and subsequently beat her with dead snakes (Plate 23).67 The phallic appearance of the snakes recalls the moment of original sin, especially when wielded by the athletic, leaping demons, one of whom is rendered in the guise of a satyr. In both of these panels, Francesca is depicted as unharmed, unmoved, and even serene. Though the two images represent chaotic scenes with demons jumping about, spitting infernal flames, and brandishing demonic whips, their juxtaposition with the figure of Francesca in each case emphasizes her spiritual tranquility, and ultimately indicates the state of grace that the oblates sought each time they sat down to dine. The ultimate purpose of corporeal penance and asceticism was to purify the passionate part of the soul and to rid the intellect of sense reactions which were obstacles to contemplation and salvation.68 In the Tor de’Specchi refectory, the oblates meditated on successive images of Francesca in a state of divine contemplation, and even ecstasy, in the face of the relentless and often excruciating torments of her demonic tempters. With every viewing of the cycle, they were meant to be moved further away from earthly attachment to sensual pleasure and toward a spiritual detachment that was grounded in an unshakable and impregnable faith.

The Tor de’Specchi Refectory as a Ritual Space Monastic customaries often set down guidelines for walking into and through a convent refectory, stipulating where and when to gesture, bow, sit, or stand. In the absence of written documentation, analyses of archeological evidence and decorative programs have been successfully employed to map out ritual gesture, circulation patterns, and seating arrangements at specific sites.69 The ordinations for the Oblates of Santa Francesca do mandate specific behavior (silence, reading aloud, and gestures at table) and the contemplative, penitential attitude to be adopted in the refectory space, but do not stipulate or outline the oblates’ physical movement or placement in it. However, considering the pictorial program in the Tor de’Specchi refectory as well as what we know about the physical space during the fifteenth century, it is possible to imagine the ritual path that the community might have taken when they walked into the refectory space and sat at their dining table. The image of Francesca Romana confronting the Beast of the Apocalypse is directly adjacent to the doorway leading into the refectory from the Tor de’Specchi ­oratory and stairway, and mimics the architectural construction of the entry (Plate 19). In the panel, Francesca strides forward from a doorway and toward the

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Figure 42: Marble lavabo in south wall of Tor de’Specchi refectory. Photograph by author.

beast; her guardian angel follows closely behind her as she prepares to meet her demonic tempter head on. It is likely that the adjacent doorway on the northern wall of the refectory was the community’s preferred, if not primary, entry into the refectory space. When an oblate approached the refectory from this direction, she passed the image of the Man of Sorrows in the stairway, reminding her to adopt a penitential frame of mind as she prepared to dine. Advancing through the refectory space, she filed past the doorway cut into the wall frescoed with the demon cycle (on her right), where the mandate for SILENTIO was prominently inscribed. As she turned a corner at the far end of the room, she stopped to wash her hands in an ornate marble lavabo set into a recessed niche in the south wall – an act that was ritually akin to purifying the mind, as well as the body, in preparation for silent contemplation and reflection at mealtime (Figure 42). In order for the oblates of Tor de’Specchi to have an unobstructed view of the terra verde demon cycle while dining, their dinner table(s) must have been placed along the east (and if need be, also the north) wall of the refectory, with all chairs situated on one side of the table so that no one had her back to the images. The community is depicted in exactly this type of seating arrangment in the aforementioned

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oratory fresco of Francesca blessing and miraculously multiplying bread for her community (Plate 10). In this fresco, the refectory table is covered with a white cloth that extends to the floor, and is set with matching white plates alongside ceramic pitchers of water and wine. Two oblates serve small portions of meat and distribute rolls from the baskets that, after Francesca’s divine intervention, were brimming with enough bread to sustain the entire community. It is significant that not one of the women depicted in this image interacts with or looks at another woman at the table; instead, all are shown in attitudes of individual contemplation or reflection. Several oblates clasp their hands in prayer; two hold their hands over their hearts; and one ticks off points on her fingers and looks out at the viewer as if counting the penitential psalms as she silently works through them in her mind – and asking the viewere to do the same. This is a representation of the ideal posture and behavior for the refectory, as outlined in the statutes, which the oblates endeavored to achieve each time they sat down to dine. For the oblates of Tor de’Specchi, the unending journey back to God and toward eternal salvation was sought through daily penance, prayer, and meditation on painted imagery. In order to live more fully in Christ, the Roman women who followed Francesca Ponziani had to confront His enemies and vanquish them with the same virility, constancy, and bravery as she did. In their shared refectory, this meant systematically eliminating the possibility of falling into sin or vice by consuming the terrifying frescoes of Francesca’s demonic battles every time they sat down to dine. While each oblate silently filed into the refectory and past the image of the monstrous Beast of the Apocalypse, she thought of God’s final judgment at the end of days. When she meditated on the picture of the rotting demon in the form of a vermin-laden, fetid corpse, she contemplated her own corporeality and mortality in a sinful world. And when she confronted the gruesome depictions of Francesca Romana brutally assaulted by muscular demons brandishing serpentine whips, she willingly mortified her own flesh in the hopes of one day joining the beloved beata Francesca in Paradise.

4. The Devil in the Refectory: Bodies Imagined at Tor de’Specchi The center bottom panel of the gruesome terra verde fresco cycle of the Tor de’Specchi refectory, in effect the focal point of the wall, depicts one of the most menacing, memorable scenes in the series, and bears the following descriptive caption: How the blessed Francesca suffered such horrible and diabolical oppression when the enemy of human nature brought the worm-laden body of a dead man to her [room], and pushed and tossed her onto the fetid corpse.1

The grim vision represented in this scene is set in a barren room where a sinister, fire-breathing demon, shown as a remarkably muscular nude man with ram’s horns and bat wings, shoves the beatific Francesca Romana onto a rotting, worm-laden cadaver (Plate 24). The “enemy of human nature” dominates the space of the fictive room, and leans forcibly into the falling body of the saint, with his feet spread wide and hands powerfully gripping her shoulders. His genitals are barely covered by a shaggy patch of fur that brushes against the back of the beata’s floor-length skirt. As Francesca topples toward the fetid, half-eaten ribcage of the decaying corpse, she thrusts her arms forward in a seemingly futile attempt to break her fall while the corpse, which appears to be more alive than dead, strains to sit up and reaches provocatively for the hem of her skirt. Her childlike guardian angel observes the unfolding drama from a wispy, translucent cloud that hovers above the scene, and silently offers a gesture of blessing. The dramatic tension between the widely diverse figures in this panel is emblematic of the physical and spiritual dilemmas depicted throughout the refectory series, fusing themes of provocation and decay with those of resistance and redemption. Ideas surrounding temptation and penance, volition and faith, sexuality and punishment that were held by pious women of the period were incorporated into the terra verde images at Tor de’Specchi in ways that addressed mounting concerns by and about religious women and female mystics. They also give us insight into how contemporary developments in artistic ideation and practice could be used to best render early modern depictions of the Devil, demons, and female saints. This chapter begins with the central panel showing Francesca pushed onto the body of a corpse, as it powerfully brings to light elements of all of these issues and, in many ways, draws on and synthesizes ideas represented in the surrounding frescoes. Viewed as a collaboration between an artist (or artists) and patron, the refectory cycle as a whole embodies the challenge of picturing Francesca’s personal visions of the Devil as well as keeping the larger problem of persistent demonic

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temptation before the eyes of the community. The commissioning of the frescoes at Tor de’Specchi prompted new ways of imagining traditional hagiographic themes in the lives of saints, especially in relation to encounters with the demonic realm, and reflects the sophisticated patronage network of the community of oblates in late quattrocento Rome. The formal characteristics of the often sensual, sculptural renderings of the bodies of the Devil and his accomplices in the Tor de’Specchi refectory constituted both a thematic anomaly and a representational challenge. Though the terra verde frescoes depicted events in the saint’s life that had occurred 50 years earlier, the naturalistic, flesh and blood representations of the profane demonic beings created a sense of urgency and realism for the oblates that was only possible in the late quattrocento. Long a matter of theological and philosophical debate, the corporeality or “embodiedness” of demons took on increasing significance during the fifteenth century, ­particularly for the examination of witches and witchcraft. Around the turn of the century, witches were redefined as demons’ accomplices, and the question of whether or not human – demon interaction was a function of the imagination or a physical reality became central to the debate. During witchcraft trials, women testified (usually under torture) to the corporeal reality of demons by recounting the intensity of their physical sensations when copulating with “virile” demons, who were undeniably cast as male.2 At Tor de’Specchi, the rugged masculinity of Francesca’s demonic torturers offered visual evidence of a different, though related, type by corroborating the demons’ material corporeality while ultimately testifying to their impotence, as the beleaguered Santa Francesca ultimately remains visibly chaste and unperturbed despite their provocations.

Terra Verde and the Night The chiaroscuro modeling of figures and illusionistic sculptural effects produced in monochrome images often made them more legible, and less distracting, than those in the brightly colored painted cycles.3 At Tor de’Specchi, the terra verde refectory cycle contrasted markedly with the vibrant frescoes of the oratory, setting up a clear distinction between the visual ambiance and devotional ritual associated with each space for the oblate community. Such a distinction would have been particularly crucial during the first decades of the order’s existence, since the archictectural complex at Tor de’Specchi was relatively small and spaces must have been necessarily used for multiple purposes. It is possible that the oblates at Tor de’Specchi adapted a contemporary patronage model among reform Benedictine communities when they designed the terra verde cycle for their refectory. By the mid-fifteenth century, several reform communities in Florence and Tuscany had commissioned monumental fresco cycles for

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their monastic cloisters, most of which were painted in monochrome.4 Vasari reported that Masaccio painted a terra verde rendering of the dedication ceremonies at Santa Maria del Carmine over the door that leads from the convent interior to the cloister.5 Paolo Uccello and several assistants decorated the Chiostro Grande (now called the Chiostro Verde) of Santa Maria Novella in a green monochromatic palette, with touches of red, black, and white. Uccello painted a similar series (now largely effaced) for the Olivetan community of San Miniato al Monte in Florence, which was affiliated with the Roman (Olivetan) monks at Santa Maria Nova in the Forum who were charged with overseeing the oblate community at Tor de’Specchi.6 The limited tonal range of monochrome painting would have been conducive to meditation in a space, like a cloister or refectory, which was designated for ritual contemplation and perambulation. Terra verde was a particularly effective medium for depicting nocturnal scenes and visions of demonic temptation. In the Christian tradition, the opposition between good and evil is often expressed in terms of light and darkness. Followers of Jesus were called sons of light, while his enemies were cast as sons of darkness. The Apostle Paul made this explicit when he foretold the second coming of Christ in his first letter to the Thessalonians (5:2–8): For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night. For when they shall say: Peace and security; then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as the pains upon her that is with child. And they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. For all you are the children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep, as others do: but let us watch, and be sober. For they that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that are drunk, are drunk in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, having on the breast plate of faith and charity, and for a helmet, the hope of salvation.

The Rule of Saint Benedict, which served as a model for the statutes (ordinazioni) at Tor de’Specchi, called for monks to employ their spiritual lessons unceasingly, so that they worked both day and night. Their cycle of prayer began at matins, which fell between 2 and 3 a.m. depending on the season – a time when the general population was normally asleep. Matins was the longest of the canonical offices, and required that monks recite a long litany of prayers.7 Benedict’s Rule is in line with Paul’s call for constant vigilance from the faithful, advising those who wish to attain salvation to always be on guard against darkness and the night. For the oblate community, this meant confronting the demons of the night at the times and in the places where they were most likely to strike. Accordingly, the ordinations of Tor de’Specchi outlined rules for the night that were centered as much on corporeal safety and security as they were on spiritual continence. Doors were locked, beds were checked, and those

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Figure 43: Giovanni Fontana, Magic lantern projecting the image of a she-devil, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cod.icon. 242, fol. 70r.

who missed the extended cycle of prayers said at matins were punished by being made to eat their meals on floor of the refectory.8 In a world that relied solely on candlelight or fire for illumination, the night became associated with crime, evil, and all things demonic.9 Visitation by the Devil was understood to have occurred at night, when unsavory and incomprehensible characters could roam the streets undetected. Visionary experiences that were neither fully conscious nor unconscious were often associated with the darkening hours, on the threshold between day and night. The night was a transforming agent, the time when temptation was most prevalent and when extra vigilance was required.10 It is easy, then, to imagine how the sadistic, menacing demons of the Tor de’Specchi refectory frescoes would have come alive for the oblates when they viewed them amid the flickering shadows cast by candlelight. The ghostly green hues, deep shadows, and gleaming white highlights of the refectory paintings would have been intensified in the warm glow of candles, making the oblates’ experience of Francesca’s nocturnal visions even more naturalistic and terrifying.

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The Venetian physician and engineer Giovanni Fontana (c. 1395–c. 1455) imagined a similar type of terror when he inserted his drawing of a magic lantern (the earliest one known) into his fifteenth-century treatise on military instruments (Figure 43).11 Fontana’s drawing depicts a man, rendered in diminutive scale at the lower-left corner of the page, holding a tube-shaped lantern topped by a cone pierced with holes to emit light. Inside the lantern, a single candle is employed to project a painted image of a bewinged devil brandishing a long-handled spear. The drawing shows that the image of the Devil would have been projected in exponentially enlarged scale, shown here cast on a blank surface above the man holding the lantern. By the light of the magic device, the tiny painting inside the tube became an enormous vision of a monstrous, horned she-devil – a terrifying sight with her tongue hanging out, exposed breasts and pubic hair, and gnarled claws for nocturnal perambulation. Below the devil’s grotesque talons, Fontana wrote a Latin inscription that reads, Apparentia nocturna, ad terrorem videntium (“Nocturnal apparition, to inspire terror in those who see it”).12 The same treatise also included two designs for assembling automated, mechanical devils, one of which beat its breast, spat fire, and shot flames from its ears – much like the demons of the Tor de’Specchi refectory.13 Fontana’s drawings indicate an attempt to bring the Devil to life – to make visible and tangible that which was invisible under cover of the night. Though a functional magic lantern would not be made until the seventeenth century, Fontana’s ideas for projecting an image of the Devil signify his belief in the ability to replicate the visions of otherworldly beings that terrified his contemporaries.14 The shadowy projections of the seventeenth-century lanterns resembled dreams, visions, or apparitions, and represented the first time that a fantastic image could be materialized without becoming solid as a picture or sculpture.15 The terra verde frescoes of the Tor de’Specchi refectory represent the oblates’ attempt to make Francesca’s visions material in a quattrocento medium that, for them, could most effectively represent the Devil’s nocturnal temptations. They drew on recent monastic commissions that called for monochrome representation of important communal events, and made their refectory into a virtual theatre of life-size demons who assailed the body of Santa Francesca Romana, which was ultimately inviolable.

[Im]permeable Spaces In the context of the Roman oblates’ interaction with the refectory frescoes of Francesca’s temptations and brutal encounters with demonic beings, the metaphor of the “mouth as door” discussed in the previous chapter encompasses both the nourishing of the body through the consumption of meals and the continuous need to fend off the Devil from entering one’s body and soul. As the oblates dined in their refectory, they simultaneously smelled, tasted, and touched their food, listened to

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the texts of Francesca’s visions as they were read aloud, and looked at the images of the visions embodied in the eerie green frescoes that covered an entire wall of the room. Their refectory was a true feast for the senses, and a space where an internal re-enactment of the painted scenes was a daily occurrence. The motif of the painted doorway from the oratory was also employed in the refectory frescoes, and is evocative of the constant battle between interiorized spirituality and external demonic forces. In one of the most populated frescoes of the refectory, a host of demons assault Francesca and tear up her prayer books (Plate 25). Mattiotti’s account of the vision depicted here can be paraphrased this way: Late one evening in October, 1431, Francesca retired from her household duties and carried several prayer books off to read in the tranquility of her private room. No sooner had she locked herself in and set the volumes down when a demon appeared to her and, with great menace and ferocity, tore her books to shreds. More demons arrived and a battle ensued in which Francesca was kicked and beaten, shoved outside through the door of her room, and tossed onto a pile of ashes, where she was left abandoned, soiled, and bruised.16 In the refectory panel, the painter depicted the moment when Francesca was pushed through the door of her private room and onto the pile of ashes on the hillside. Three menacing demons with horns, tails, and leathery bat-wings manhandle Francesca as she falls through a darkened doorway that spans the full height of the panel. Two creatures positioned outside the cell forcefully jerk her toward them; one of them kicks her with a leg that the artist exaggerated in size so as to call attention to the violent act. The third demon pushing from inside the cell stands provocatively behind the beata, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and blowing flames onto her halo and veil. Two impish demons that are not mentioned in the text, but who seem to be added in the fresco for emphasis, fiendishly tear up Francesca’s prayer books and stomp on the torn pages. It is noteworthy that more demons are depicted in this panel than in any other image in the refectory series, evidence of the power of the Word of God when challenged by the Devil. All five demons are shown with flames shooting from their mouths and ears ablaze in fiery protest of the Word, while the beata’s mouth is resolutely clamped shut. Francesca is rendered with one foot inside the contemplative solitude of her private cell and the other outside in the realm of the demons. Her skirt billows from the force of being thrown, and she gazes out at the viewer with a trance-like stare. The notion that Francesca always locked herself in her cell, and locked all others out, can be interpreted as both evidence of her religious devotion and as symbolic of her “closing off” or “locking” her body when she came to live at the monastery at Tor de’Specchi as a widow. Most of the initial oblates at Tor de’Specchi were aristocratic or patrician widows, and though the community did petition almost immediately to accept unmarried postulants, widows continued to retire to the convent for

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centuries.17 Chaste widowhood and, ideally, virginity had long been viewed as the preferred states for women (as opposed to matrimony) in the Christian tradition.18 Though Francesca remained a steadfast wife until she entered the convent after her husband’s death in 1436, she and Lorenzo had agreed to a separazione mistica more than a decade earlier, definitively ending their sexual relationship and effectively consecrating Francesca’s body to the body of Christ.19 It was also at this moment that Francesca Romana began to be assailed by the Devil and various demons. As demonstrated above, the oblates’ transition from secular society to a life of religious observance also constituted their return to (in the case of previously married oblates) or continuation of a state of virginity; they, too, were closing themselves off from sexual intercourse while simultaneously inviting virulent temptation from demonic forces. The refectory frescoes perpetually challenged the community to confront this temptation by imagining, and re-imagining, Francesca’s disturbing visions. In one of the first accounts of his treatise of Francesca’s nightly demonic battles (Tractato delle Bactaglie), Giovanni Mattiotti recorded the encounter depicted in the panel of the Devil pushing Francesca onto the fetid corpse. As one of the lengthier passages in the Trattati, the brutal event can be paraphrased as follows: One night, when Francesca was in her room [soa camera] she suffered horrible diabolic oppression when the Devil [lo demonio] brought a demon to her in the form of a dead man’s body; that is, a rotten, stinking, worm-laden corpse. The Devil threw her on top of the corpse, tossing and turning her several times. After he departed, Francesca was left so soiled and dirty all over her body that she was unable to wash the stench away. The event upset her so much she was only able to eat small amounts of food from that time on. Because of the encounter, she experienced great anxiety in the presence of men, and they all appeared rotten to her. Those that were “stained by the sin of carnal lust” upset her even more. Even women infected by vice would cause her to perceive the great stench of the demon, especially when she passed by a brothel. Thus, because she hated the “dishonest carnal vice,” demons henceforth showed themselves to her a great many times, in the form of both men and women, and appeared committing the sin of sodomy and other forms of vice in “many and various ways.”20

The language of sensory experience in this passage is remarkable. Psychological and physiological trauma was linked to olfactory stimulation in the vision: Francesca could no longer eat because she perpetually perceived the stench of the rotting demon-corpse. She was left soiled, stained, and battered. Yet she was also empowered with the extraordinary ability to recognize and purposefully avoid sinners in her midst – the gift of spiritual discernment. This pairing of heightened

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sensual awareness with the onset of enlightened insight is the key to understanding the programmatic role of the refectory frescoes for the oblates dining at Tor de’Specchi. The setting depicted in the temptation fresco with the fetid corpse at first appears to be an indoor space, not unlike Francesca’s room (camera) as described by Mattiotti. The precise rendering of receding walls and sharply defined corners, capped by a contiguous molding from end to end, lend depth and perspective to the panel. Tall painted pilasters with ornate composite capitals divide this scene from those that border it; all ten panels in the cycle are separated in the same way. What appears to be a large casement window takes up a significant portion of the left wall in this scene, and a similarly articulated doorway ostensibly leads out of the back of the fictive room. Yet, both window and door have no visible knob, handle, or latch and are closed and tightly sealed in such a way that their presence renders this space impermeable and impenetrable by human hands or force. Mattiotti frequently referred to Francesca’s longing for the solitude of her private cell, located in a remote corner of the Palazzo Ponziani, where she could lock the door and prepare for the Devil to arrive.21 His texts of the battaglie also powerfully highlight the crescendo of physical mortification that, simultaneous with beatific visions, marked the last years of the beata’s life. Francesca’s stringent regimen of penitential exercises included vigils, fasts, and bodily mortifications, and can be understood as a type of corporeal and spiritual training in anticipation of the fierce battles with the Devil that she knew awaited her.22 Her virility, bravery, and constancy (virilitate, animositate, constantia) in the face of the demonic, virtues that were historically praised as masculine, were repeatedly ascribed to Francesca throughout her life. References to these virtues appear throughout the battaglia narratives and recall the heroic sanctity of the early monk saints and Christian martyrs.23 As discussed in the previous chapter, retiring to the desolation of her cell became a practice akin to those of the hermit saints who took refuge in the desert, an association that is clearly made in the panel in which the Devil appears to her disguised as Sant’Onofrio, an eremitic monk who wandered the Egyptian desert (Plate 20).24 The image of Francesca sealed in a room with a disgusting corpse makes visible the secluded and solitary place where she confronted the polymorphous incarnations of the Devil and his followers. Here, the painter represented both the architectural structure of a physical room and an imagined place that is only accessible through heroic faith and divinely inspired will. In order to reinforce this point pictorially, what should have been depicted as a wood or tile floor typical of a fifteenth-century palazzo was rendered as grass-covered ground, with an uneven surface and a shaded, sloped mound in the foreground.25 Though Mattiotti’s recounting of this particular battle indicated that the encounter took place only inside Francesca’s room, with the Devil entering and exiting freely, the fresco painter created an ambiguous space that allows the viewer to imagine the possibility of demonic encounter outside the limits

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of the palazzo or, in the case of the oblates, of the refectory. The ground extends beyond the corners of the fictive room and outwards to the painted pilasters, pushing the figures of the Devil, Francesca, and the corpse to the front of the picture plane and toward the viewers. The space could then be interpreted in multiple ways: certainly as Francesca’s camera, but also as an enclosed courtyard or any number of places beyond the limits of the room or within the scope of imagination. In this way, the corpse fresco effectively offered the oblates a window into the larger world of temptation by expanding the physical and imaginative boundaries of Francesca’s demonic encounters. The oblates of Tor de’Specchi sought to reconcile monastic ideals – by retiring to a communal space – with everyday lay practice in the form of charitable service among Rome’s poor. As discussed above, the community combined both a private conventual existence and a visible presence in the city, working, among other places, in the great papal hospital of Santo Spirito as well as in the small hospice of Santa Maria in Cappella in Trastevere.26 This dual existence frequently placed the oblates in harm’s way, as they were exposed to the infamous dangers and temptations of the Roman streets when they ventured beyond the safety of Tor de’Specchi. In fact, some of the battaglia narratives are set outside of the Ponziani palace, often in specifically named locations in Rome. In one instance, Francesca reported that a demonic encounter occurred when she and her sister-in-law, Vanozza, were navigating a remote path on their way to pray at the church of San Giovanni in Laterano. En route to the church, on a dark and rocky street (via Merolana), they encountered an old bearded man who attempted to have his way with them, saying,Io vorria da voi uno piacere. Vanozza, terrified of being assaulted, fell to her knees to pray for deliverance. At the same time, Francesca discerned that their assailant was not an old man but, in fact, the Devil in disguise. Brave and emboldened due to her extraordinary virtue, and buttressed by divine will, she subsequently chastised the demon so severely that he was forced to flee, leaving the two women to resume their peregrinations unharmed.27 The image of their founder encountering the Devil in all his wily incarnations, as well as those in true need of succor in the streets, continually reminded the Oblates of Francesca Romana of the vulnerability and instability inherent in their mission outside the confines of the monastery. As a counterbalance, they would remember the efficacy and necessity of daily prayer and spiritual fortification as a community in order to remain vigilant in the face of the same. The painted renderings of sparse, colorless, and ambiguous settings within the refectory panels allowed for diverse and fluid interpretations of Mattiotti’s battaglia narratives, and encouraged meditative viewing. If Francesca’s cella was the place where she encountered – and overcame – sin, fear, and temptation at the hands of the Devil, then the refectory images recreated that site while simultaneously articulating physical and imaginative spaces where the oblates could safely confront their own demons.

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Inviolable Bodies The theme of sexual peril as a threat to a woman’s noble virtue (nobile honesta) is set up at the beginning of the Trattati and powerfully evoked in several of the refectory frescoes. In the panel of the temptation with the corpse, Francesca’s head is positioned at the center of an axis mediating between the demonic and divine, and offered the viewing oblates a focal point for meditation on this struggle. Her glowing halo overlaps the robe of her guardian angel; her white cloth veil hangs as a perpendicular extension of the wispy cloud that supports him. Her body, wedged between the demon and the rotting cadaver, acts as the fulcrum of a fan-like construction, teetering between the rigid muscularity of the standing, bat-winged devil and the prone, decaying corpse. With disproportionately large arms reflexively outstretched, she resists both the pull of gravity and the forceful shoving of her diabolic oppressor. In his provocative stance, the figure of the Devil clearly evokes the “dishonest carnal vice” and sin of sodomy that Francesca’s demonic tempters acted out in this and subsequent visions. With taut legs spread wide, he balances himself on the sharp claws of his talon-like feet. He is naked but for the shaggy patch of pubic fur that tantalizingly brushes the back of the beata’s skirt. Both of his very human-looking hands are planted firmly on her shoulders, and his arms are extended to form an arc that is duplicated in Francesca’s pose as she attempts to break her fall. The oblates were thus visually invited to make comparisons every time they sat down to meals: naked vs. clothed, horns vs. halo, vice vs. virtue. The explicit pairing of violence and sexuality is graphically repeated in two other refectory panels: Francesca beaten with animal tendons (Plate 22), and Francesca shoved out the doorway of her cell and her prayer books destroyed (Plate 25). In the former, the setting is again a composite space in which an arcaded loggia, a wall with a door, and a sloping landscape seamlessly blend into a contiguous background, once again conflating inside with outside. In this instance, three demons appear and savagely beat Francesca with animal tendons (nervi di animali).28 As her guardian angel looks on, the devils unflinchingly assault her. The first clutches the back of her head as he prepares to strike; another grabs at her veil in an attempt to pull it off; and the third, standing squarely behind her, reaches around her waist to fondle the front folds of her skirt. A strikingly similar violent embrace can be seen in contemporary images on marriage chests (cassoni) and painted panels (spalliere) that often depicted mythological scenes of amorous pursuit and rape.29 For example, Antonio del Pollaiuolo’s panel painting of Apollo and Daphne, drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, depicts the pivotal moment of contact between the ill-fated couple (Figure 44). According to the dramatic pastoral narrative, Apollo, spurred on by Cupid’s intervention, falls in love with the nymph Daphne, who is bound to flee his advances. It is a story of amorous

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Figure 44: Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Apollo and Daphne, c. 1470–1480. © National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY

pursuit in which Daphne only escapes Apollo by appealing to her father, the river god Peneus, who turns her into a laurel tree to save her.30 Pollaiuolo effectively captured the critical elements of the story in a manner evocative of the courtly love tales and painted poesie favored in noble circles of the fifteenth century. As her arms are transformed into laurel branches, Daphne becomes part of the pastoral landscape. Though she appears to be rooted to the earth, the speed of the chase and the events of her subsequent capture are evidenced by her loose, windblown hair and one creamy, exposed leg that wraps around Apollo’s bent knee. In feverish pursuit, the young lover lunges toward the nymph, his hair and scarf rippling in a rush of air. As he finally overtakes her, Apollo peers up at the object of his desire, while she casts her eyes downward to avoid his gaze. This is a moment of transition and transformation, but also of force and resistance, suggested by Pollaiuolo through his dynamic portrayal of falling and forward motion. Two spalliere panels by Botticelli contain similar portrayals of pursuit and sexual assault: the Primavera, a mythological narrative commissioned for the wedding of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco d’ Medici to Semiramide d’Appiani (c. 1482); and Nastagio in the Pinewoods of Ravenna (c. 1483), commissioned on the occasion of the marriage of Gianozzo Pucci to Lucrezia Bini (Figures 45, 46).31

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Figure 45: Sandro Botticelli, Primavera, c. 1482, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 46: Sandro Botticelli, The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, 1st panel, c. 1483, Museo del Prado, Madrid. Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

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In the initial scene of the complex composition of the Primavera (reading right to left), Zephyrus, the West Wind, pursues the nymph Chloris, who would subsequently be transformed into Flora. Derived from Ovid’s Fasti, the three figures simultaneously represent Zephyrus’s intent to ravish Chloris, her subsequent rape by him, and the violence seemingly resolved through their marriage.32 Amid the festive atmosphere and verdant setting of the Primavera, the brutality of the rape scene is evoked through the haunted appearance of Chloris and her panic-stricken stance as she falls prey to her pursuer. In contrast to the upright and gaily dressed Flora, the contours of Chloris’s body are plainly visible through the sheer, barely articulated fabric that clings to her form. Her hair hangs loose and wild. As she anxiously turns to look back at Zephyrus, he forcefully seizes her under the arm with his icy blue hand. Even more alarming is the grim scene on the Nastagio panel, which recreates a story from Boccaccio’s Decameron.33 According to the narrative, a young nobleman named Nastagio degli Onesti was walking through a forest when he encountered a terrified young maiden, screaming and running frantically in his direction. Inexplicably, the maiden was naked, and fleeing from a sword-wielding knight astride a galloping white horse. The knight subsequently overtook the vulnerable young woman, killed her, and commanded his hunting dogs to eat her heart and entrails. In Botticelli’s rendering the nude woman, who is the clear focal point of the panel, falls helplessly toward the ground in a pose that is reminiscent of Chloris. The painter depicted the maiden precariously balanced on one bent leg, with the other kicking out behind her, to represent her desperate attempt to flee. Her breasts and pubis are barely covered by a filmy swath of white fabric, and her hair tumbles loosely down her back. She thrusts her arms forward to break her fall, yet she gazes skyward as she screams in vain for help. Lilian Zirpolo convincingly argued that images of conquest and rape, which often decorated quattrocento cassoni and spalliere destined for private bedchambers, served as a moralizing lesson for the noble bride in an era of arranged, strategic marriage alliances. The ideals of chastity, virtue, and submission to one’s husband were important models for the woman who was about to make the transition from her natal to her marital family. In the context of quattrocento marriage rituals, the images played an integral role in a woman’s physical transformation from the status of maiden to wife as the cassoni, which contained the bride’s trousseau, were displayed at the time of a festive procession from a woman’s childhood home to that of her future husband in celebration of the impending marriage.34 Both Pollaiuolo and Botticelli employed longstanding iconographic conventions in their respective depictions of amorous conquest and sexual assault. Looking further back, fourteenth-century manuscript illuminations that portrayed sexual rape showed male assailants grabbing a woman from behind, indicating a sneak attack. The rapist was depicted fondling his victim’s hair, grasping her by the wrist, shoulder, or waist (an indication of force), and pressing his face and body close to hers.35

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Illuminations in medieval picture bibles represented female victims of rape with flowing hair and with their heads exposed (i.e. without a head cloth), which was often the viewer’s only indication of a sexual assault. The loose hair, wild, disheveled appearance, and torn clothing of the female protagonists in the fifteenth-century images were even more pronounced, and served not only as compelling pictorial depictions of rape but also displayed visual evidence considered sufficient for an accusation of sexual assault in the medieval court system.36 Further, a woman’s vocal outcry, like the screams of Nastagio’s fleeing victim in the forest of Ravenna, was also grounds for a rape conviction according to both contemporary and biblical law.37 This iconography on cassone and spalliera panels made for noble domestic spaces like the natal homes of the Roman oblates was employed in the didactic imagery of their new monastic quarters. To the group of gentlewomen gathered before the fresco panels in the refectory of Tor de’Specchi, the images undeniably embodied contemporary pictorial conventions for the representation of sexual assault within the framework of Francesca’s demonic encounters. Demons unabashedly grab the beata by the wrist, shoulder, and waist in a show of brute force. They attempt to besmirch her honorable status by tugging off the veil that she wore as a sign of her holy vows. They clutch her in the most unholy of embraces, and breathe the flames of Hell into her ears and onto her neck. Rendered with the same iconography as Botticelli’s Chloris and Pollaiuolo’s Daphne, Francesca falls away from the sadistic Devil as he attempts to lure her into the sin of carnal lust that we know she vehemently despised. Yet, the frescoes at Tor de’Specchi were commissioned for the communal dining space of a monastic community, and not for the private quarters of a married woman or a newly-wed couple. Therefore, they must be understood in terms of their relationship to the transformational and liminal period of each oblate’s transition from the privileged, secular sphere of Roman aristocratic society to that of chaste servant of God within a female religious community. Construed as a sort of systematic opposition to her beatific visions, the world of Francesca’s demonic encounters can be characterized as one of nature run wild and a place of corruption seething with lust.38 According to the battaglia narratives, when the demons were at their most irate, they tossed the beata about (as in the encounter with the corpse) or threw her into walls, leaving her battered and bruised. After one particularly violent bout, the bottoms of Francesca’s feet were left severely burned.39 During another, the Devil held the saint by her braided hair and dangled her above the street from the balcony of her room.40 As evidence of their wily and seductive nature, the Devil and his accomplices appeared to Francesca as untamed wolves, lions, boars, and monkeys and in the reptilian (and phallic) forms of dragons, asps, vipers, and other snakes – almost all of which are depicted in the refectory cycle. Mattiotti’s Trattati were written in vivid sensory language, invoking the powerful presence of filth and pollution. The sense of smell is particularly prominent, embodied in the constant repetition of the “fetid demons” and, in the case of the corpse narrative, in the putrid, decaying cadaver. Throughout the texts, then, the fear of

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Figure 47: Rotting corpse, detail of Plate 24.

pollution is inextricably linked with the masculinity and sexuality of the demons, which are dirty, erotically charged, and even contagious.41 According to canonization witnesses, Francesca covered her hands with a cloth to protect her body from the stain of touching men; and, as recounted in the narrative of the vision of the corpse, she smelled the stench of demons when she passed men on the street who were sexual sinners. She reportedly viewed her marriage as an obstacle on the pathway to sanctity, and her documented aversion to sexual relations was made physically apparent when she vomited and coughed up blood following intercourse.42 In light of these attestations, we can imagine the tension between the desire of the quattrocento Oblates of Francesca Romana to enjoy nourishment in the refectory at Tor de’Specchi and the images and spoken texts that they consumed along with their meals. The putrid stench of the rotting corpse as recounted in the text of the battles was powerfully evoked in the related fresco through the image of the half-eaten ribcage of the prone demonic body devoured by ravenous worms (Figure 47). Described in Mattiotti’s text as appearing in the form of a dead man, the decaying demon of the refectory panel perpetually antagonizes the beleaguered, toppling Francesca. His right arm appears emaciated, nearly rotted to the bone, yet the sinister left hand remains unnaturally fleshy

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Figure 48: Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Lamentation over a Dead Hero, c. 1450–1500. By kind permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London/Art Resource, NY.

and lifelike as he provocatively reaches for the hem of her skirt. He seems to be lifting his torso from the floor with muscles that no longer exist as his head flops backward under the weight of his filthy hair. He is the embodiment of an unholy death, the grim and inevitable result of a life of sin – in this particular case, the sin of lust. The stench recalled through the act of internalizing the fresco imagery would have mitigated any olfactory pleasure that the oblates derived from their daily bread. Gluttony, considered to be the root of all other vices, was particularly associated with the Devil as he reputedly entered the bodies of unsuspecting victims through the mouth or the ears.43 If, as the Trattati recount, Francesca was able to eat but a few morsels of food after being soiled by the worm-laden cadaver, then the corpse image would have pointed her followers toward asceticism and moderation in their own dining practices and corporeal gratification. The detailed portrayal of the figure of the decaying cadaver in the Tor de’Specchi refectory is a perversion of contemporary images that were meant to arouse compassion and anguish in very different contexts, such as the heroic dead youth portrayed in a drawing made after a composition by Antonio del Pollaiuolo and epitomized later in Mantegna’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ (Figure 48).44 In both the Tor de’Specchi fresco and the copy of the Pollaiuolo drawing, a prone dead body is prominently laid out for the viewer and shown with long, loose hair, a heavy head that hangs back without volition, and lips slightly parted. The youthful countenance and smooth, elongated muscularity of the naked man in the drawing, who is clearly mourned over by the wailing figures around him, suggest a fallen hero

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cut down in his prime and destined for a proper burial. In contrast, the wizened features and gnawed flesh of the unnaturally lifelike refectory corpse inspire repulsion and foreboding. Metaphorically, he is akin to the popular vanitas figures such as the skeleton laid on a tomb slab depicted at the bottom of Masaccio’s fresco of the Trinity in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, which reminds us in an inscription, “I was once what you are, and what I am, you also shall be.”45 Paired with the image of the Trinity, Masaccio’s skeleton was both a memento mori and an affirmation of eternal salvation for the believer in the message of Christ’s Crucifixion. He embodies the promise that Death has no victory over the believer who, having died with Christ in baptism, hopes one day to rise with him and “walk in newness of life” with God.46 While on one level the corpse in the Tor de’Specchi refectory may have been meant to function in the same way as Masaccio’s skeleton, the image of a semi-decayed cadaver – with his ribs, spine, and viscera already picked clean by the ravenous worms – more overtly conveyed a warning to the oblates about the results of giving oneself over to the Devil’s temptation, and of the final consequence of a sinful life. The oblates would have recognized the decaying demon as the antithesis of the steadfast, pure, and pious Francesca whose image, which was replicated many times around the monastery, provided them with a daily model of proper behavior. Their own monastic garb mirrored the dress of their founder as prescribed by the Virgin in the same vision in which Francesca received her Rule: The first petticoat of white signifies purity, faith right and true, and the fortification of the heart that keeps the hands innocent and always purified for God; the second skirt should be black, made of coarse cloth without ornament, to remind them to be always prepared for omnipresent death and final judgment; their mantle should be of rough whitened linen, signifying holy obedience […] understood through discomfort and penance.47

The oblates’ mode of dress was understood as a symbolic and physical barrier that provided the community with constant visual (through the painted image of ­Francesca and also by seeing one another in identical dress) and corporeal (through the prickly, coarse cloth) stimulus to keep their founder before them in everything they did. The imagined impenetrability of their clothing was one way of steeling themselves against the onslaught of demonic forces, and recalled the heroic virility, constancy, and bravery exhibited by Francesca. Throughout the refectory cycle, Francesca is the very picture of serenity and invulnerability (impassibilitas) when confronted with every possible incarnation of the Devil.48 Her face expressionless and untroubled, she neither flinches nor moves to defend herself against the torrent of abuse inflicted upon her person, but remains impervious to it and seemingly incapable of physical sensation. This is particularly evident in an image of Francesca beaten with dead snakes (Plate 23).49 Here,

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Figure 49: Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Nude Dancers, c. 1465, Villa Galletti, Arcetri, Florence. © DeA Picture Library/Art Resource, NY.

Francesca is rendered in a classic contrapposto stance at the center foreground of the panel, her bent left leg barely articulated beneath the weight of her heavy woolen skirt. She tilts her head slightly to fix her gaze at a point somewhere in the distance, raising her hands in a gesture of humility and astonishment, without attempting to stop the blows from the snake-wielding demons. Behind her, three naked, muscular demons – one in the guise of a satyr – leap in a satanic dance as they strike her with serpentine whips. The same satanic movements can be seen in the animated male nudes in Pollaiuolo’s courtly frescoes made for the noble Lanfredini family at the Villa La Gallina in Florence (Figure 49). Modeled after sculpted relief figures of antiquity, the La Gallina nudes represented a rhythmic, exotic moresca (morris dance), traditionally performed by reveling men who leapt and gestured in a show of agility and expressivity.50 This was a suitable theme for a villa, a country house and place of otium where humanist patrons delighted in viewing and discussing imagery that evoked the classical past. At Tor de’Specchi, however, these same figures represented temptations to be faced in the here and now, and signified the persistent demonic forces that the oblates endeavored to identify and avoid.

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In his treatise on painting, Alberti asserted that the movements (pose, facial expressions, and attitude) of bodies in an istoria should reflect their internal states, or “movements of their souls.”51 Filarete expressed similar notions, using the figures of saints as particular examples: Actions, modes, poses, and everything should correspond to [a figure’s] nature, age and quality. You should be aware of these differences when you have to make a figure of a saint or of a person who wears a different habit. Saints as well should conform to their quality. If you have to make St. Anthony, he should not be timid, but bold like the St. George that Donatello did, which is truly an excellent and perfect figure. The figure is of marble on Orto San Michele in Florence. If you have to make a St. Michael who kills the Devil, he should not be timid. If you have to make St. Francis, he should not be bold but timid and devout. Saint Paul should be bold, robust.52

What of Santa Francesca Romana? The juxtaposition of the evil, expressed by the violent motions of the demons, with the placidity and serenity embodied in the figure of Francesca gives us insight into the ways in which the artist(s) at Tor de’Specchi worked out this pictorial challenge. The phallic snakes recall the moment of original sin, especially when wielded by the brawny demons. The image is composed as if depicting two realities: one in which the active, menacing demons virtually consume the space of Francesca’s cell; and one in which the saint and her guardian angel almost passively weather the onslaught. As in the images discussed above, the space portrayed is stripped of all excess ornamentation or furniture; the doorway on the left side of the panel is the viewer’s only indication of the setting for this scene. The monochromatic palette and plain backdrop effectively make the figures of the demons appear sculptural and three-dimensional. The elbow, thigh, and knee of the demon on the far left extend beyond the limits of the fictive room, breaking the picture plane and giving him the potential to fly out of the painting at any moment. When viewed by candlelight, as these frescoes surely were, the deep cast of the shadows and bright white highlights on the muscular torsos, biceps, and legs of the nude demons would have heightened the sensual ambiance of the already warm and fragrant refectory. In contrast, when the community focused on the figure of Francesca, they saw the very image of impassibilitas. In her relaxed contrapposto stance and the modest monastic garb that covers all but her face and hands, she appears to her oblates as steadfast, inviolable, and still. She gazes off at a point somewhere far outside the panel, and clear of the refectory – placing herself beyond the reach of the demons and their serpentine whips. The figure of Francesca in this image bears striking resemblance to the figure of Christ in Luca Signorelli’s painted panel of the Flagellation, which was commissioned as a processional banner for the flagellant Confraternita dei Raccomandati

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Figure 50: Luca Signorelli, Flagellation, c. 1482–1485, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

in Fabriano (Figure 50).53 Lashed to a marble column before a fictive architectural setting that looks like a Roman triumphal arch, Signorelli’s naked Christ appears in the same resigned contrapposto pose. His hands are tied behind him, but his countenance is fixed and serene as he passively endures the whipping by his tormenters. Pontius Pilate – who occupies the same pictorial space as Francesca’s guardian angel in the Tor de’Specchi panel – looks on from his elevated throne while one of his thuglike centurions prances mockingly in anticipation of the event. In both Signorelli’s painting and the Tor de’Specchi fresco, the figures of the divine protagonists are meant to be seen as possessing both extraordinary humility and heroic virtue. In the context of imagery commissioned for penitential communities, viewers would have been called upon to empathize with that figure’s suffering and to imitate the same in seeking divine favor. They would have been reminded of images of early Roman martyrs such as St. Lawrence, who stoically suffered the gridiron, or St. Agnes, who piously endured rape, stabbing, and burning. Likewise, Francesca’s own voluntary ascetic regimen, which notably included self-flagellation and mortification of the body through wearing a cilice and dripping hot wax on her naked flesh, would have been specifically recalled by her oblates as they meditated upon the images of demonic torture in their own refectory.54

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Yet, in contrast to the exposed bodies of Christ and the martyr saints, Francesca was depicted in chaste attire as befitted a pious noblewoman and doubly fortified by the resolutely monastic style of her dress. Her body is covered from head to foot, with only her hands and parts of her face showing. Looking again at the image of temptation with the corpse, her seemingly compliant but wholly virtuous body is caught between two corrupt bodies that together represent both the temptation to commit the mortal sin of lust and the consequences of doing so (Plate 24). Visualized as perpetually caught in the throes of a struggle to maintain a chaste and pious existence in order to obtain eternal salvation, Francesca – as exemplar for her oblates – continually faces the disastrous result of yielding to the Devil’s temptation: she is seen forever in the precipitous act of falling onto the worm-laden corpse. As in all ten scenes, this one is presided over by her ever-present guardian angel, reminding the oblates that they too must turn to the divine in order to fortify themselves in the struggle against demonic forces. Though Francesca’s guardian angel is not mentioned in the text of this particular battle, Mattiotti’s Trattati related that whenever the beata was suffering the greatest oppression from demons, so much so that her body was about to perish, her angel would move his head slightly and with such grace and beauty that his “lovely hair would give off magnificent splendor and light,” consoling Francesca and compelling the demons to depart.55 Francesca Ponziani died in 1440 on March 9, which is still celebrated as her feast day. Her death did not occur at the convent of Tor de’Specchi, but in the Ponziani palace, where she contracted a fever while visiting her ailing son. The fresco panel depicting Francesca’s death in the adjacent oratory testifies that in the end she successfully triumphed over earthly temptation.56 As discussed above, Francesca was clearly ill, though is shown sitting serenely upright on her deathbed as her soul, portrayed as a small androgynous figure, is lifted toward Heaven and into the arms of Christ. A group of oblates kneels in prayer at her bedside and watches as her spirit is guided toward the next life on a lamp-lit pathway strewn with flowers (Plate 11). In 1485 – the same year that the demon frescoes were made – the body of a Roman maiden, then believed to be Cicero’s daughter, was discovered when three ancient sarcophagi were excavated near the via Appia. A Venetian chronicler recorded the event and made a drawing of the exhumed cadaver. According to his account, the body of the young girl was completely intact and her face “so agreeable and charming that not many would believe it to be 1500 years old or more.”57 In fact, he drew the pristine maiden exactly this way, with creamy, smooth skin, perfect limbs, serene expression, and elegantly coiffed hair. Her head rests on a makeshift pillow as though she were merely taking a nap (Figure 51). The discovery of the ancient body caused such a sensation in Rome that it was displayed for several days on the Capitoline hill, just steps from the monastery of Tor de’Specchi.58 For the nearby oblates, who certainly had the opportunity to view the maiden, the image of an uncorrupt female cadaver – even a pre-Christian or

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Figure 51: Body of a Roman Maiden, from the sylloge of Bartholomeus Fontius, MS Lat. Misc. d. 85, f. 161v. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.

pagan one – would have been understood to have been in a state of piety, chastity, and virginity at the time of death, in the same way that Francesca’s incorrupt corpse was considered evidence of her purity and sanctity at the hearings to promote her canonization.59 Throughout the Vitae of saints dating back to early Christianity, sexuality and eroticism were evoked to praise the heroic preservation of virginity and chastity of the saint in the face of corporeal temptation. Increasingly during the later medieval period, the sexuality of female saints was often re-routed into a mystical marriage with Christ, expressed in erotically charged terms and associated with a woman’s fervent wish to be released from familial and conjugal duties in order to pursue a religious vocation.60 Carnality was represented as a struggle throughout women’s lives, whereas sexual temptation of male saints was characterized as only one obstacle (albeit an important one) to be conquered along the spiritual journey of the protagonist. Rejection of the flesh was the indispensable first step on the path toward spiritual perfection, and though renunciation of sex did not qualify someone as a saint, yielding to sexual temptation was a sure way to be disqualified.61 Unlike the brides who surrendered their virginity in the service of conjugal duty and procreation, which they were

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reminded of daily in domestic forms such as the rape imagery on painted furniture, the widows and virgins entering communal life sought to reclaim (or maintain) their virginity in the service of God. Women’s sexuality was therefore framed in moral and psychological terms, and it was assumed that the desire for erotic union could shift from actual physical relations toward mystical union with the Divine. In the case of Francesca Ponziani, this shift occurred only after she and her husband agreed to a chaste marriage.62 Though she continued to live with her husband and share his bed, it was at this point that Francesca began to receive ecstatic visions as well as demonic visitation and temptation; and it was during this same period that she founded the open monastery that would become the community at Tor de’Specchi.63 The concept of spiritual virginity or “virginity of the mind” as a transformative and salvific option for medieval women has been studied by historians of female religiosity. The dissolution of the conjugal union of marriage and the adoption of the mantle of religious life, fully realized when Francesca and her oblates crossed the threshold to take up residence at Tor de’Specchi, marked an ideological and presumably physical shift (in the case of those previously married) to a state of perpetual “virginity.”64 By effectively closing off her body to sexual relations and re-establishing a chaste public and private countenance, Francesca Ponziani opened herself – and consequently the oblates who adopted her Rule – to the continuous onslaught of the insatiable Devil. The artist(s) who were commissioned to illustrate Francesca’s nocturnal temptations in the Tor de’Specchi refectory therefore faced the challenge of depicting both the “movements of the soul” of a chaste would-be saint and the virilitate, animositate, and constantia of a woman who could stand up to the Devil. Clearly, they drew on contemporary theoretical and pictorial models, like the dying Francesca in the adjacent oratory or Signorelli’s Christ, to establish the basis for representing Francesca’s extraordinary piety as a model for her oblates. But the embattled (and victorious) Francesca, imbued with heroic virtues not often seen in a female figure, was best imagined in the contraposition of the powerful demonic beings that she faced.

The Devil in the Refectory Painted representations of the Devil and demons during the fifteenth century ranged from scaly, reptilian beings recalling the serpent or great dragon of the Apocalypse to furry, monstrous creatures with bat-wings and pitchforks.65 Cosimo Rosselli imagined a tiny, monkey-like devil whispering into Judas’s ear in his fresco of the Last Supper for the Sistine Chapel walls (1481–1482). In Botticelli’s nearby rendering of The Three Temptations of Christ, painted only two years before the Tor de’Specchi cycle, the Devil wears a monk’s habit and appears as a hermit in two scenes, only to be exposed in his nakedness as a hairy, claw-footed beast with sagging breasts and

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a bushy tail in a third. But nowhere was the Devil more immediate for the oblates of Tor de’Specchi than in the vision of Hell frescoed 20 years earlier in their own oratory (Plate 8). In this colorful image Satan looms large, spanning the entire height of the fresco as he reigns over a blazing inferno. He is rendered in an ashen charcoal hue, and named in a bold white script caption inscribed beneath his buttocks. His demonic henchmen, shown as smaller versions of himself, torture every manner of sinner in discrete compartments that make up a schematic version of Hell.66 Blood red flames leap out between his powerful thighs, and a thick, green serpent slithers upward behind his back and wings. Like the devils in the refectory frescoes, he is rendered with a muscular abdomen and chest that seem more human than beastly. Yet, he has claws at the ends of his fingers and monstrously large talon-like feet; his face is hideous and mask-like, with a long, sharp, hooked nose and hooded eyes that glow an eerie green. Most innovative and provocative about the Tor de’Specchi refectory cycle, then, is the portrayal of the Devil and his co-tempters as muscular male nudes that are recognizably based on human form, proportion, and scale. In the image of Francesca beaten with animal tendons, for example, the figures of the demons have horns, wings, and tails, much like the Devil in the oratory, which would have made them immediately recognizable as devilish beings (Plate 22). Yet, they are sculptural, shaded, and modeled and seem to share the perceptible, familiar world of Francesca Romana and her oblates. The frescoes of the Tor de’Specchi demons can be connected to a growing ability and preoccupation on the part of quattrocento artists with rendering anatomically accurate and energetic representations of the body, and the practice of life drawing. Convincing depictions of the male nude displayed a concern for realistic narrative imagery, stimulated by humanist ideas codified by Leon Battista Alberti, who advised painters both to study sculpted bodies of classical antiquity and to draw from nature.67 Parallels between Alberti’s advice and techniques used in figural studies by Tuscan draftsmen of the mid-fifteenth century indicate both the influence of early Renaissance intellectual concepts and the increasing value given to drawing as a medium for investigating the dynamics of human anatomy.68 The frescoes of the Tor de’Specchi refectory are clearly based on these principles. Comparison between the demon poised between Francesca and her guardian angel from the animal tendons panel and Antonio Pollaiuolo’s contemporary masterful engraving of The Battle of the Nudes reveals the ability of the Tor de’Specchi artist(s) in rendering forceful movements of the body and anatomically difficult positions that clearly are rooted in the same tradition (Figure 52).69 Like Pollaiuolo’s figures who heroically brandish swords, this refectory demon reaches back to strike forward as he prepares to beat Francesca with his bull whip. He is balanced and poised as he lunges, with his muscles taut, ready to spring. He has fully human facial features, and his lips are parted as if he is about to speak. Deliberate details such as the hair on his head, the dark patches under his arms, prominent navel, and barely

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Figure 52: Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Battle of the Nudes, detail, c. 1470–1475. Musée du Petit Palais, Paris. Scala/ White Images/Art Resource, NY.

concealed genitals evoke a type of sensuality that perhaps goes beyond the virility of the Pollaiuolo figures in his role as demonic tempter. Considering the circle of prominent Florentine and Tuscan artists brought to Rome to paint the mural cycle on the Sistine Chapel walls in the early 1480s, it is certain that workshop drawings, preparatory studies, and copies of paintings would have been diffused in the city at the time of the commission for the Tor de’Specchi refectory frescoes. We can see from a comparison between a Luca Signorelli chalk drawing of a nude man seen from behind and the demon with his back to the viewer on the right side of the same fresco that the artist(s) working on the refectory cycle had access to precisely this type of imagery (Figure 53). The tension and dynamism felt in the pose of both the Tor de’Specchi and Signorelli figures is rendered through the clear outline, contour, and shadow of the back, buttocks, and powerful thigh and calf muscles. The tonal range used by Signorelli in his drawing to create a convincing anatomical structure is ably achieved in the painted refectory images through the use of terra verde. Though terra verde was clearly an apt choice for the illustration of eerie nocturnal battle scenes, it was also a very effective technique for representing sculptural modeling and light, shadow, and form based on nude figure studies.70 We almost forget that our refectory demon has a tail, horns, and wings as we are drawn to the familiar stance of the figure and wonder where we have seen him before.

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Figure 53: Luca Signorelli, Nude male seen from behind. Photo: Rene-Gabriel Ojeda, Bayonne. © RMN-Grand Palais/ Art Resource, NY.

It is precisely the addition of these demonic attributes to the beautifully articulated bodies that makes the refectory demons antithetical to the heroic all’antica nudes of Signorelli’s drawing and Pollaiuolo’s engraving. The gravitas embodied in the powerful stance of Signorelli’s nude man is corrupted by the clawed talons, curly tail, and protruding bat-wings of his demonic counterpart in the refectory – a combination that would be fully realized 20 years later in Signorelli’s masterful frescoes in the San Brizio Chapel in Orvieto.71 The commanding bravery of the Pollaiuolo figures is undermined by the ram’s horns and the elfin ears of the tendon-wielding Devil. But, most importantly, the depiction of the demonic beings as the antithesis of the heroic nude emphasized the constancy, heroic sanctity, and virtù embodied in the figure of Santa Francesca Romana. Viewed in this way, her oblates could work to reconcile their own spiritual conflicts and quest for salvation through the imitation of both the projected modesty and inner fortitude of their founder as imagined in the refectory frescoes. While it is tempting to say that Signorelli or Pollaiuolo – both of whom were working in Rome in the 1480s – had a hand in the Tor de’Specchi frescoes, we know that drawings and engravings were shared within and among workshops of this period,

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and it appears certain that the Tor de’Specchi artist(s) participated in that exchange.72 Although living full time in the monastery on the Capitoline Hill, the oblates of the beata Francesca, through their prominent familial and social connections, would have been in touch with intellectual and artistic networks that were blossoming in papal Rome during this period.73 As sophisticated and discerning patrons, they would have had access to imagery and ideas associated with the workshops of artists like Signorelli and Pollaiuolo, and possibly to the artists themselves.74 First and foremost, the Tor de’Specchi refectory cycle was meant to illustrate the accounts of Francesca Ponziani’s ongoing battles with demonic forces as recorded in her Vita and as read aloud to the oblates who dined in front of them. Yet, the refectory demons painted in 1485 showcase a growing awareness and virtuosity in the representation of convincing movement and form, creating a sense of urgency and immediacy for the viewing oblates. All recent knowledge and skill in illustrating human anatomy went into the animated renderings of the nude male bodies of the corpse, demons, and the Devil, while those of Francesca and the sexless, childlike angel were made to be chaste, pious, and impassible. The tension between force and resistance set up in the refectory panels illuminates much about the dual and often conflicting nature of the specific type of Roman community founded by Francesca Ponziani at Tor de’Specchi. Taking part equally in two distinct realms – contemplative retirement to a monastic space and active charity on the streets of Rome – created both internal and external conflict for the Oblates of Francesca Romana. The tight, enclosed space depicted in the scene of temptation with the corpse, with its doors sealed to human hands but clearly accessible to angels and demons, also represents the bodies of Francesca and her oblates – closed and sequestered, but always potentially permeable and violable. The provocative Devil, with his hands firmly planted on Francesca’s shoulders and his nearly exposed genitals precariously close to hers, makes plain the sin of lust so despised by the saint. The fan-like, triangular composition of the three distinct and recognizably human figures – the Devil, Francesca, and the rotting corpse – forms a frozen tableau illustrating the dangerously unstable position that the oblates often found themselves in: between the life that they chose to abandon and the potential for either salvation, by turning toward the divine, or damnation in the form of decay and worm-eaten flesh. In their refectory frescoes, then, the oblates of Tor de’Specchi were offered a potent and powerful reminder of the dangers of succumbing to temptation through the example of the tortured, but ultimately inviolable, body of their founder, Francesca Ponziani. But they also found new and varied ways of recognizing the image and body of the Devil and, increasingly, that it was possible for him to look like the man next door.



Epilogue: Imagining the Canonization of Francesca Romana

On May 29, 1608, Camillo Borghese celebrated the third anniversary of his coronation as Pope Paul V – an auspicious day for the Roman pontiff – by canonizing Francesca Bussa de’Ponziani. Francesca was only the third person elevated to sainthood in the wake of the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and the first woman to be canonized since 1461, when her contemporary, Catherine of Siena, was made a saint.1 In preparation for the lavish ecclesiastical ceremonies staged to herald the canonization of Santa Francesca Romana, St. Peter’s Basilica and square were transformed into virtual stages for papal pageantry. At that time, the new (current) Basilica of San Pietro was still under construction; thus, furniture and ceremonial structures were either rearranged or built particularly for Francesca’s canonization festivities. Three ephemeral triumphal arches were erected around the main portals of the basilica, decorated with original oil paintings and embellished with flowers and fruit garlands made of papier-mâché. Great swaths of gold, silver, and green brocade festooned the interior walls of the basilica. Enormous tapestries and banners were hung over the main altar and from the ceiling of a makeshift “theater” erected for the event, all dazzlingly illuminated by blazing torches and hundreds of white wax candles.2 Outside the church, trumpets blared, bells pealed, cannons were fired, and the Pope’s Sistine choir sang the “Ave Maria,” all while a magnificent procession of ecclesiastical and civic dignitaries wended its way through the Piazza San Pietro in anticipation of the formal papal benediction and canonization rites.3 Official recognition of Francesca Ponziani at this particular moment (168 years after her death and initial canonization proceedings) was as much about papal politics and Counter-Reformation spiritual ideals as about the long overdue elevation of a local holy woman to the sacred altar. The first decades of the seicento also heralded a crucial shift in the complexion and mission of the community of oblates devoted to Santa Francesca across the Tiber from the Vatican. It was at precisely this moment that the community made the surely fraught transition from daily life in their historically “open monastery,” which allowed for movement and work outside the confines of Tor de’Spechhi, to a cloistered convent observing strict enclosure (clausura) in conformance with the Decrees of the Council of Trent.4 Images and representations of Santa Francesca, which had long been within the purview of the oblate community and largely commissioned for churches and chapels in proximity of Tor de’Specchi, simulataneously became linked with an official public “persona” of the saint that was shaped by ecclesiastical platforms for doctrinal and liturgical reform.5 In this brief epilogue, I consider a few key images commissioned during the years leading up to and immediately following Francesca’s canonization to highlight shifting, yet

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Figure 54: Antonio Tempesta, Minutissima Cerimonia Osservata nell’Atto Della Canonizazione di Santa Francesca Romana, 1608. Biblioteca Angelica, Rome.

ongoing tensions and interdependence between the oblates of Tor de’Specchi and the Roman Church.

Surrounding a Saint: Antonio Tempesta’s Canonziation Broadside The masterful printmaker, Antonio Tempesta, engraved a magnificent broadside to commemorate the spectacle of Francesca Ponziani’s canonization by Pope Paul V (Figure 54). The lavish festivities that took place inside the Basilica of San Pietro, as well as events enacted in the piazza outside, were recorded in minute detail in Tempesta’s dense but orderly composition. The central image of his monumental print portrays a large effigy of Santa Francesca Romana accompanied by her ever-present guardian angel. Radiating outward, small rectangular narrative panels frame the effigy and depict exemplary moments from Francesca’s miraculous life and works to present the viewer with the evidence used to corroborate her sanctity for a papal tribunal convened to rule on her canonization. These blocks are surrounded by larger square panels that document the scripted sequence of Paul V’s sacramental

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Figure 55: Antonio Tempesta, Text key to canonization print, Santa Francesca Romana, 1608. Biblioteca Angelica, Rome.

movements inside the basilica as he performed the official canonization rites.6 The entire broadside is bordered by Tempesta’s meticulous recreation of the grand procession outside, made up of ecclesiastical and civic dignitaries and moving majestically through Piazza San Pietro to inaugurate the official ceremonies. Explanatory text below the images provided a key for locating and identifying specific points marked throughout the broadside, and included a brief biography of Santa Francesca so that the owner of the print (who may or may not have been present at the festivities) could hold, study, witness, and, in effect, re-live the spectacular events of the day (Figure 55). Tempesta drew on compositional conventions from earlier paintings and prints to produce an effective juxtaposition of stillness and movement across the canonization print. His rendering of the central, oversized effigy surrounded by discrete, descriptive panels harkened back to painted Renaissance altarpieces erected to commemorate venerable saints. His composition also resembles a 1589 engraving documenting the prolific urban renewal and construction projects of Paul V’s predecessor, Pope Sixtus V (Felice Peretti, r. 1585–1590). Further, the circuitous winding of Tempesta’s papal procession in Piazza San Pietro calls to mind souvenir pilgrimage prints, such as that made for the papal jubilee of 1575 on which a female personification of Rome is framed by scenes of Christian charity and circumscribed by streams of pilgrims processing from one church to another.7 The ritual and festival for the canonization of Francesca Romana were also painstakingly recorded in eccesliastical publications which summarized the miraculous acts and heroic virtues marshalled to corroborate Francesca’s sanctity for the canonization tribunal. Francesco Peña, an Aragonese prelate and head of the panel of papal auditors assigned to rule on canonization testimony, penned an official pamphlet (Relatione) that shaped the image of Santa Francesca Romana as a model of

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Figure 56: Title Page, Giulio Orsini, Vita Della B. Francesca Romana, 1608. Biblioteca Angelica, Rome.

female sanctity for the Counter-Reforamtion Church.8 A Roman Jesuit priest, Giulio Orsini, simultaneously brought out a “modern” Vita of Santa Francesca in celebration of her canonization, published by the same printing house (Zannetti) as Peña’s Relatione in 1608 (Figure 56).9 Dedicated “to the sisters of the most venerable Monastery of Tor de’Specchi” (Alle suore del venerabilissimo Monasterio di Torre de Specchi), Orsini’s Vita was gleaned from Mattiotti’s quattrocento biography which was housed at Tor de’Specchi. Orsini carefully pruned excerpts from Mattiotti’s Trattati for his settecento work in order to emphasize Francesca’s devotion to liturgy and the sacraments, her obedience to Divine will (and that of her parents), her humility, and her longing for contemplative solitude.10 Francesca’s role as a popular mystic and miraculous healer on the streets of Rome, which were essential elements of the original Roman cult of the saint (and vividly portrayed in the fifteenth-century frescoes at Tor de’Specchi), was either recast in the light of divine assistance or omitted entirely in Orsini’s updated version of her biography. Testimony from canonization witnesses who lived and worked with Francesca in the fifteenth century was largely discounted or omitted from the testaments of 1608. These changes reflect a model of female sanctity adopted after

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the Council of Trent. Indeed, Paul V and canonization judges hailed Francesca as the perfect example of religious ideals of the post-Tridentine era. Tempesta’s print follows suit: all miracles depicted in the narrative blocks surrounding the central effigy, listed under the title “Holy Acts and Mircles of the Saint” in the printed key (Attioni Sante, et Miracoli della Santa, numbered 1–12), emphasize Francesca’s powers of discernment, humility, and benediction in imitation of Christ, or miraculous healing in the form of posthumous intercession dispensed from Heaven. The active hands-on healer shown working in the squalid, bloody city of quattrocento Rome, so palpably present in the fifteenth-century fresco cycles at Tor de’Specchi, now appeared as a more passive and remote heavenly being (though still accessible through prayer and supplication). The oblates of Francesca Romana made Mattiotti’s treatise available to Orsini when he was crafting his 1608 Vita in deference to long-standing connections between the Orsini family and the community at Tor de’Specchi. Acccordingly, the community gave him the precious gift of a “piece of linen with which Francesca dried the blood that flowed from her stigmata” in recognition of his efforts.11 Surely, the community at Tor de’Specchi garnered prestige from their association with and contribution to Orsini’s new biography. Yet the question of their participation in the re-fashioning of Francesca Romana as an icon of CounterReformation spirituality while simultaneously redefining their own institutional identity is a complex one.

Whose Saint Is She? The papal coat of arms of Pope Paul V, featuring the Borghese eagle and dragon, floats like a heavenly medallion directly above the central effigy of Santa Francesca in Tempesta’s engraving. Mounted Swiss Guards surround the escutcheon at the foot of a stairway leading up to the Basilica of San Pietro. The iconic dove of the Holy Spirit appears to descend from the pontifical heraldry, and is set off in one of five horizontal panels that form an entablature above the effigy of Francesca. The dove emits rays of heavenly light and is flanked by images of Sts. Peter and Paul, the patron saints of Rome, as well as the classical emblem of the Commune of Rome (SPQR), graphically fusing Church and State as the authoritative bodies in the canonization arena. Indeed, the ubiquitous and eminently familiar symbols of Paul V alongside those of the Roman Church and Commune appeared on the triumphal arches erected around the doors of St. Peter’s, and accompanied images of Santa Francesca Romana made for the canonization festivities. It is noteworthy, too, that payments for canonization expenses (including the production of clerical vestments, ephemera, imagery, and gifts to various dignitaries) were made in the name of the Madre Presidente of Tor de’Specchi, but in fact paid by the Commune of Rome – evidence of the complex

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economic, political, and spiritual claims attached to the official elevation of Francesca as both a homegrown and a universal saint.12 At the end of the illustrious procession as documented in Tempesta’s print, Pope Paul V blesses the faithful from a gestatorial chair that was carried in turn by foreign ambassadors and distinguished local noblemen. We see that the pontiff was protected from the sun and elements by a lofty baldacchino set above the chair, and from the rowdy crowd of spectators, or perhaps disgruntled members of his flock, by several mazzieri (mace bearers) who walked alongside him. Cardinals and bishops carried the papal mitre and bejeweled tiaras in the procession to remind those in attendance that Francesca would be crowned in Heaven on the same date that Camillo Borghese was crowned as Pope. Conspicuously absent from the procession and the canonization rites in St. Peter’s, however, were the Oblates of Francesca Romana who had been her faithful followers for a century and a half. Rather, according to Peña, the oblates stayed inside their monastery at Tor de’Specchi throughout the festivities, “giving thanks to Heaven and praying continuously for the happy and long life of his holiness Pope Paul V and for the universal rule of the holy church.”13 Peña’s assertion here bears witness to tasks assigned particularly to cloistered nuns of the post-Tridentine era, whose intercessory prayers were lauded as crucial and efficacious in contemporary advice manuals and devotional guides for women.14 Yet, despite the official exclusion of the Oblates of Francesca Romana from the public rites in Piazza San Pietro, their presence was palpably manifest in imagery commissioned for the spectacle.

Carrying the Standard The iconographic representation of Tempesta’s central effigy of Francesca and her angel (where Tempesta also signed the print) is the mirror image of a standard (banner) commissioned by the oblates of Tor de’Specchi in 1602, when the papal tribunal to rule on Francesca’s canonization was officially convened (Figure 57). Receipts archived at Tor de’Specchi show that the Bolognese painter and gilder Annibale Corrandini was paid the hefty sum of 2100 scudi to paint the banner.15 Corrandini was part of a circle of painters associated with the workshop of Annibale Carracci, and was also employed by Camillo Borghese (Paul V) for such important papal commissions as the chapel of the Annunciation in the Quirinal palace, the decoration of his private apartments in the Vatican, and the Pope’s monumental burial chapel, the Cappella Paolina, in Santa Maria Maggiore.16 The same artist was also paid 1700 scudi between March 21 and May 23, 1608 (the two months leading up to the canonization festivities) for “decorative works and paintings and other works” in preparation for the ceremonies. In fact, a total of ten banners were made for the procession and celebration, all double-sided and festooned with ribbons. Again, as with all

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Figure 57: Contemporary reproduction of Annibale Corrandini’s 1602 canonization banner, Francesca Romana and guardian angel, Tor de’Specchi, Rome. Photograph by author.

expenses for the canonization, the banners were made under the order of the oblates of Tor de’Specchi and paid for by the Commune of Rome.17 Though written records are somewhat vague about exactly who carried the Tor de’Specchi banner in the canonization procession, Peña relates that the prior of the Roman Commune, Vincenzo Muti, “carried in his hand a large standard with the image of the Saint,” which is reproduced in a detail from Tempesta’s print.18 It is also clear that Corrandini’s iconographic depiction of Francesca and the angel was the prototype for a series of banners hung inside the Basilica of San Pietro for the papal Mass, as evidenced in both a fresco commemorating the canonization commissioned by Paul V for the Vatican Library and in a detail of the same moment from the canonization print (see Figure 54). Most importantly, Corrandini’s iconographic rendering is taken directly from Antoniazzo Romano’s quattrocento depiction of Francesca and her guardian angel in the altarpiece fresco made for the Tor de’Specchi oratory (Plate 3). In Antoniazzo’s portrayal, Francesca stands as a columnar pendant to the figure of Saint Benedict. Both saints appear against a backdrop of a broacaded cloth of honor and gaze at the enthroned Madonna nursing the Christ Child in Heaven.

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Francesca displays an open book containing a passage from Psalm 72; her evervigilant guardian angel stands faithfully by her side.19 Corrandini reproduced the 1468 altarpiece figures of Francesca and her angel for the canonization standard, but with notable changes to the background. To replace the regal appearance of the brocaded cloth, the pair is instead set in a verdant landscape of sloping hills and snow-capped mountains. A rosy glow in the blue sky indicates that the sun is setting in the heavenly paradise now inhabited by the saint. Pudgy cherubim peek out from behind puffy clouds while two adolescent angels recline, somewhat precariously, amid the fading light of dusk. Francesca’s angel leans in toward her, his tunic now simple and white and his bare feet peeking out from beneath his robes – all signs of profound humility and devotion. Francesca’s mantle is gathered modestly around her; her eyes are cast down and her head slightly bowed, a signal of her eternal piety and chastity. To mark the authority of this image, the final block in Tempesta’s printed sequence of the canonization ritual at St. Peter’s depicts a second procession related to the conclusion of the festivities. According to the corresponding text on the print (labelled “Q”), “A solemn procession [was] made after the canonization in the transportation of the standards from St. Peter’s to Sant Maria Nova in [C]ampo Vaccina where the body of Francesca was [buried].”20 Here, then, the representation of Francesca on the standard of the Church was taken to venerate the actual corpse of the saint in the same place that she performed posthumous miracles a century and a half before. In his Relatione, Peña described the elaborate decorations made to adorn Santa Maria Nova (subsequently the church of Santa Francesca Romana) in celebration of the canonization, including a ciborium placed above the sepulcher of the saint, decorated with many lamps set in silver vases and surmounted by a “portrait of the saint and her guardian angel as it is painted.”21 It stands to reason that the “portrait” of Santa Francesca in Santa Maria Nova, where the oblate community had their own burial chapel and had gone for decades to venerate their sainted founder, was the same image of Francesca and her angel rendered on the canonization banner – as originally made for their private oratory. Tempesta’s engraving, then, reflects the shifting status and limited authority of the oblate community at the moment of Francesca’s canonization as much as it represents the celebration of the canonization itself. The central effigy of Santa Francesca Romana at the center of the print, now enclosed by her miraculous deeds and circumscribed by the rites of Pope and Church, reflects the forced enclosure of her oblate followers under the mandates of the Council of Trent. The Oblates of Francesca Romana, once so visible on the streets of Rome and documented for posterity in the quattrocento frescoes at Tor de’Specchi, were absented from official festivities by the very authorities they had fervently hoped would elevate their founder to sainthood. As a result, they were represented solely by the image of their venerable

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madre, as it was paraded through those same streets by bishops, cardinals, and civic dignitaries as an emblem of papal authority. Was the oblates’ role in shaping and promulgating this image an act of agency and savvy patronage in the face of shifting doctrine and power? Or was the fate, face, and legacy of Santa Francesca Romana truly out of their hands for all time?

Appendix: Statutes of Ordination for the Beata Francesca 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

In the name of eternal God. These are the statutes of ordination of the Beata Francesca to her daughters in Christ, present and future, who will be in the congregation. First, it is decreed and ordained that they will studiously love God above all creatures and will be united together of one heart in charity, and together in their will, which corresponds to the will of obedience. Item – when [the oblates] meet one another, they will greet one another with reverence; whoever fails to do so, will admit her guilt in front of the others. Item – that no one will keep anything without permission of the superior, otherwise she must give up that which she has and will fast on bread and water for one day, on the floor, having tied that which she has around her neck. Item – that nothing is lent or given without permission of the superior, otherwise for every time she will eat for two days without a tablecloth and without wine. Item – that no one presumes to eat or drink without the permission of she who is superior in the house, otherwise the following day she will eat on the floor without cooked food. Item – that no one eats or drinks outside of the house without permission from the superior, otherwise she will be punished by always eating without a tablecloth and after the congregation. Item – that no one will speak of the things of the house, nor speak in secret with people outside, without permission of the president; otherwise for each thing and for each time, she will fast for two days on bread and water on the floor. Item – that no one will state some need or secret with another [oblate], but will only speak of them with the obedientia; and for every time someone does this, she will eat on the floor for two days and will receive two scourgings from the superior for the space of one Miserere. Item – that no one presumes to quarrel with another, otherwise if she does not quietly tell the obedientia [of the quarrel], she will fast for one day with bread and water, on the floor. Item – that no one presumes to touch another for any reason other than to take care of her when she is sick; anyone who goes against this will receive four scourgings in the presence of the congregation. Item – if some kind of quarrel occurs between them [oblates], they will admit their guilt that evening to the obedientia; anyone who does not do this will receive one scourging. Item – if someone upsets or is troubled by another, they must immediately fall to their knees, admitting their guilt and saying the Ave Maria with their mouth on the floor, otherwise they will eat the following day on the floor without wine or cooked food. Item – that no one speaks of vain and mundane things or of things past, but only words of God and of usefulness; anyone who does not do this will not drink wine that evening and will spend the following day in silence.

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15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

DIVINE AND DEMONIC IMAGERY AT TOR DE’SPECCHI, 1400–1500

Item – if someone fails in obedience, the other(s) will record it with humility, otherwise they will bow/lower their head one time. Item – if one prohibits another from admitting her faults to the obedientia, she who is prohibited must say so right away; otherwise she will be given two scourgings for each in the presence of the others. Item – that there is no opinion or judgment of the other, but everything is taken in good faith. Item – that when the superior reads or speaks, no one will presume to interrupt her speech; otherwise, the following day they will miss the main meal. Item – that after compline silence is observed until the following morning when Mass is said; whoever breaks this without necessity will fast on bread and water on the floor for that day. Item – that at table it is always silent and every Friday there will be silence for the entire day, and no one presumes to laugh at table or look at the others too much; whoever does not do this will eat on the floor one time. Item – when going for indulgences all must be silent; otherwise, they will admit their guilt to the obedientia in front of the others. Item – that when the obedientia speaks with another person in secret, no one should be curious or listen to what she says; otherwise, she will admit her guilt to the obedientia and will fast for two days on bread and water only. Item – that no one is to open the dormitory in the morning if they are not commanded to do so; whoever disobeys will receive one scourging from the superior for the space of one Miserere in the presence of the others. Item – that no one will give a message to a person without permission from the obedientia; whoever does so will eat bread and water on the floor two times [for each offense]. Item – that no one presumes to speak with someone outside of the house without permission of the superior; whoever does not obey will not drink wine the following day. Item – whoever watches the door will convey messages well; otherwise, she will admit her guilt to the superior and receive a scourging. Item – when someone is sent outside of the house, no one will presume to ask her where she is going or from where she is returning, nor what she did nor what she said or any other thing; whoever does this will lose wine for one day and cooked food the other. Item – no one repeats in the house that which she has seen or heard outside, except with the obedientia, unless it is weighing on her conscience; otherwise, she will eat for one day without a tablecloth or the main course. Item – when a secular woman comes to the house, whoever is not required should not be present; otherwise, she should admit her guilt. Item – all of those who committed infractions during the week should admit their guilt on Friday nights in front of the congregation; and if anything is not admitted, others who know of it should state it charitably; those who do not do this will lose one day of wine and one of cooked food. Item – if someone damages something, she should admit her guilt in front of the others, and if someone breaks a piece of pottery, she will wear it around her neck while eating, and will eat on the floor; otherwise, she will fast for one day on bread and water, sitting on the floor.

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32. Item – whoever does not say matins at the designated hour without permission of the obedientia must admit her guilt openly and eat on the floor. 33. Item – all of the alms that come from any persons must be given to the superior; whoever does otherwise will eat for two days on the floor without a main course. 34. Item – no one presumes to go out the door of the house without the blessing of the president; anyone who does otherwise will be last in everything for two weeks, and every evening during that time will be given a scourging for the space of one Magnificat. 35. Item – if something sudden occurs outside of the house that was not previously known or thought of one should try to decide what to do according to the will of the president; otherwise, she should admit her guilt in front of everyone, and for one week will eat without a tablecloth or meat. 36. Item – no one presumes to touch the hand of a man even though they might be close; whoever does otherwise loses wine for one day for every time it happened. 37. Item – if the dormitory is left open at night, all involved will admit their guilt and the following day they will eat on the floor. 38. Item – that at midnight everyone must be in the house; anyone who does otherwise without permission of the president will sleep that night on the floor and will not eat at the table the following day. 39. Item – at the designated hour, all of the doors of the house will be locked and no one will presume to open any of them without the express permission of the president; anyone who does otherwise will kneel with their arms like a cross in the doorway of the refectory while the others are eating the following morning. 40. Item – no one will presume to open any of the doors or go outside of the house before the day is clear, that is, before the sun rises, save for in great necessity and with the permission of the president; anyone who does otherwise will fast for one day on bread and water on the floor, and will receive a scourging for the space of one Miserere. 41. Item – when the president is outside of the house, she who remains in her place will be obeyed and revered as if she were the president; those who do not do this will make the aforesaid penance. 42. Item – no one should put more inordinate affection into one exercise than in another; that which is commanded should be done without quarreling or rebellion; anyone who does otherwise will receive a scourging in front of the entire congregation for the space of two De Profundis. 43. Item – anyone who is sent outside of the house should be prudent and circumspect according to the time and the place and not cause scandal; if a scandal occurs, she has to bring it to the attention of the president and receive the penitence that she gives out. 44. Item – when [oblates] are outside of the house, there should always be at least two or three of them together; if someone does otherwise, she should admit her guilt to the president in the presence of the others and will be given a scourging for the space of five Patre nostri with the Ave Maria. 45. Item – no one should go outside of the house alone, unless she is old or able to go out to wash clothes or do other services; otherwise, whoever sends her or whoever is sent will eat for three days without wine and will be scourged three times in the presence of the others.

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46. Item – no one should wash their head or their feet or their clothes without permission of the superior; whoever does not do this will eat on the floor one day without cooked food. 47. Item – the president, or someone ordered by her, will check the beds once a week, and if anyone has something without permission the object will be taken away, and she will fast for two days on bread and water, on the floor with the said object. 48. Item – that everyone sleeps in bed alone and that no one sleeps in one place alone; anyone who does otherwise eats separated from the others for eight days, without a tablecloth, and every evening she will be given a scourging for the space of one Salve Regina. 49. Item – if anyone is given permission to eat outside of the house, she should not presume to eat or drink where any men might be; anyone who does otherwise will be separated for fifteen days from the table of the congregation and will eat on the floor, and on Fridays she will fast on bread and water. 50. Item – no one presumes to exit or enter the house through any other than the usual door without permission; anyone who does otherwise will make the penitence stated above. 51. Item – whoever is healthy does not drink wine during the day; otherwise, she will eat on the floor the following day without wine. 52. Item – all will come to the table when called; anyone who does otherwise will eat on the floor, unless they do not have permission from the president. 53. Item – if anyone says “mine” about anything, they will say the Miserere while prostrated in the form of a cross. 54. Item – no one should dress themselves in or wear anything new without the permission and blessing of the president; anyone who does otherwise will take off the said item and will be given a scourging by the superior for the space of one Miserere. 55. Item – when bread is broken everyone should be silent, and those who know how to say the penitential psalms will say them; those who do not know them will say other prayers; otherwise, they will lose wine and a main course for one day. 56. Item – when someone is entrusted with an official duty, she must first wash the clothes of the others as if they were hers; whoever does otherwise goes fifteen days without clean clothes. 57. Item – whoever asks something of the superior and is refused should be content without disturbing her further; anyone who does otherwise will receive a scourging for the space of one De Profundis. 58. Item – no one should presume to sing either softly or loudly when she is in a place where she can be heard, even if singing songs of spiritual things; otherwise, she will eat one time on the floor and without wine. 59. Item – when you find yourself speaking of idle or mundane things, you should quickly change to speaking of things that are useful and edifying; anyone who does not do this will eat one day without a tablecloth. 60. Item – anyone who goes to wash clothes has to wear a long dress down to the water; and whoever gives the scourging should hold a cloth over the chest as high as the neck; and no one is to wear the black dress without sleeves; anyone who does otherwise fasts for a day on bread and water, and eats on the floor.

Appendix: Statutes of Ordination for the Beata Francesca

61. 62.

63.

64.

65.

66.

67.

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Item – anyone who needs a small thing at the table should signal that it be given to her; otherwise, she does not eat cooked food the following day. Item – the canonical hours are to be said in the following way: at matins the Patre nostro with the Ave Maria should be said 50 times; at prime that which was already said, but 33 times; at terce, sext, and none and at compline, they should be said for each hour 15 times and at vespers said 25 times. Whoever does not say them without legitimate reason has to say them twice, and admit her guilt to the president in front of the others. Item – they should be making four fasts every year: the first is for Lent; the second is for Advent; the third is for the feast of the Holy Spirit and the fourth for the [feast of] Holy Mary. All the rest of the year should be carried out this way: Fridays and Saturdays will be observed by fasting; Mondays and Wednesdays no one will eat meat, with the exception of those showing signs of sickness; Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays meat will be eaten only during the day at lunchtime; evenings when there is no fasting one will eat soberly; and at all times use a small amount of well-watered wine; and from summer to winter do not sleep more than seven hours between night and day. Whoever does not observe the above-mentioned things will state her guilt in front of the congregation and will be punished harshly according to the importance in the conscience of the superior. Item – the clothing should be worn this way: underneath, a white skirt will be worn; on top of that, a black skirt and a belt of black rope; the cloth for coverings will be of linen; that is, bed sheets and edged cloth and other cloth for the head, and the woolen clothes as well as the others should be rough and not ostentatious. Item – no one can send, or receive, or read, or make read any letters or other writings without permission of the president, and which was not first shown to her superior. Whoever does otherwise will not be absolved from mortal sin, and will be damned for this sin that shall not be absolved, if it is not first shown to the said president, except on the deathbed. For this excess, one will be incarcerated for the space of one month, and will fast every Friday with only bread and water, and be scourged for the space of two Miserere; and on Mondays and Wednesdays she will not drink wine, or eat a main course. Item – in folding the skirt, it should not have pleats. Said skirt should not be longer than 18 palmi from the foot, and from the head it should cover part of the neck so that it will be necessary to have a button on one side. The head cloth should not have pleats. If there are pleats, they should be eliminated before wearing the cloth. Item – there should be nothing on top of the veil. Item – the head should be covered in such a way that nothing is visible beyond the forehead. No one should go out unless she has shoes on. Anyone who does other than the things said above will fast for two days on bread and wine on the floor, for each time. Item – all of the doors of the house will be locked by night and by day, and no man who is over the age of five is ever allowed to enter, except for the confessor when necessary, and the doctor in case of sickness, and plasterers and carpenters to modify the house; and when they are in the house, it will always be with doors open and, if possible, in the company of others. Whoever does not observe these things will be last in all things, and on Fridays and Wednesdays will be given a scourging for the space of three Patre nostri with the Ave Maria.

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68. Item – no one presumes to appear at the door, or in the window, or in any place where she might see a person or anything else outside of the house; whoever does otherwise will eat one day on the floor, without wine. 69. Item – no one presumes either to defend or excuse anyone who has been reprimanded by the superior; anyone who does otherwise will eat on the floor for one week and will be given a scourging for the space of one Miserere every evening. 70. Item – no one presumes, either by request of the confessor or of another person, to keep something secret from the president; otherwise, she will not get absolution until she has told the president, and for penitence she will be incarcerated for two months, fasting every Friday on bread and water, and Mondays and Wednesdays she will have no wine, and she will be given a scourging for the space of two De Profundis. 71. The said beata Francesca in the end ordered and declared that all of the above things should be limited and dispensed with discretion, more or less, according to how it weighs on the conscience of the superior, that is, of the president, to whom all will be always reverent and obedient, and observant of the commandments of God and of the Church. 72. Item – beata Francesca, every year on the night of Good Friday, in the fourth hour, would say the Miserere seven times while prostrated on the floor in the form of a cross, and at midnight she would scourge herself until she bled in the time that it took to say the Miserere five times. 73. Item – on Holy Saturday every year, when returning from Mass, the community should make a procession in the house, beginning as they entered through the door and ending in the oratory, saying the litany and the hymn Te Deum seven times; anyone who does not know these prayers should say the Miserere instead; and anyone who does not know the Miserere should say the Patre nostro with the Ave Maria fifteen times. Then, in reverence for the Passion of our Savior, should say the Patre nostro with the Ave Maria six thousand six hundred and sixty-six times.

Notes Introduction: Demonic and Divine Bodies 1

2

The 400th anniversary of the canonization of Francesca Ponziani in 2008 was the inspiration for recent re-examination of the cult and community surrounding the saint. See Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli and Giorgio Picasso, eds., La canonizzazione di Santa Francesca Romana: Santità, cultura e istituzioni a Roma tra Medioevo ed età moderna (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo per la Fondazione Ezio Franceschini, 2013); Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli (ed.), Francesca Romana: La Santa, il monastero e la città alle fine del Medioevo (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo per la Fondazione Ezio Franceschini, 2009). Critical editions and the publication of Mattiotti’s original treatises are indispensable for study of the saint: Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica dei Trattati Latini di Giovanni Mattiotti (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994); Giorgio Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento: Il manoscritto quattrocentesco di G. Mattiotti narra i tempi, i personaggi, le “visioni” di Santa Francesca Romana, compatrona di Roma (Rome: Nuova Editrice Spada, 1995). Fifteenth-century canonization transcripts were transcribed by Placido Tommaso Lugano, I processi inediti per Francesca Bussa dei Ponziani (Santa Francesca Romana), 1440–1453 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1945). For a concise biographical sketch of Francesca Romana with ample bibliography, see Arnold Esch’s entry “Francesca Bussa (Francesca Romana), santa,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 49 of 88 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1997), pp. 594–9. See also Arnold Esch, “Santa Francesca Romana e il suo ambiente sociale a Roma,” in Una santa tutta romana: Saggi e ricerche nel VI centenario della nascita di Francesca Bussa dei Ponziani, ed. by Giorgio Picasso (Siena: Monte Oliveto Maggiore, 1984), pp. 33–56. Quattrocento popes who reigned during the decades relevant for this study were: Martin V (Colonna, Rome, r. 1417–1431), Eugenius IV (Condulmer, Venice, r. 1431–1447), Nicholas V (Parentucelli, Sarzana, r. 1447–1455), Calixtus III (Borja, Játiva, Spain, r. 1455–1458), Pius II (Piccolomini, Siena, r. 1458–1464), Paul II (Barbo, Venice, r. 1464–1471), Sixtus IV (Della Rovere, Savona, r. 1471–1484), and Innocent VIII (Cibo, Genoa, r. 1484–1492). For the fresco decoration of the Chapel of Nicholas V, see Carl Brandon Strehlke, “Fra Angelico: A Florentine Painter in ‘Roma Felix’,” in Fra Angelico, ed. by Laurence Kanter and Pia Palladino (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), pp. 202–13. See also Innocenzo Venchi and Alessandro Bracchetti, Fra Angelico and the Chapel of Nicholas V: Recent Restorations of the Vatican Museums, vol. 3 of 5 (Vatican City: Edizioni Musei Vaticani, 1999). For the founding of the Vatican Library and the renovation of the Hospital of Santo Spirito, see Eunice Howe, Art and Culture at the Sistine Court: Platina’s “Life of Sixtus IV” and the Frescoes of the Hospital of Santo Spirito (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2005). The canonical study of the papacy of Sixtus IV is Egmont Lee’s Sixtus IV and Men of Letters (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1978). For an in-depth analysis of the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel walls, see Carol F. Lewine, The Sistine Chapel Walls and the Roman Liturgy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993).

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Charles Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998); Westfall, In This Most Perfect Paradise; Peter Partner, The Lands of St. Peter: The Papal State in the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). 4 See n. 1, above. 5 Lugano, I processi, p. 39; Guy Boanas and Lyndal Roper, “Feminine Piety in FifteenthCentury Rome: Santa Francesca Romana,” in Disciplines of Faith: Studies in Religion, Politics and Patriarchy, ed. by J. Obelkevich, L. Roper, and R. Samuel (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), pp. 190–91; Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 215; Dyan Elliottt, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 195–265. 6 Francesca and Lorenzo Ponziani had three children: Evangelista, Agnese, and Battista. Evangelista and Agenese died of the plague; only Battista survived into adulthood. Mattiotti recorded the deaths of Evangelista and Agnese in his Trattati. See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 8–12. For a chronology and family tree of the Bussa and Ponziani families, see Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 59–73. 7 Mario Sensi, “Tor de’Specchi e il movimento religioso femminile nel quattrocento,” in La canonizazione di Santa Francesca Romana, ed. by Romagnoli and Picasso, pp. 259–301; Alfonso Marini, “Monasteri femminili a Roma nei secoli XIII–XV,” Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria, vol. 132 (2009), pp. 81–107. 8 Katherine Gill, Penitents, Pinzochere and Mantellate: Varieties of Women’s Religious Communities in Central Italy, c. 1300–1520 (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1994) and Gill, “Open Monasteries,” pp. 15–47. 9 Gill, Penitents, p. 59. In both ecclesiastical Latin and local vernaculars, the women in these communities went by many names: mulieres, religiosae, mulieres de penitentia, sorores, pinzochere, bizoke, mantellate, terziarie, monache di casa, monacelle, sante, and santarelle. See Gill, “Open Monasteries,” p. 17. 10 Sensi, “Tor de’Specchi e il movimento,” p. 278. 11 For my English translation of the Tor de’Specchi statutes, see Appendix of this study. The Ordinationi were recorded in a fifteenth-century document (12ff.) and transcribed by Giovanni Lunardi in 1984. Lunardi, “L’istituzione di Tor de’Specchi,” in Una santa tutta romana, ed. by Picasso, pp. 71–94. See also Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli, “Nel segno dell’oblazione: Francesca Romana e la regola di Tor de’Specchi,” in Francesca Romana: La Santa, il monastero e la città, ed. by Romagnoli, pp. 87–160; and Joyce Pennings, “Semi-Religious Women in 15th-Century Rome,” Mededelingen van het Nederlands Historisch Instituut te Rome, 47, no. 12 (1987), p. 127. 12 George Kaftal, “Three Scenes from the Legend of Santa Francesca Romana,” Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, 11 (1948), pp. 51–61, 86; Federico Zeri, Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery, vol. 1 (Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1976), pp. 154–8. 13 Paolo D’Achille, “Le didascalie degli affreschi di Santa Francesca Romana (con un documento inedito del 1463),” in Il volgare nelle chiese di Roma: Messaggi graffiti, dipinti e incisi dal IX al XVI secolo, ed. by Francesco Sabatini, Sergio Raffaelli, and Paolo D’Achille (Rome: Bonacci, 1987), pp. 109–83; Cynthia Troup, “Art History and the Resistant Presence of a Saint: The Chiesa Vecchia Frescoes at Rome’s Tor de’Specchi,” in

Notes

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15

16

17 18

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Rituals, Images and Words: Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by F.W. Kent and Charles Zika (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 119–45. For recent scholarship and bibliographies on the oratory frescoes, see Giuliano Milani, “Tre committenti per Santa Francesca: Le fonti del ciclo della chiesa vecchia di Tor de’Specchi (1468),” in La canonizzazione di Santa Francesca Romana, ed. by Romagnoli and Picasso, pp. 525–49; Suzanne M. Scanlan, “Doorways to the Demonic and Divine: Visions of Santa Francesca Romana and the Frescoes of Tor de’Specchi” (PhD diss., Brown University, 2010); Claudia Tempesta, “Arte a Tor de’Specchi,” in Francesca Romana: La santa, il monastero e la città, ed. by Romagnoli, pp. 240–45. Suzanne M. Scanlan, “The Devil in the Refectory: Bodies Imagined and the Oblates of Tor de’Specchi in Quattrocento Rome,” in The Devil in Society in Premodern Europe, ed. by Richard Raiswell and Peter Dendle (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012), pp. 313–38. This literature on this subject is vast. See, for example, Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1994); Grace M. Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and their Religious Milieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Alan Charles Kors and Edward Peters, eds., Witchcraft in Europe, 400–1700 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Armando Maggi, In the Company of Demons: Unnatural Beings, Love and Identity in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Maggi, Satan’s Rhetoric: A Study of Renaissance Demonology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Anne Jacobson Schutte, “‘Saints’ and ‘Witches’ in Early Modern Italy: Stepsisters or Strangers?,” in Time, Space and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Anne Jacobson Schutte, Thomas Kuehn, and Silvana Seidel Menchi (Kirksville, mo: Truman State University Press, 2001); Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 2003); Moshe Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Discernment and Female Mysticism in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Lina Bolzoni, The Web of Images: Vernacular Preaching from its Origins to St. Bernardino da Siena (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 2–5; Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons. Francesca Ponziani’s death was recorded in the Necrology of Monte Oliveto as “Beatissima Francisca de Pontianis devotissima oblate monasterii nostri romani, obit Rome,” as seen in Necrologium Montis Oliveti, col. cart, fol. 50, published in Lugano, “L’istituzione,” pp. 292–3. The events surrounding her death were recounted by canonization witnesses, most notably Giovanni Mattiotti and several of the initial oblates. See Lugano, I processi, pp. 100–103. In 1494 the Roman magistrate declared March 9 a feast day in honor of Francesca. Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 154.

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The primary source documenting the funeral proceedings comes from canonization testimony. Lugano, I processi, pp. 140–47. 20 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. xxxv–xli. 21 Scanlan, “Doorways to the Demonic and Divine,” p. 11. 22 Lugano, I processi. For the full text of the epitaph, see Lugano, La nobil casa, p. 111. See also Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 156. 23 For a full explanation of the complex processes of beatification and canonization, see Camillo Beccari, “Beatification and Canonization,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 2 of 15 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1907). 24 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. xxxv–vi; Kaftal, “Three Scenes,” pp. 51–61. 25 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. xl. 26 Anabel Thomas, Art and Piety in the Female Religious Communities of Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 309–19. 27 Diana Hiller, Gendered Perceptions of Florentine Last Supper Frescoes, c. 1350–1490 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014); Ann Roberts, Dominican Women and Renaissance Art: The Convent of San Domenico in Pisa (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); Jeryldene M. Wood, Women, Art and Spirituality: The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Gabriella Zarri and Gianna Pomata, eds., I monasteri femminili come centri di cultura fra Rinascimento e Barocco (Rome: Edizione di storia e literature, 2005); Andrée Hayum, “A Renaissance Audience Considered: The Nuns at S. Apollonia and Castagno’s Last Supper,” Art Bulletin, 88, no. 2 (2006), pp. 243–66; Thomas, Art and Piety, esp. pp. 140–49; William Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Creighton Gilbert, “Last Suppers and their Refectories,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion: Papers for the University of Michigan Conference, ed. by Charles Trinkhaus and Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1974), pp. 371–402; Luisa Vertova, I cenacoli fiorentini (Turin: Edizione Radio-Televisione Italiana, 1965); Sandra Lynn Weddle, Enclosing Le Murate: The Ideology of Enclosure and the Architecture of a Florentine Convent, 1390–1597 (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1997); and R. Scott Walker, Florentine Painted Refectories (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1979). 28 For recent surveys, see Marcia Hall, ed., Artistic Centers of the Italian Renaissance: Rome (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Sergio Rossi and Stefano Valeri, eds., Le due Rome del Quattrocento: Melozzo, Antoniazzo e la cultura artistica del ’400 romano (Rome: Lithos, 1997); Anna Cavallaro, Antoniazzo Romano e gli antoniazzeschi: Una generazione di pittori nella Roma del Quattrocento (Udine: Campanotto, 1992); Antonio Paolucci, Antoniazzo Romano: Catologo completo dei dipinit (Florence: Cantini, 1992). For earlier art historical tratements of the works, see Attilio Rossi, “Le opere d’arte del monastero di Tor de’Specchi in Roma,” Bolletinod’arte del Ministero della Pubblica Instruzione, 1, Fasc. 9 (1907), pp. 1–12; Roberto Longhi, “In favore di Antoniazzo Romano,” Vita Artistica, 2, no. 11/12 (1927), pp. 226–33; Vincenzo Golzio and Giuseppe Zander, eds., L’arte in Roma nel secolo XV (Bologna: Licinio Cappelli, 1968). 29 See Marilyn Dunn, “Piety and Patronage in Seicento Rome: Two Noblewomen and their Convents,” Art Bulletin, 76, no. 4 (1994), pp. 644–63 (see esp. n. 2 therein for extensive bibliographies on noblewomen who founded Roman convents in the late sixteenth to seventeenth centuries). Carolyn Valone is the pioneer of studies on

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Roman matrons as patrons. See Katherine A. McIver and Cynthia Stollhans, Patronage, Gender and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Essays in Honor of Carolyn Valone (New York: Italica, 2015); Carolyn Valone, “Elena Orsini, Daniele da Volterra and the Orsini Chapel,” Artibus et Historiae, 22 (1990), pp. 79–87; Valone, “Roman Matrons and Patrons: Various Views of the Cloister Wall,” in The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion and the Arts in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Craig Monson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), pp. 49–72; Valone, “Women on the Quirinal Hill: Patronage in Rome, 1560–1630,” Art Bulletin, 76, no. 1 (1994), pp. 129–46; Valone, “Piety and Patronage: Women and the Early Jesuits,” in Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy, ed. by E. Ann Matter and John Coakley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 156–84; Valone, “Mothers and Sons: Two Paintings for San Bonaventura in Early Modern Rome,” Renaissance Quarterly, 53, no. 1 (2000), pp. 108–32; Valone, “The Art of Hearing: Sermons and Images in the Chapel of Lucrezia della Rovere,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 31, no. 3 (2000), pp. 753–77; Valone, “Matrons and Motives: Why Women Built in Early Modern Rome,” in Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, ed. by Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wikins, (Kirksville, mo: Truman State University Press, 2001), pp. 317–35. 30 Arnold Esch, “Tre sante ed il loro ambiente sociale a Roma: S. Francesca Romana, S. Brigida di Svezia e S. Caterina da Siena,” in Atti del Simposio internazionale Cateriniano-Bernardiniano, Siena, 17–20 Aprile 1980, ed. by Domenico Maffei and Paolo Nardi (Siena: Accademia Senese degli Intronati, 1982), pp. 89–127. 31 Vittorio Bartoccetti, “Le fonti delle visione di Santa Francesca Romana,” Rivista storia benedettina, 13 (1922), pp. 199–215; Ornella Moroni, “Le visioni di Santa Francesca Romana tra Medioevo e umanesimo,” Studi romani: Rivista bimestrale dell’Istituto di Studi Romani, 21 (1973), pp. 160–78. 32 Hiller, Gendered Perceptions of Florentine Last Supper Frescoes.

1. Sanctity on the Threshold: Liminality and Corporeality at Tor de’Specchi 1

2

Antonella Greco, La cappella di Niccolò V del Beato Angelico (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1980); Venchi and Bracchetti, Fra Angelico and the Chapel of Nicholas V (see also intro., n. 6); John Pope-Hennessy, Fra Angelico (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1974), pp. 29–33; Strehlke, “Fra Angelico: A Florentine Painter” (see also intro., n. 6); Loren Partridge, The Art of Renaissance Rome, 1400–1600 (New York: Abrams, 1996), pp. 112–14. In the Chapel of Nicholas V, the primitive church of Saint Stephen in Jerusalem is represented in the upper register of the fresco cycle, and the early Christian church of Saint Lawrence, led by the popes in Rome in the lower. According to the New Testament, Saint Stephen was one of seven deacons ordained by the original twelve Apostles (Acts 6:5), and was hailed as the first Christian martyr. His zealous ministry led him to be stoned to death outside of Jerusalem for asserting the superiority of Christianity over Judaism before the Sanhedrin. Saint Lawrence was a Roman deacon, ordained by Pope Sixtus II in the third century, and a venerated patron saint

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of Rome. He was put to death on the gridiron by the Emperor Valerian in 258 for distributing material goods belonging to the Church as alms for the poor instead of surrendering them to imperial authorities. See Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, vol. II, trans. by William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 40–44, 63–74. The Golden Legend specifically mentions St. Lawrence’s charity toward the poor, blind, and lame and was most likely the source for Fra Angelico’s rendering. See also Partridge, Art of Renaissance Rome, pp. 112–14. 3 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori nelle redazione del 1550 e 1568, ed. by Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, 6 vols. (Florence: Sansoni, 1966–1987), vol. I, pp. 268–81. In the 1568 edition of the Lives, Vasari refers to the frescoes in the Nicoline chapel as “istorie bellissime di San Lorenzo,” and he adds a comment about the Pope’s portrait as depicted within the cycle: “dove ritrasse papa Niccola di naturale” (p. 277). For the Vatican restoration of the cycle, see Venchi and Bracchetti, Fra Angelico and the Chapel of Nicholas V. 4 Scanlan, “Doorways to the Demonic and Divine,” pp. 1–3; Tempesta, “Arte a Tor de’Specchi,” pp. 230–32. 5 Westfall, In This Most Perfect Paradise, pp. 160–65. 6 Partridge, Art of Renaissance Rome, pp. 114–15. According to Partridge, the unspoken subtext to papal charity was a resistance to papal control by the Romans as well as an economic depression in Rome that necessitated almsgiving. 7 Lugano, I processi; Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 3–55, and my Introduction for a discussion of the hagiographic corpus and relevant bibliography. 8 D’Achille, “Le didascalie degli affreschi di Santa Francesca Romana.” 9 Milani, “Tre committenti per santa Francesca”; Tempesta, “Arte a Tor de’Specchi,” p. 222. 10 Tempesta, “Arte a Tor de’Specchi,” pp. 237–40. 11 For discussion on the purpose of similar spaces in Tuscany, see Thomas, Art and Piety, pp. 75–106. 12 See Arnold Esch, “I processi medioevali per la canonizzazione di santa Francesca Romana (1440–1451),” in La canonizzazione di Santa Francesca Romana, ed. by Romagnoli and Picasso, pp. 39–51. 13 Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, pp. 43–6; Partner, The Lands of St. Peter, esp. pp. 366–446. 14 For a series of brief but dense and informative articles on the evolving uses and iconography associated with doors and doorways, see Salvatorino Salomi, ed., Le porte di bronzo dall’antichità al secolo XIII (Rome: Instituto della Encyclopedia Italiana, 1990): of particular relevance to this study therein are Licia Vlad-Borrelli, “La porta romana,” pp. 1–10 and Margaret E. Frazer, “Church Doors and the Gates of Paradise Reopened,” pp. 271–7. See also, Allyson Everingham Sheckler and Mary Joan Winn Leith, “The Crucifixion Conundrum and the Santa Sabina Doors,” Harvard Theological Review, 102, no. 3 (2009), pp. 1–22. 15 Westfall, In This Most Perfect Paradise, pp. 7–16. 16 Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, pp. 44–5; Eva-Maria Jung-Inglessis, “La Porta Santa,” Studi Romani, 23 (1975), pp. 473–85; Vlad-Borrelli, “La porta romana,” pp. 1–10; Frazer, “Church Doors and the Gates of Paradise Reopened.”

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18 19

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21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

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Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); Victor Turner, “Liminality and Communitas,” in A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, ed. by Michael Lambek (Malden, ma: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 358–74. See also Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969); Turner, The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1967). Turner, “Liminality and Communitas,” p. 367. Sensi, “Tor de’Specchi e il movimento,” pp. 291–5. See also Gill, “Open Monasteries” and Pennings, “Semi-Religious Women”. For similar communities outside of Italy, see Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 170–93; Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200–1565 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). “Quindi è che noi, inclinati alle vostre divote preghiere, con autorità apostolica col tenore delle presenti vi concediamo piena e libera facoltà di potere ellegere alcun prete sacerdote di vita approvata sufficiente e discreto, religioso o secolare, di età provetta per vostro cappellano e confessore, il quale tante volte quante sarà opportune celebri la Messa con le porte aperte [Latin: apertis ianuis] nell’Oratorio della predetta casa, senza ricercare sopra di ciò licenza da veruno, ed udire diligentemente le confessioni vostre e delle altre oblate che dimoreranno nelle case proprie loro, allure però solamente quando accaderà che esse per ragione d’infermità dimorino nella propria casa loro e non altrimenti, se i peccati non fossero tali che meritamente si avesse da ricorrere alla Sede apostolica, possa a voi ed a loro dare l’assoluzione, e per i peccati commessi ingiungere la penitenza salutare, ed amminisrarvi gli altri Sacramenti; e che possiate licenziare il ditto prete, come vi parerà espediente, ed in suo luogo, ancora quando fosse morto, eleggerne un altro successivamente idoneo nel modo che si è ditto, salva sempre la ragione della chiesa parrocchiale predetta or di altra qualsivoglia.” The complete papal brief is transcribed in the original Latin and in Italian in Lugano, “L’istituzione,” pp. 300–303; the Latin concession was reprinted in Romagnoli, “Documenti per l’istituzione,” pp. 157–8. Lugano, “L’istituzione,” pp. 300–303; Romagnoli, “Documenti per l’istituzione,” p. 157. Vecchi, “La congregazione,” pp. 461–3. Lugano, “L’istituzione,” p. 303; Romagnoli, “Documenti per l’istituzione,” p. 157; Sensi, “Tor de’Specchi e il movimento religioso,” p. 284. Romagnoli, “Francesca Romana e la regola,” pp. 145–60; Cattana, “Santa Francesca Romana e i monaci di Monte Oliveto.” “Como la beata Francesca con tucte le soe figliole in Christo presente et future se offerivo allo monasterio de Sancta Maria Nova del oridine de Monte Oliveto socto la regola de sancto Benedecto.” Wisch and Newbigin, Acting on Faith, pp. 157–8. See my extended discussion of the Icon of Santa Maria Nova in Chapter 2. Leonetto Tintori and Millard Meiss, The Painting of the Life of St. Francis in Assisi (New York: New York University Press, 1962). See Martha C. Howell, “The Spaces of Late Medieval Urbanity,” in Shaping Urban Identity in Late Medieval Europe, ed. by Marc Boone and Peter Stabel (Leuven: Garant, 2000), pp. 3–23; Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture, esp. pp. 170–86.

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The significance of the tri-layered crown is discussed at length in Chapter 2. For the Madonna Lactans, see Margaret Miles, “The Virgin’s One Bare Breast: Female Nudity and Religious Meaning in Tuscan Early Renaissance Culture,” in The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. by Susan Suleiman (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 193–208; Megan Holmes, “Disrobing the Virgin: The Madonna Lactans in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Art,” in Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, ed. by Geraldine A. Johnson and Sara F. Matthews-Grieco (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 167–95. 31 Psalm 72:24 (Douay-Rheims Bible) or Psalm 73 (King James Bible). The inscription reads: “TENVISIT MANVM DEXTRAM MEAM ET IN VOLVNTATE TVA DEDVXISTI ME ET CUM GLORIA SVS CEPISTI ME.” 32 Mattiotti included this miracle in the Latin edition of his Trattati. See Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 366. 33 Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, pp. 21–2. 34 For identification of the red house as the Palazzo Ponziani, see Giovanni Brizzi, “Contributo all’iconografia di Francesca Romana,” in Una santa tutta romana, ed. by Picasso, p. 268; Esch, “Tre sante ed il loro ambiente sociale a Roma,” pp. 92–93, 102–3. 35 John Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital: Healing the Body and Healing the Soul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 113–17; Andrée Hayum, The Isenheim Altarpiece: God’s Medicine and the Painter’s Vision (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 36–8. 36 See especially the Gospel of St. Matthew:8 and 9. 37 For a concise overview of confraternal life in fifteenth-century Rome, see Anna Esposito, “Men and Women in Roman Confraternities in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Roles, Functions, Expectations,” in The Politics of Ritual Kinship: Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy, ed. by Nicholas Terpstra (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 82–97. See also Wisch and Newbigin, Acting on Faith, pp. 63–83; Eunice Howe, “Appropriating Space: Women’s Place in Confraternal Life at Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome,” in Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy: Ritual, Spectacle and Image, ed. by Barbara Wisch and Diane Cole Ahl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 235–58. 38 Esposito, “Men and Women in Roman Confraternities,” pp. 95–7. 39 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 366: “Ipsa, ex pietate et caritate mota, dixit pauperi: ‘Quare, pauper homo, non facis tibi mederi?’ At ille respondens cum fletu dicendo: ‘Quia non habeo pecunias’.” 40 There has been much recent work done on nuns and medicine. See, for example, Sharon T. Strocchia, “The Melancholic Nun in Late Renaissance Italy,” in Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period, ed.by Yasmin Haskell (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 139–58; Gianna Pomata and Nancy G. Siraisi, eds. Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, ma: MIT Press, 2005); Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Gianna Pomata, Contracting a Cure: Patients, Healers, and the Law in Early Modern Bologna (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 75–78. 41 Boanas and Roper, “Feminine Piety in Fifteenth-Century Rome,” esp. pp. 180–85.

Notes

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“Tornando la beata Francesca dalla chiesia de sancto Ianni trovavo che nello ponte sancta Marie era taglia/to ad uno quasi tucto lo braccio essa beata mossa ad compassione toccandolo subito fu sanato.” 43 This is still true today. I thank Madre Camilla Rea for explaining this distinction to me. 44 “Item, quando son fore de casa, sempre steano insiemi almeno tre o vero doi; chi fa altremente, dica sua colpa alla presidente in presentia de l’altre e siali data una desceplina per spatio di cinque Patre nostri con la Ave Maria.” 45 The caption reads: “Uno chiamato Iuliano tagliando le legna se tagliavo quasi tucto lo pede it infra spatio de cinque mesi lo pede se lli fracidavo recommandandose alla beata Francesca essa toccandolo subito fu sanato.” For Mattiotti’s Latin text, see Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 368–9. 46 The caption is as follows: “Uno chiamato Ianni avendo per longa infirmità quasi perduta la gamma colla cossa/como fu revommandato alla beata Francesca subito fu liberamente sanato.” See Daniela Mazzuconi, “Pauca quedam de vita et miraculus beate Francisce de Pontianis: Tre biografie quattrocentesche di santa Francesca Romana,” in Una santa tutta romanai, ed. by Picasso, pp. 101–15. 47 For the San Marco altarpiece, see Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, pp. 97–122; also Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, pp. 190–99. For a compelling analysis of the altarpiece, see Allison Levy, Re-membering Masculinity in Early Modern Florence: Widowed Bodies, Mourning, and Portraiture (Aldershot: Ashgate: 2006), pp. 3–6. 48 Though she resided at Tor de’Specchi full time after 1436, Francesca ultimately died at the Palazzo Ponziani while visiting her surviving child, Battista, when he was ill. Afterwards, the community came under the co-direction of Rita de’Celli (or Covelli) and Agnese di Paolo di Lello Petrutti from 1440 to 1454. See Romagnoli, “Francesca Romana e la regola,” pp. 116–18; Esposito, “Tor de’Specchi e la società,” p. 317. The property was willed to the congregation as a permanent residence in 1445. See Lugano, “L’istituzione,” p. 303 for a transcription of the donation. 49 “In questo luogo la N.S.M. Francesca nel giorno de S. Benedetto 1436 venne a trovare le sue figliole spirituali si fermò al piede in questa scala chiuse la porta si scalzò si pose una corda al collo e prostrate con lacrime supplicó di essere ricevuta nella congregazione da lei fondata come minima di tutte loro.” The feast of St. Benedict is July 11. 50 The Olivetans were reformed Benedictines, headquartered at the Abbacy of Monteoliveto. See Enzo Carli, L’Abbazia di Monteoliveto (Milan: Electa, 1961). 51 Terence G. Kardong, Benedict’s Rule: A Translation and Commentary (Collegeville, mn: Liturgical Press, 1981), pp. 462–85. 52 Thomas, Art and Piety, pp. 264–9. 53 Ibid., pp. 264–5. 54 Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital, esp. pp. 186–221. See also Howe, “Appropriating Space.” 55 Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital, pp. 188–90. 56 Howe, “Appropriating Space,” esp. pp. 241–3. See also Eunice Howe, “The Architecture of Institutionalism: Women’s Space in Renaissance Hospitals,” in Architecture and the Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Helen Hills (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 63–82; Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture, pp. 172–7.

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57 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 75–7; Lugano, La nobil casa, pp. 9596, 146–8 (see also intro., n. 20). 58 Boanas and Roper, “Feminine Piety in Fifteenth-Century Rome,” p. 181. 59 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 75–7. 60 Ibid., p. 76, n. 50. See also Lugano, La nobil casa, p. 148. 61 See Appendix for the Ordinationi, specifically Statutes 23, 26, 37, 39, 40, and 45 for the rules surrounding doors and doorways. 62 Kardong, Benedict’s Rule, pp. 462–85. 63 Mattiotti’s transcription of this vision takes up several pages of his Trattati. See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 265–307; and Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 815–71, for the Latin edition. 64 Both the oratory panel and the entry fresco were adapted to accommodate the opening for the grate. 65 “Como la beata Francesca fu menata in visione da l’angilo Raphaele ad vedere l’oribilità dello inferno/mostravo in que modo sonno punite et cruciate le anime per ciaschedun peccato.” 66 See Appendix, Statute 26. 67 “Le quale erano state vergine secundo lo cuorpo, ma non de mente.” See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 284–6. 68 Esposito, “La fama delle donne.” 69 Esch, “Santa Francesca Romana e il suo ambiente sociale a Roma,” pp. 33–55; Esch, “Santa Francesca Romana e la società Romana del suo tempo,” in Francesca Romana: La Santa, il monastero e la città o, ed. by Romagnoli, pp. 3–21; Marchetti, La casa delle Oblate, pp. 8–12; Lugano, La nobil casa, pp. 7–56. 70 Christopher Hibbert, Rome: The Biography of a City (London: Penguin, 1985), pp. 221, 320. 71 For links between the frescoes and specific tracts in Mattiotti’s Vita, see Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione Critica, pp. 935–44. 72 Esposito, “La fama delle donne,” p. 9; Boanas and Roper, “Feminine Piety in FifteenthCentury Rome,” p. 186. 73 Pennings, “Semi-Religious Women,” p. 127. Pennings noted that the Ordinationi were originally oral instructions handed down from Francesca to her housemates when she came to live with them at Tor de’Specchi, and were placed on record in 1444. See also Romagnoli, “Francesca Romana e la regola di Tor de’Specchi”. 74 Statute 43: “Item, chi è mandata fore de casa sia prudente e circumspecta secundo l’ora et lo luoco che non venga scandalo; se alcuno scandalo occurressi, sia tenuta de manifestarelo alla presidente et fare la pentientia che essa li darrao.” See Appendix. 75 Emphasis mine. Statute 67: “Item, tutti li usci de casa steano serrate di nocte e de die, e non ve possa mai entrare homo che agia passata la etate de cinque anni, salvo lo confessore in caso di necessità e lo medico per bisogno de infermità e maestri de mura e de legname per aconcime della casa, e quando sono in case sempre stea l’uscio aperto, e se fossi possibile abiano la Compagnia. Chi non observa le ditte cose, per ciascheduna, vagia uno mese ultima ad tutte, e lo venardì e lo mercordì li sia data una desceplina per spatio de tre Patre nostri con l’Ave Maria.” See Appendix. 76 Pennings, “Semi-Religious Women,” pp. 123, 138. 77 Ibid., pp. 123–6; Esposito, “La fama delle donne,” p. 9.

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Elizabeth Robertson, “The Corporeality of Female Sanctity in ‘The Life of Saint Margaret’,” in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. by Renate BlumenfeldKosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp 268–87; Dyan Elliott, The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200–1500 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), pp. 233–79. 79 Caciola, Discerning Spirits, p. 42. 80 Ibid. 81 Pennings, “Semi-Religious Women,” p. 124; Lugano, “L’istituzione,” pp. 275–6. 82 Caption: “Similemente avendo la beata Francesca dato alli poveri certa solatura de grano remasa nello granaro. Puoi miracolosamente fu trovato nello dicto granaro quaranta ruggi de buono et bellissimo grano.” The source of this scene is a brief passage from Mattiotti’s Trattati. For the vernacular version, see Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 3; for the Latin equivalent, see Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 347. 83 Boanas and Roper, “Feminine Piety in Fifteenth-Century Rome,” pp. 180–86; Elliott, Spiritual Marriage. 84 Esposito, “Il Mondo,” p. 154. 85 Caroline Murphy, The Pope’s Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice della Rovere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 164. 86 Illuminated manuscript book made in Utrecht, c. 1440, MS M.945, Morgan Library, New York. For a facsimile from the Morgan Library, see John Plummer, ed., The Hours of Catherine of Cleves (New York: Braziller, 1975), Plate 57 for the image Piety as a Lady Distributing Alms. 87 de Voragine, Golden Legend, p. 191. 88 Ibid., pp. 50–51; and George Kaftal, Saint Dominic in Early Tuscan Painting (Oxford: Blackfriars, 1947), p. 82. 89 Caption: “Una die non essendo pane nella congregatione della beata Francesca se non certi pezzuili sufficienti ad tre persone essa beata benedicendo lo dicto pane ne furono satiate essa co[n] xv soe figliole in cristo et radunavone pieno uno canestro de meso quarto.” 90 The miracle of the loaves and fishes (feeding of the 5000) is recounted in all four Gospels: Matthew 14:13–21, Mark 6:31–44, Luke 9:10–17, John 6:5–15. 91 See Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 365. The caption below the fresco reads: “Como la beata Francesca essendo nella vigna dello mese de gennaro con octo soe figliole in Cristo ad raccogliere li sarmenti/le quale avendo grande sete Dio miracolosamente fece nascere in quello die in una vite nove rampacci de uva nera.” 92 Esposito, “Tor de’Specchi e la società,” pp. 308–12. 93 Ibid., p. 304. 94 Ibid., p. 310–12. 95 As Fiorani demonstrated, female religious communities were the largest landowners in Rome by the end of the seventeenth century – with Tor de’Specchi one of the wealthiest convents in the city. See Luigi Fiorani, “Monache e monasteri romani nell’età del quietismo,” Ricerche per la storia religiosa di Roma, 1 (1977), pp. 63–111. 96 Marchetti, La casa delle Oblate, pp. 161–85.

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97

See Article LII, De eius obitu et sui prescientia in Lugano, I processi, pp. 140–47; Lugano, La nobil casa, pp. 108–14; Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 141–2. 98 The primary documentation of the funeral proceedings comes from canonization testimony. See Lugano, I processi, pp. 140–47. See also Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 142. 99 The caption beneath the fresco reads: “Como lo eterno Dio se degnavo de venire per pigliare la anima della beata Francesca/quando se partivo dallo suo sacratissimo corpo.” 100 For an insightful discussion of gender, hagiography, and the soul, see Dyan Elliott, “Rubber Soul: Theology, Hagiography, and the Spirit World in the High Middle Ages,” in From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe, ed. by E. Jane Burns and Peggy McCracken (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), pp. 89–120. 101 Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, pp. 117–20, 155–8. 102 The fresco caption reads: “Essendo lo sacrosancto cuorpo della beata Francesca più dì sopra terra nella chiesia de sancta Maria nova alla quale concurrendo innumerabili puopoli per lo odore della/soa sanctissima vita lo eterno Dio se degnavo per li meriti de essa beata demustrare molti et stupendi miracoli de varie et antiquate infermità. FINIS. MCCCCLXVIII.” See also Lugano, I processi, pp. 140–47.

2. Painted Visions and Devotional Practices at Tor de’Specchi 1

2

3

Museum catalogue information is as follows: [Antonio da Viterbo the Elder], Santa Francesca Romana, ca. 1445, tempera on wood, 21 3/4 × 14 7/8 in., Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Figure 3); [Antonio da Viterbo the Elder], Santa Francesca Romana Clothed by the Virgin, ca. 1445, tempera on wood, 21 3/4 × 14 7/8 in., Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Figure 4); The Communion and Consecration of the Blessed Francesca Romana, ca. 1445, tempera on wood, 21 3/4 × 14 7/8 in., The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (Figure 5). See John Pope-Hennessy, Italian Paintings: Robert Lehman Collection (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987), pp. 204–9; Zeri, Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery, pp. 154–8; Kaftal, “Three Scenes,” pp. 51–61, 86; Brizzi, “Contributo all’iconografia di Francesca Romana,” pp. 265–362. Kaftal, “Three Scenes”; Zeri, Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery, pp. 154–8. A fourth panel depicting the Crucifixion, currently in the Národní Galerie in Prague, has been intermittently identified as possibly belonging to the Francesca group. However, this association has been convincingly refuted by Joanna Cannon in “An Enigmatic Italian Panel Painting of the Crucifixion in the Národní Galerie, Prague,” in Image, Memory and Devotion: Liber Amicorum Paul Crossley, ed. by Zoe Opacic and Achim Timmermann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 157–80. At the time of Kaftal’s analysis in 1948, the two Lehman panels were owned by the Harris Gallery in London. See Kaftal, “Three Scenes,” pp. 51–61. Kaftal consulted Armellini’s edition of the Vita di S. Francesca Romana (Rome, 1882), which is based on the Vatican manuscript of Mattiotti’s Trattati. He posited that there were likely six panels in the group, based on the corresponding number of fresco panels of

Notes

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5

6

7

8

9 10

11

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Francesca’s ecstatic visions within the oratory cycle. However, this is by no means definitive. See also Milani, “Tre committenti per Santa Franceca.” Beatrice Cirulli, “Documenti sulla fondazione e dedicazione della cappella delle Oblate di Santa Francesca Romana in Santa Maria Nova e una ipotesi sulla sua più antica decorazione (1442–1448),” in Francesca Romana: La Santa, il nonastero e la città, ed. by Romagnoli, pp. 247–71; and Cirulli, “Un documento e una proposta per la decorazione Quattrocentesca della cappella delle Oblate di Santa Francesca Romana in Santa Maria Nova a Roma,” Paragone. Arte, 61, ser. 3, no. 92–3 (2010), pp. 102–19. Both the Lehman and Walters panels are now supported by wooden cradles, making it virtually impossible to discern whether or not they were originally attached to a larger central painting (or to anything else). The provenance of the Lehman panels is discussed in Pope-Hennessy, Italian Paintings, p. 206. For a recounting of the obsequies and burial of Francesca Ponziani, see Lugano, La nobil casa, pp. 108–14; Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 141–3. See also Licia Marti, “Santa Francesca Romana (Santa Maria Nova),” Roma Sacra, 3 (1995), pp. 40–47. The basilica of Santa Maria Nova was re-named the church of Santa Francesca Romana after Francesca’s canonization by Pope Paul V (Camillo Borghese) in 1608. George Kaftal and Federico Zeri both proposed that the panels related to the main altar. See Kaftal, “Three Scenes,” pp. 59–60. Zeri posited that an altarpiece containing the panels was placed directly on Francesca’s tomb adjacent to the altar, and that it was broken up during extensive renovations of Santa Maria Nova at the beginning of the seventeenth century. See Zeri, Italian Paintings, p. 156. Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. by Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 72–3, 124–6, Figure 1; Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Vintage, 1983), pp. 104–6; See also Marti, “Santa Francesca Romana,” pp. 46–7. Ramiro Capra, Guida illustrata della Basilica di S. Maria Nova (S. Francesca Romana) (Rome: Scuola Tipografica Missionaria Domenicana, 1949), p. 14; Wisch and Newbigin, Acting on Faith, pp. 67–8. Quattrocento women’s devotion to Marian icons and testamentary bequests to be buried near them was analyzed by Maria Luisa Lombardo and Mirella Morelli in “Donne e testamenti a Roma nel Quattrocento,” Archivi e cultura, 15/16 (1993), pp. 23–130. Scanlan, “Doorways to the Demonic and Divine,” p. 11. Cirulli, “Documenti sulla fondazione e dedicazione,” and Cirulli, “Un documento e una proposta.” Cirulli, “Un documento e una proposta,” pp. 102, 116–19. The concession is dated October 4, 1442. See Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 156; Lugano, La nobil casa, pp. 111–12; Lugano, “Santa Francesca Romana nella memoria dei contemporanei e dei posteri,” Rivista storica benedettina, 3 (1908), pp. 162–3. Facing the high altar from the doorway of Santa Maria Nova, the oblates’ chapel was the third from the entrance, on the right-hand side of the church. For a floor plan of the basilica and a description of the chapel, see Marti, “Santa Francesca Romana,” p. 43–4. Jonathan Katz Nelson, “Memorial Chapels in Churches: The Privatization and Transformation of Sacred Spaces,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. by Roger Crum and John Paoletti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 353–75.

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12 Antoninus, Summa Theologica, vol. III, tit. X, cap. III. See also Robert W. Gaston, “Liturgy and Patronage in San Lorenzo, Florence, 1350–1650,” in Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. by F.W. Kent and Patricia Simons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), pp. 111–33; Nelson, “Memorial Chapels,” pp. 358–62. 13 Nelson, “Memorial Chapels,” p. 356. 14 Moroni, “Le visioni di Santa Francesca Romana,” p. 167; Lugano, I processi, p. 88. 15 Belting, Likeness and Presence, pp. 409–57, esp. pp. 409–19. Sixten Ringbom cites numerous quattrocento examples of this type of image in Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth-Century Devotional Painting, 2nd ed. (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1984), pp. 30–39. 16 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 40–41. 17 Belting, Likeness and Presence, p. 410; Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Seeing and Believing: The Suspicion of Sight and the Authentication of Vision in Late Medieval Art and Devotion,” in Imagination und Wirklichkeit: Zum Verhältnis von mentalen und realen Bildern in der Kunst der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Klaus Krüger and Alessandro Nova (Mainz: von Zabern, 2000), pp. 55–8. 18 Belting, Likeness and Presence, p. 412. 19 Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 57. See also Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966); Michael Camille, “Before the Gaze: The Internal Senses and Late Medieval Practices of Seeing,” in Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw, ed. by Robert S. Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 197–223. 20 Camille, “Before the Gaze,” pp. 200–201. See also Katharine Park, “Impressed Images: Reproducing Wonders,” in Picturing Science Producing Art, ed. by Caroline Jones and Peter Galison (New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 254–71. 21 David C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). See also Carl Nordenfalk, “The Five Senses in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 48 (1985), pp. 1–22; Hamburger, “Seeing and Believing”; Hamburger, “Speculations on Speculation: Vision and Perception in the Theory and Practice of Mystical Devotion,” in Deutsche Mystik im abendländischen Zusammenhang: Neu erschlossene Texte, neue methodische Ansätze, neue theoretische Konzepte, ed. by Walter Haug and Wolfram Schneider-Lastin (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000), pp. 353–408; Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998); Hamburger, Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Anne-Marie Bouché, eds., The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 22 Lindberg, Theories of Vision. 23 Camille, “Before the Gaze,” p. 202; Cynthia Hahn, “Visio Dei: Changes in Medieval Visuality,” in Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw, ed. by Robert S. Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp.169–96; Beth Williamson, “The Ordered Exercise of Intellection: The Manipulation of Devotional

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Technologies,” in Image, Memory and Devotion: Liber Amicorum Paul Crossley, ed. by Zoe Opacic and Achim Timmermann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 121–8. 24 Murray Wright Bundy, The Theory of Imagination in Classical and Mediaeval Thought (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1927), esp. pp. 146–99. See also Lindberg, Theories of Vision, pp. 122–46; Hamburger, “Seeing and Believing,” pp. 47–9; Carruthers, Book of Memory, pp. 56–98. 25 Bundy, Theory of Imagination, pp. 41–59. 26 Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History of Theory and Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Hamburger, “Seeing and Believing,” pp. 48–50. 27 Bundy, Theory of Imagination, pp. 42–59; Hamburger, “Seeing and Believing,” pp. 47–8. Bolzoni, Web of Images, pp. 7, 23–35. 28 The presence of the Apostle Paul, St. Benedict, and Mary Magdalene as divine protectors of the beata and as messengers of Jesus and the Queen of Heaven is explained in Francesca’s vision of Christmas, 1433. It is in this same vision that the Madonna hands down her Rule to Francesca. See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 143–5 and Kaftal, “Three Scenes,” p. 54. 29 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 36–7, 46–7, 143–7, 204; Kaftal, “Three Scenes,” p. 54. 30 Dyan Elliott analyzes a variety of texts and responses; see “Rubber Soul,” pp. 89–120. See also Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). 31 Emphasis mine. Dionysius Areopagiticus, De Ecclesia hierarchia, I.2, in PseudoDionysius: The Complete Works, trans. by Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), p. 197. For a synopsis of discussions of divine contemplation in the writings of Dionysius, see C.E. Rolt, Dionysius the Areopagite on the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920), pp. 25–40. 32 Donna Spivey Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Washington, dc: Catholic University Press, 2001), pp. 128–41. 33 Hamburger, “Seeing and Believing,” pp. 54–5. 34 Catherine Mooney, “Women’s Visions, Men’s Words: The Portrayal of Holy Women and Men in Fourteenth-Century Italian Hagiography” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1991), pp. 174–222; Mooney, “The Authorial Role of Brother A. in the Composition of Angela of Foligno’s Revelations,” in Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance, ed. by E. Ann Matter and John Wayland Coakley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 52–3; Park, “Impressed Images,” pp. 264–5. 35 Park, “Impressed Images,” p. 264. 36 See Bolzoni, Web of Images, p. 5; Roberts, Dominican Women and Renaissance Art; Wood, Women, Art and Spirituality; Zarri and Pomata, I monasteri femminili. 37 Mary Carruthers summarizes the differences between lectio and meditatio, drawing on a variety of sources, in her chapter on memory and the ethics of reading. See Carruthers, Book of Memory, pp. 202–12. 38 Ibid. pp. 205–8; Evelyn Lincoln, Brilliant Discourse: Pictures and Readers in Early Modern Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), pp. 25–60; Lincoln, “The Devil’s Hem: Allegorical Reading in a Sixteenth-Century Illustrated Life of

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St. Benedict,” in Early Modern Allegory: Embodying Meaning, ed. by Cristelle Baskins and Lisa Rosenthal (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 135–53. 39 Cynthia Troup, “Reading Surfaces: Imagery and Devotion in Giovanni Mattiotti’s Vernacular Tractati,” in Cultures of Devotion: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. by Peter Howard and Cynthia Troup (Clayton, Vic.: Monash University, 2000), pp. 52–60. 40 Translation and emphasis mine. “[The Virgin] vestita de resplendente luce, colla corona solita, tenendo in braccio lo Signore piccolino quasi de octo mesi, tanto bello et amabile, quanto lo ymagina tu lectore, acio che lo possiedi insieme collo scriptore, con tucti devoti scoltatori.” See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 34; Troup gives a slightly different translation of this passage in “Reading Surfaces,” p. 54. 41 The painting of Francesca holding the Christ Child currently has inscriptions taken from Dante’s Paradiso inserted into the panel, but they are not original to the work. Kaftal sorts through this problem in his article, and I agree with his conclusion that, based on the scrolls in the other two surviving panels, the original text on the panel of Francesca holding the Christ Child would likely have been drawn from Mattiotti’s Trattati. See Kaftal, “Three Scenes,” pp. 58–61, 86; and Zeri, “Italian Paintings,” pp. 156–7. 42 This is one of the most extensive vision narratives of Mattiotti’s Trattati. For the entire tract, see Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 43–51 (especially pp. 45–7 for descriptions of the Christ Child’s body). 43 “Et poi ponendosello nelle braccia, con granne letitia [Francesca] contemplava et maniava tucti li parti de quella gloriosa humanita [del pretioso cuorpo del Signore], sempre cantando et dicendo la excellentia et la significatione de tucti parti del pretioso cuorpo, et era dechiarata della significatione della gloriosa vergine matre.” See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 45. 44 “Perlo sancto et pretioso capo fo dechiarata dalla regina, como significava tucte cose da esso facte et che farravo, et tucte cose che a desfacte (et desfarra). Perla fronte, lo intellecto, como principio et luce de intellect…perle rechie, lo inclinamento et la humilita delli petitioni che faco le anime iustamente […] perle mano tucti li exercitii facti et operationi buoni operati, et anche chesse faco, et farrano, perche da esso procedono.” Ibid., pp. 45–6. 45 Illustrated manuscript, MS Ital. 115, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. This manuscript contains 193 pen drawings, 113 of which are finished with color washes. There are blank spaces for an additional 104 illustrations throughout the end of the text. For an English translation of this manuscript, with reproductions of all 193 illustrations, see Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green, eds. and trans., Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961). 46 See Ragusa and Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ, pp. xxvii, 1–5. 47 Bolzoni, Web of Images, pp. 156–8. 48 Ragusa and Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ, p. 38. 49 “Per tucto lo cuorpo, como in tucto incise dato et davo ad tucte hore, per nostro confuorso et raducto, et per nostra salvatione, per volerencie actennere quello chencie a promesso, et darencie vita eternal, per che esso e vita eterna.” See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 46.

Notes

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The canonical study of the possible functions for the holy dolls is in Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. by Lydia C. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 310–29. See also Wood, Women, Art and Spirituality, pp. 121–44. For a recent critical edition of CaterinaVigri’s treatise, see Caterina Vigri, Le sette armi spirituali, ed. by Antonella Degl’Innocenti (Florence: Sismel Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2000). Caterina’s bambino is preserved in the Monastery of Corpus Domini in Bologna. 51 Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, pp. 328–9. 52 Wood, Women, Art and Spirituality, pp. 136–7. 53 Amarilli Marcovecchio, “Il culto delle statue vestite a Roma in età pontificia,” La Ricerca Folklorica, 24 (1991), pp. 63–71; Ursula Schlegel, “The Christ Child as Devotional Image,” Art Bulletin, 52 (1970), pp. 1–10; Giovanni Previtali, “‘Il Bambin’ Gesu come immagine devozionale nella scultura italiana del trecento,” Paragone, 21, no. 249 (1970), pp. 31–40; C. van Hulst, “La storia della devozione a Gesu Bambino nelle immagini plastiche isolate,” Antonianum, 19 (1944), pp. 35–54; H.W. van Os, “The Madonna and the Mystery Play,” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, 5 (1971), pp. 5–19. 54 “Guardava […] fixamente allo divino verbo.” See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 47. 55 “Pero non levava li suoi ochi dale soe braccie, nelle quale teneva esso Signore…pensa lectore quanta letitia abe quando li retorno, et sempre cantando iubilando piena de letitia, con gaudio et de confuorso, sola ad lo divino verbo fixamente guardanno.” Ibid. 56 “Stanno la mirabile ancilla de Christo nelle soa camera in sancta meditatione, menata dalla luce, vide lalta regina/acompanagnata con moltitudine de angeli seraphici, et con essa era lo apostolo/sancto Pavolo, sancto Benedecto con la gloriosa Magdalena, et le figliole in Christ de/essa beata stavano socto lo manto della regina, et volendo io [Mattiotti] sapere do-/ve essa beata stava, medisse con vergongna, como stava dallo lato dextro/alla regina, collo capo chienato allo suo pecto coperta con uno manto de/ oro, lo quale teneva anche amantata la gloriosa vergine et matre, socto lo quale au-/ reo manto era laltro candidissimo, collo quale copriva le figliole, et lalta regina li disse: Ben venga la mea electa, a Dio si fosti offerta.” Ibid., pp. 152–3. This vision is dated March 1, 1433. 57 Wisch and Newbigin, Acting on Faith, pp. 31–61. 58 This vision is dated August 15, 1439. See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 202–4: “Disse lo dicto mirabile angelo ad essa beata: Voglio comensare ad ordire una tela de ciento legami, et puoi farragio laltra de sexanta legami, et poi farragio laltrade trenta legami. […] Et nello dicto ordimento che esso angilo faceva, certi cani con gacti impicciavano li fili, nota peril contrarietati.” 59 Ludovico Ponzileoni, Vita di Santa Francesca Romana (Turin, 1874), p. 255. See also Kaftal, “Three Scenes,” p. 58. 60 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 199: “Poi che la mirabile ancilla de Christo anno ad stare colle soe dilecte figliole in Christo depo la morte del suo marito nella festa et sollempnita de sancto Benedecto, nelli anni domini. Milli. Cccc. Trenta sei.” 61 Dyan Elliottt specifically cited Francesca Romana as a model for the tensions between the spiritual desires and domestic obligations of female saints. See Elliott, Spiritual Marriage, pp. 231–45.

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“Lo glorioso archangelo sopra dicto, la quale assiduamente vedeva in forma humana, li devo uno assai piu nobile angelo, la quale era dello quarto choro, cioe de potestati, et era della supprema stantia dello dicto choro.” See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 199. For the distinctions between angels in the heavenly realm, see Pseudo-Dionysius, The Celestial Hierarchy in The Complete Works, pp. 143–92. 63 Ragusa and Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ, pp. 72–3. 64 “Sempre li occhi de esso mirabile angilo sguardavano fixamente al cielo, o che facessi lo dicto lavoro o che non.” See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 203. Spinning was a common occupation among communities of beguines and tertiaries of this period as well. See Esposito, “Il Mondo,” p. 162. 65 The caption below this fresco reads: “Como spesse fiate essendo la beata Francesca nella beatifica visione lo eterno Dio apparendoli/nelle braccia della soa gloriosa vergine matre se degnava de venire nelle braccia de essa beata.” 66 Hamburger, “Seeing and Believing,” pp. 47–9; Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons. 67 André Vauchez, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. by Daniel E. Bornstein, trans. by Margery Schneider (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), pp. 237–42; Spivey Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Washington, dc: Catholic University Press, 2001), pp. 134–41; Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 217–21; Dominique Rigaux, “Women, Faith, and Image in the Late Middle Ages,” in Women and Faith: Catholic Religious Life in Italy from Late Antiquity to the Present, ed. by Lucetta Scaraffia and Gabriella Zarri (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 72–82; Roberts, Dominican Women and Renaissance Art, pp. 159–60. 68 Hamburger, “Seeing and Believing,” p. 56. 69 Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, pp. 241–2. 70 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 217. For example, a vision on the Feast of the Epiphany, 1433, begins: “Venendo la angelica ancilla de Christo ad recepe/re lo sanctissimo sacramento nella sopra dicta cappella, quando li fo ministrato/lo sacramento stava in extasi, et stecte immobile, et puoi mobile.” See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 147. 71 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 143–7. 72 Ibid., p. 144. 73 Westfall, In This Most Perfect Paradise, pp. 21–7. 74 Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, pp. 238–40; Rigaux, “Women, Faith and Image,” p. 81; Romagnoli gives a concise examination of these issues in relation to Francesca’s Eucharistic devotion. See Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 217–21. 75 Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, p. 239; Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast. 76 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 218–20; Moroni, “Le visioni di Santa Francesca Romana,” p. 169. 77 Giovanni di Paolo, The Miraculous Communion of Saint Catherine of Siena, tempera and gold on wood, 11 3/8 × 8 ¾ in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Pope-Hennessy, Italian Paintings, pp. 128–33, 302–3. 78 See Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 221–34; Roberts, Dominican Women and Renaissance Art, pp. 155–61. 79 Bolzoni, Web of Images, pp. 168–77.

Notes

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Peter Parshall, “The Art of Memory and the Passion,” Art Bulletin, 81, no. 3 (1999), pp. 456–72; Bolzoni, Web of Images, pp. 3–7. 81 Bolzoni, Web of Images, pp. 117–19. See also Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, pp. 1–52. 82 Iris Origo, The World of San Bernardino (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1962), pp. 123–27. 83 Bartoccetti, “Le fonti delle visioni,” pp. 199–215; Moroni, “Le visioni di Santa Francesca Romana,” pp. 160–78. Francesca Romana has been tentatively assumed to be one of the due donne, credo santissime, le quali erano maritate ognuna that San Bernardino met while in Rome. The reference is from a 1427 sermon given in Siena, in which he praises the virtues of the two unnamed Roman women. See Mauro Tagliabue, “Francesca Romana nella storiagrafia: Fonti, studi, biografie,” in Una santa tutta romana, ed. by Picasso, p. 212. For the text of the 1427 sermon, see L. Bianchi, ed., Le prediche volgari di s. Bernardino da Siena dette nella Piazza del Campo, l’anno MCCCCXXVII, vol. I (Siena: Tipografia G. Landi e N. Allesandri, 1880), p. 102. 84 Bolzoni, Web of Images, p. 168. The biblical quote is derived from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Philippians, 2:9–11. 85 Bolzoni, Web of Images, pp. 170–72. 86 Carruthers, Book of Memory, pp. 99–152; Bolzoni, Web of Images, pp. 2–5. 87 During the late-medieval period, the ad Herennium was believed to have been written by Cicero. See Ad C. Herennium: De Ratione Dicendi (Rhetorica ad Herennium), trans. by Harry Caplan (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1981). See also Parshall, “Art of Memory and the Passion,” pp. 456–72. 88 Ad Herennium, 3.21.35–3.22, 36–7. 89 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 43–51. For the description of the Virgin’s crown, see Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 47–9; Kaftal, “Three Scenes,” pp. 56–7. 90 Note: The Latin manuscript of the Trattati describes the second crown as having duodecim lilia aurea. See Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 457. However, Carpaneto’s transcription of the original manuscript in the vernacular uses castoni, which seems to translate as “mounting” or “setting.” See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 47–8. 91 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 47–9. 92 See de Voragine, Golden Legend, pp. 77–119. For the Legenda Aurea and commentary on scriptural, apocryphal, and literary sources known to and possibly read by Francesca Ponziani (especially as sources for her visions), see Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 190; Moroni, “Le visioni di Santa Francesca Romana,” pp. 160–78; Bartoccetti, “Le fonti delle visione,” pp. 13–40. 93 Miri Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 285–312. 94 Ibid., pp. 97–8; Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, p. 104. 95 Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, pp. 107–13; Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 190. 96 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 190. 97 Ibid., pp. 183–200 and related bibliography. See Moroni, “Le vision di Santa Francesca Romana,” p. 175 for Moroni’s description of the pictorial nature of Francesca’s visions as Giotto-esque (giottesca). Guila Barone, however, noted the strong sense of color

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asserted in the visions, relating them to the “splendor of the Late-Gothic miniaturists” and the “brilliant color and dream-like atmosphere” of the early work of Fra Angelico. Barone, “L’immagine di Santa Francesca Romana nei processi di canonizzazione e nella Vita in volgare,” in Una santa tutta romana, ed. by Picasso, pp. 57–69. 98 Barone, “L’immagine di Santa Francesca Romana.” 99 Ibid., p. 69. It is noteworthy that in her footnote to this assertion, Barone cites Francesca’s description of the Virgin’s crown in her vision of Christmas 1432 as an example. 100 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 47. 101 Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, pp. 215–16; Richard Krautheimer, Rome: Profile of a City, 312–1308 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 150–52; Egerton Beck, “The Mitre and Tiara in Heraldry and Ornament (Concluded) II: The Tiara,” Burlington Magazine, 23, no. 126 (1913), pp. 330–32. 102 Krautheimer, Rome, p. 151; Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, p. 215. 103 Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, pp. 215–16. 104 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 146. 105 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 47–9. 106 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, p. 457; Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 47–8. 107 Margaret Miles, “Vision: The Eye of the Body and the Eye of the Mind in Saint Augustine’s De Trinitate and Confessions,” Journal of Religion, 63, no. 2 (1983), pp. 125–42. 108 Lindberg, Theories of Vision, pp. 87–90. 109 Augustine, The Trinity (De Trinitate), ed. by John E. Rotelle, trans. by Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 1991), pp. 258–443; Miles, “Vision,” p. 127. 110 Augustine, The Trinity, pp. 258–443; Augustine, Confessions, trans. by Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 179–92, Book 10. See also Miles, “Vision,” pp. 128–36. 111 Sandra Penketh, “Women and Books of Hours,” in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. by Jane H.M. Taylor and Lesley Smith (London: British Library, 1996), pp. 266–80; Carruthers, Book of Memory, pp. 1–17.

3. Dining and Discipline at Tor de’Specchi: The Refectory as ­Ritual  Space 1

In a recent survey, Diana Hiller compared Last Supper imagery between male and female religious communities. See Hiller, Gendered Perceptions of Florentine Last Supper Frescoes. See also Hayum, “A Renaissance Audience Considered”; Gilbert, “Last Suppers and their Refectories,” pp. 371–402. 2 The battaglie are transcribed in Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 225–65. 3 See the collected essays in Sarah Blick and Laura D. Gelfand, eds., Push Me, Pull You: Physical and Spatial Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. xxxv–liv. 4 Based on my own measurements, each panel averages approximately 67 × 63 in. (170 × 162 cm). The panels are all 162 cm in height and 167–176 cm wide, which places them all at about 5.5 × 5.5 ft. in size, with the exception of the two bottom panels on either side of the door.

Notes

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For the compilation and order of the vision tracts, see Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento. The Vatican Codex (ASV, A.A., Arm. I–XVIII, 3350) and successive Vite all contain the same arrangement of the visions and battles with demons. 6 Lugano, I processi, pp. 50–58. 7 Donald Weinstein and Rudolph Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 369–86. 8 Ibid., p. 40. 9 See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 257–9 and Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 801–3. The textual accounts of the events of this encounter align in both the Latin and Romanesco versions of the battaglie. However, the Latin version, as transcribed in Romagnoli’s critical edition, is dated “anno Domini MCCCCXXXII,” while the Romanesco version transcribed in Carpaneto is “anni domini M. cccc trenta tre.” Neither Romagnoli nor Carpaneto address this discrepancy in dates. 10 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 257–9. 11 On the subject of liminal beings, see Stephen T. Asma, On Monsters: An Unnatural History of our Worst Fears (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), esp. pp. 39–42. See also Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998), pp. 173–214. 12 For associations between apocalyptic imagery and the antique tradition, see Aleks Pluskowski, “Apocalyptic Monsters: Animal Inspirations for the Iconography of North European Devourers,” in The Monstrous Middle Ages, ed. by Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), pp. 155–76. See also Luther Link, The Devil: The Archfiend in Art from the Sixth to the Sixteenth Century (New York: Abrams, 1995); Lorenzo Lorenzi, Devils in Art: Florence from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, trans. by Mark Roberts (Florence: Centro Di, 1997); Enrico Castelli, Il demoniaco nell’arte: Il significato filosofico del demoniaco nell’arte (Milan: Electa, 1952). 13 Pluskowski, “Apocalyptic Monsters”; Asma, On Monsters, pp. 67–71. 14 Rob Dückers and Ruud Priem, eds., The Hours of Catherine of Cleves: Devotions, Demons and Daily Life in the Fifteenth Century (New York: Abrams, 2009). 15 For the iconographic attributes of the Apostle Paul, see James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), p. 235. 16 For the colors of the Devil, see Lorenzi, Devils in Art, p. 124. 17 Pluskowski, “Apocalyptic Monsters,” pp. 161–3; Michael Camille, “Mouths and Meanings: Toward an Anti-Iconography of Medieval Art,” in Iconography at the Crossroads: Papers from the Colloquium Sponsored by the Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, 23–24 March 1990, ed. by Brendan Cassidy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 43–58. 18 Large portions of this fresco have flaked off due to vibrations caused by increased motor vehicle traffic on Via Teatro Marcello. Fortunately, the other nine frescoes have survived with minimal damage. I thank Federica Moretti, conservator for the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali in Rome, for explaining the damage and the earlier restoration of the frescoes to me. 19 “Noi simo li secte doni, simo venute ad stare con voi […] simo li doni dello spirito sancto.” This vision occurred in July 1432. Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 252–4. For the gifts of the Holy Spirit, see Jacques Forget, “Holy Ghost,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7 of 15 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910).

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“Et subito se mutorono in lopi ferocissimi con grandissima iracundia et rabia per volere devorare essa pretiosa, et quello ponto de tanta crudelita, lo glorioso sopradicto angilo…Allora la nobile anima [Francesca] vide sopra lo glorioso una inusitata divina luce, con altra verita che la luce ficta che essi miseri mustraro quando vennero.” See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 252–3. 21 Ibid., p. 252. 22 Isaiah 11:2–3, concerning the spiritual kingdom of Christ to which all nations shall repair, reads: “And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and of godliness. And he shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge according to the sight of the eyes, nor reprove according to the hearing of the ears.” 23 Emphasis taken from the Douay-Rheims Bible. For the doctrinal distinctions between spiritual gifts of the first class as described in Isaiah and those of the second class (charismatic) as outlined by Saint Paul, see Forget, “Holy Ghost”. 24 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 225. 25 “Al nome dello eterno Dio. Questi so li ordinationi statiuti per la beata Francesca alle sue figliole in Christo presente e future, le quale serraco nella sua congregatione.” Lunardi, “L’istituzione di Tor de’Specchi,” pp. 76, 87–93. For my English translation of the Statutes, see Appendix. 26 Francis Oakley, The Western Church the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 231–8. Alessandra Romagnoli traced the codification of the Tor de’Specchi Rule through Francesca’s visions and in relation to contemporary Church policy and politics. See Romagnoli, “Francesca Romana e la Regola,” pp. 87–142. The most detailed of these visions occurred on Christmas Day (die della santa nativita) 1433, conflating the “birth” of her Rule with the birth of Christ. See also Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 604–16; Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 143–7. 27 Katherine Gill, “Scandala: Controversies Concerning Clausura and Women’s Religious Communities in Late Medieval Italy,” in Christendom and Its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000–1500, ed. by Scott L. Waugh and Peter Diehl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 177–203. 28 For further discussion, see Chapter 4; see also Hayum, “A Renaissance Audience Considered,” p. 255. 29 “Ordinationi Statuiti per la Beata Francesca, no. 55: Item, quando se fao lo pane, tutte tengano silentio, e chi sao dire li salmi penitentiali li dica; chi non li sapessi, dica altre oratione, altramente lassi una die lo vino et una die la pietanza.” The statute quoted above can be found in Lunardi, “L’istituzione di Tor de’Specchi,” p. 90. For proposed differences between ordinations and constitutions for women’s religious communities, see Thomas, Art and Piety, pp. 38–40. 30 Kardong, Benedict’s Rule, pp. 311–21. For an analysis of the ritual significance of silence in the refectory space, see Sheila Bonde and Clark Maines, “‘To Hunger for the Word of God’: Dining and Community in the Gothic Refectory,” in Saint-Jean-des-Vignes in Soissons: Approaches to Its Architecture, Archaeology and History, ed. by Sheila Bonde and Clark Maines (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 321–4.

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Statute 61: “Item, a chi mancha covelle a mensa, faccia segno che li sia data, altramente non mangia cucina lo die sequente.” Lundardi, “L’istituzione di Tor de’Specchi,” p. 91. See Appendix. 32 For San Domenico in Pisa, see Roberts, Dominican Women and Renaissance Art, pp. 182–92. For San Marco, see Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, pp. 147–65. 33 The frescoes are dated in a painted caption located above the top center panel. 34 “Fare uno refectorio ne le casse del la [con]gregat[i]o[n]e de le do[m]pne de la beata Fran[ces]ca; de fare el solaro de lu d[i]c[t]o refecto in quella forma [et] modo.” The document of December 1463 was transcribed and published as an Appendix in D’Achille, “Le didascalie degli affreschi di Santa Francesca Romana,” pp. 177–8. 35 Ibid., p. 178: “Et promectono le dicte dompne dare al dicto maestro Salvato tucto con cime per porte per fenestre per canali et ferro per fenestre d ferrarse et mastro Salvato de mectereli sensa altro prezo.” 36 Carlo Cecchelli, “Il monastero delle oblate e le sue origini,” in Studi e documenti sulla Roma sacra, vol. II, ed. by Carlo Cecchelli (Rome: Presso la R. deputazion alla Biblioteca vallicelliana, 1951), pp. 13–28; see esp. pp. 27–8. Based on his footnotes, it appears that Cecchelli was not aware of the 1463 document. In line with Cecchelli’s hypothesis, and based on my own observation of the irregularities in the floor of a room (now empty) adjacent to the refectory, I would also suggest that there was an external landing and stairway outside the refectory door that led down to a cortile as well as up to the attic constructed by Salvato. This would have given the oblates private access to and from their garden, courtyard, and dormitory space as the area below the refectory was surrounded by a wall during the decades covered here. 37 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 250. The caption beneath this fresco is barely legible, but a fragment reads: “Como lo maligno spirito […] delegiava essa beata dicendo.” See also Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 234–9. Many of the details and themes from the stories of the desert fathers that were recorded in de Voragine’s Golden Legend, for example, those of St. Paul the hermit and Saint Anthony (abbot), were later recorded in Mattiotti’s battaglia texts. 38 Ellen Callman, “Thebaid Studies,” Antichità Viva, 14 (1975), pp. 3–22. For a recent technical and comparative analysis of Thebaid imagery, see Alessandra Malquori, Il giardino dell’anima: Ascesi e propaganda nelle Tebaidi fiorentine del Quattrocento (Florence: Centro Di, 2012). See also Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, p. 128; Christian Heck, “The Vision of St. Anthony on a Thebaid Panel at Christ Church, Oxford,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 59 (1996), pp. 286–94. See also Domenico Cavalca, Le Vite de’Santi Padri, vols. I–II (Milan: Istituto Editoriale Italiano, 1915). 39 Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, p. 128. Hood defines monochrome in this sense as a palette strongly organized around earth pigments, most often terra verde, in contemporary Thebaid scenes (ibid., p. 312, n. 24). 40 Callman, “Thebaid Studies,” p. 5. 41 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 225. 42 Cattana, “Santa Francesca Romana e i monaci di Monte Oliveto.” See also Gabriella Zarri, “From Prophecy to Discipline, 1450–1650,” in Women and Faith: Catholic Religious Life in Italy from Late Antiquity to the Present, ed. by Lucetta Scaraffia and Gabriella Zarri (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 87–91; Thomas, Art and

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Piety, pp. 44–52. For identification of the reformed Benedictine habit, see Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols, p. 262. 43 Carli, L’Abbazia di Monteoliveto, p. 47. Carli attributes the hermit series to Giovanni di Paolo (c. 1440) and the Thebaid to an assistant of Giovanni di Paolo. See also Callman, “Thebaid Studies,” pp. 15 and 22, n. 57. 44 Hayum, “A Renaissance Audience Considered,” p. 245; Thomas, Art and Piety, pp. 44–52. 45 See Adrian S. Hoch, “Pictures of Penitence from a Trecento Neapolitan Nunnery,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 61, no. 2 (1998), pp. 206–26. 46 Denys Hay, The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 69; Ringbom, Icon to Narrative, pp. 27–8. 47 “Stanno la humile ancilla de Christo nella soa camera de nocte in sancto exercitio spirituale de mente.” See, for example, Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 232. 48 Ibid., p. 143: “Annanno nella devota cella, essa beata et ponenedove certi rami perlo acceso desiderio de stare nello bosco.” 49 Patricia Curran, Grace before Meals: Food Ritual and Body Discipline in Convent Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), pp. ix, 53–6; Bonde and Maines, “To Hunger for the Word of God,” pp. 302–25; Thomas, Art and Piety, pp. 38–41; Roberta Gilchrist, Contemplation and Action: The Other Monasticism (London: Leicester University Press, 1995), pp. 129–32. 50 See Thomas, Art and Piety. 51 Hiller, Gendered Perceptions of Florentine Last Supper Frescoes, p. 3 and Chapter 5. 52 Hay, The Church in Italy, pp. 72–82; Zarri, “From Prophecy to Discipline,” pp. 87–95. 53 See Thomas, Art and Piety, pp. 38–41; Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, p. 294; Joëlle Rollo-Koster, “From Prostitutes to Brides of Christ: The Avignonese ‘Repenties’ in the Late Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 32 (2002), p. 121; Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, pp. 140–42; Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast. 54 The preferred method of mortifying one’s flesh during this period was the disciplina, or flagellation, again recalling Christ’s suffering. For quattrocento believers, the disciplina was inflicted with flails made of string and nails. 55 In the Douay Rheims edition, the Penitential Psalms are nos. 6, 31, 37, 52 (Miserere), 101, 129, and 142. In the King James version, they are nos. 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143. 56 See Curran, Grace before Meals, pp. 49–73 for a summary of the theological and historical foundations of Christian food beliefs. See also Bynum, Holy Feast, Holy Fast. 57 Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), p. 202. 58 Jacobus de Theramo, Consolatio peccatorum, seu Processus Belial, German (Augsburg: Johann Schonsperger, 1487); de Theramo, Consolatio peccatorum, seu Processus Belial (Augsburg, Johann Schussler, 1472). The 1487 German edition contains colored woodcuts illustrating scenes from the mock trial. 59 See R. Po-chia Hsia, “Religious Cultures (Spirituality, Reform, High and Low),” in A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance, ed. by Guido Ruggiero (Malden, ma: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 333–48.

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60 Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, p. 58; H. Diane Russell and Bernadine Barnes, Eva/ Ave: Woman in Renaissance and Baroque Prints (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1990). 61 Tiziana Marozzi, Iconografia Umbro-Marchigiana della Madonna del Soccorso (San Ginesio: Associazione di Cultura Operativa Identita Sibillina, 1999). See also Efrat El Hanay, Beating the Devil: Images of the Madonna del Soccorso in Italian Renaissance Art (PhD diss., Indiana University, 2006). 62 “Con grande constantia [Francesca] ben confidata in Dio sempre dicendo et chiamando Yhesu como soleva.” See Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 258. 63 For a survey of the image of the Man of Sorrows in Italy during this period, see Colin Eisler, “The Golden Christ of Cortona and the Man of Sorrows in Italy, Part Two,” Art Bulletin, 51, no. 3 (1969), pp. 233–46. See also Caroline Walker Bynum, “Seeing and Seeing Beyond: The Mass of St. Gregory in the Fifteenth Century,” in The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, ed. by Jeffrey Hamburger and AnneMarie Bouché (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 208–40; and Ringbom, Icon to Narrative, pp. 66–9. 64 See Eisler, “The Golden Christ” for a summary and extensive bibliography on Eucharistic piety and the Feast of Corpus Christi in Italy, especially in relation to the iconography of the Man of Sorrows. 65 Ordinationi, no. 72: “Item, usava la beata Francesca omne anno la nocte dello venardì santo nella quarta hora dicere sette fiata lo Miserere, staendo in terra in croce, e nella mesa nocte faceva la desceplina a sangue per spatio de dicere lo Miserere cinque fiate.” The Miserere is the fifth Penitential Psalm. 66 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 234–5, 263. 67 The vision of Francesca beaten with dead snakes is dated January 1432 and is recorded ibid., pp. 248–9. 68 Curran, Grace before Meals, p. 56. 69 See, for example, Bonde and Maines, “To Hunger for the Word of God,” pp. 303–48; Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture.

4. The Devil in the Refectory: Bodies Imagined at Tor de’Specchi 1

“Como la beata Francesca abe tale orrebile et diabolica oppressione che lo inimico della humana natura li portò uno cuorpo de homo muorto fracido pieno de viermi pigliando et soboltando essa beata sopra lo dicto cuorpo muorto.” See also D’Achille, “Le didascalie degli affreschi di Santa Francesca Romana,” pp. 109–83. 2 Walter Stephens, “Habeas Corpus: Demonic Bodies in Ficino, Psellus and Malleus maleficarum,” in The Body in Early Modern Italy, ed. by Julia Hairston and Walter Stephens (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), pp. 74–82; and Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 3 Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, p. 133; Evelyn Lincoln, The Invention of the Italian Renaissance Printmaker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 69–75. 4 Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, p. 129.

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Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, scultori e architettori, vol. III (1971), pp. 129–30; Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, pp. 126–9. 6 Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, pp. 132–141. 7 C.H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed. (Harlow: Longman, 2001), p. 30. 8 See Ordinations 32, 38, 39, 40, 48, and 62 in Appendix. 9 Deborah Youngs and Simon Harris, “Demonizing the Night in Medieval Europe: A Temporal Monstrosity?,” in The Monstrous Middle Ages, ed. by Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), pp. 134–54. 10 Ibid., pp. 137–40; Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society, trans. by Teresa L. Fagan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 11 Eugenio Battisti and Giuseppa Saccaro Battisti, Le macchine cifrate di Giovanni Fontana: con la riproduzione del Cod. Icon. 242 della Bayerische Staatsbibliothek di Monaco di Baviera e la decrittazione di esso e del Cod. lat. nouv. acq. 635 della Bibliothèque Nationale di Parigi (Milan: Arcadia Edizioni, 1984), pp. 99–100, 140; Marshall Clagett, “The Life and Works of Giovanni Fontana,” in Annali dell’istituto e museo di storia della scienza di Firenze, 1, no. 1 (1976), pp. 5–28; Anthony Grafton, “The Devil as Automaton: Giovanni Fontana and the Meanings of a Fifteenth-Century Machine,” in Genesis Redux, ed. by Jessica Riskin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 46–62; Koen Vermeir, “The Magic of the Magic Lantern (1660–1700): On Analogical Demonstration and the Visualization of the Invisible,” British Journal for the History of Science, 38, no. 2 (2005), pp. 127–59; Laurent Mannoni, The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000), pp. 28–32. 12 Battisti and Battisti, Le machine cifrate, p. 99; Grafton, “The Devil as Automaton,” p. 54; Mannoni, The Great Art of Light and Shadow, pp. 30–32. 13 Battisti and Battisti, Le machine cifrate, pp. 94, 96, 134, 137; Grafton, “The Devil as Automaton.” 14 Grafton, “The Devil as Automaton,” p. 54. 15 Vermeir, “The Magic of the Magic Lantern,” p. 132. 16 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 244–6. 17 Vecchi, “La congregazione delle oblate,” pp. 457–72. 18 Clarissa Atkinson, “‘Precious Balsam in a Fragile Glass’: The Ideology of Virginity in the Later Middle Ages,” Journal of Family History, 8, no. 2 (1983), pp. 131–42; Rollo-Koster, “From Prostitutes to Brides of Christ,” pp. 120–21. For the “closing off” of bodies in a later context, see Helen Hills, “The Veiled Body: Within the Folds of Early Modern Neapolitan Convent Culture,” Oxford Art Journal, 27, no. 3 (2004), pp. 271–90. 19 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 62–73. 20 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 227–8. 21 Ibid., p. 230: “[Francesca] assai anxiata della sollitudine como sempre era…nella devota cella posta nell alto della casa del suo marito et per stare bene quieta inserro luscio, como sempre faceva, et posta che fo in oratione, lo demonio li venne.” 22 Stringent asceticism was a common feature of late-medieval piety, especially for women. For canonical studies of the same, see Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast; Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption; Rudolph Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago:

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University of Chicago Press, 1985). For a discussion of Francesca Ponziani’s ascetic practices, see Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 234–9. 23 See, for example, Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 226–7, 231, 256. The virtues of humility, nobility, and prudence were also ascribed to her in equal measure. 24 This image is examined at length in Chapter 3. 25 Note: there are blades of grass depicted in the panel, but they are so faint that it is virtually impossible to capture them in a photograph. For architectural elements typical of a palazzo in fifteenth-century Rome, see Golzio and Zander, L’arte in Roma. 26 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 75–6; Lugano, La nobil casa, pp. 95–6, 146–8; Esch, “Santa Francesca Romana e il suo ambiente,” pp. 51–2. 27 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 226–7. Carpaneto identifies the street as la via remota chiamata Merolana. 28 Ibid., p. 235. The caption below the fresco reads: “Como la beata Francesca stando in oratione nella soa cella li vennero certi demonii et con certi niervi di animali/la battierono tanto crudelmente in muodo che se non fussi lo angelo che continuamente con essa era assai più la molestavano.” 29 See, for example, Cristelle Baskins, Cassone Painting, Humanism, and Gender in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 30 Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. by F.J. Miller (London: Heinemann, 1925), pp. 35–43. The original function of Pollaiuolo’s Apollo and Daphne is still a matter of debate. See Andrea Bayer, ed., Art and Love in Renaissance Italy (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008), p. 292. See also Alison Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers: The Arts of Florence and Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 94–113. 31 The Medici wedding took place in May 1482. Ronald Lightbown was the first scholar to suggest that the Primavera was painted on the occasion of the wedding, a suggestion that has been accepted by several scholars. See Lightbown, Botticelli: Life and Work, vol. 1 (London: Elek, 1978), p. 72; Paul Barolsky, “Botticelli’s Primavera and the Tradition of Dante,” Konsthhistorisk Tidskrift, 52, no. 1 (1983), pp. 1–6. For a discussion of the Primavera’s intended message for a female audience, see Lilian Zirpolo, “Botticelli’s Primavera: A Lesson for the Bride,” in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, ed. by Norma Broude and Mary Garrard (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992), pp. 100–109. For a concise description of the Nastagio degli Onesti panels in context, see Bayer, Art and Love, pp. 300–303. 32 Zirpolo, “Botticelli’s Primavera,” p. 105. 33 This is the first of four panels depicting The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. by G. M. McWilliam (London: Penguin Books, 1972), pp. 419–25. 34 Zirpolo, “Botticelli’s Primavera,” pp. 105–8. See also Diane Wolfthal, Images of Rape: The “Heroic” Tradition and Its Alternatives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 12–17. For quattrocento marriage rituals, see Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, pp. 247–60. 35 Two such images are depicted in the Ovide moralisé (c. 1325–1350), MS 5069, fols. 92 and 162v, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris and are reproduced in Wolfthal, Images of Rape, pp. 42–5, 130–32. 36 Wolfthal, Images of Rape, p. 43.

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Deuteronomy 22:24–7. For a discussion of the legal burdens of proof for rape victims during the late medieval period, see Wolfthal, Images of Rape, pp. 41–5. 38 Boanas and Roper, “Feminine Piety in Fifteenth-Century Rome,” pp. 185–6. 39 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 232. 40 Ibid., p. 226. 41 Boanas and Roper, “Feminine Piety in Fifteenth-Century Rome,” pp. 190–91. For a powerful study on the demonization of women’s sexuality, see Dyan Elliottt, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality and Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). 42 Lugano, I processi, pp. 39–40; Romagnoli, “Francesca Romana e la regola,” p. 97; Boanas and Roper, “Feminine Piety in Fifteenth-Century Rome,” pp. 190–91. 43 Caciola, Discerning Spirits, pp. 41–8; Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, pp. 140–42; Nordenfalk, “The Five Senses in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art,” pp. 1–22. 44 There are two almost identical drawings based on what is believed to be an original design by Pollaiuolo: one, shown here, is owned by the Wallace Collection in London, and the other by the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich. Both are pen and brown ink and wash. The drawings have been variously titled Lamentation over a Dead Hero and Death of Gattamelata. See Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers, pp. 182–3, 514. 45 Paul Joannides, Masaccio and Masolino: A Complete Catalogue (London: Phaidon, 1993), pp. 356–68; Timothy Verdon, “Masaccio’s Trinity: Theological, Social and Civic Meanings,” in The Cambridge Companion to Masaccio, ed. by Diane Cole Ahl (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 158–76. For a discussion of the depiction of Masaccio’s skeleton in the context of anatomical study and dissection during the early Renaissance, see Katherine Park, “Masaccio’s Skeleton: Art and Anatomy in Early Renaissance Florence,” in Masaccio’s Trinity, ed. by Rona Goffen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 119–40. See also Severino Dianich and Timothy Verdon, eds., La Trinità di Masaccio: Arte e teologia (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane Bologna, 2004). 46 Romans, 6:3–9; Verdon, “Masaccio’s Trinity,” pp. 170–73. 47 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 146. 48 Michael Baxandall examined St. Augustine’s four corporeal gifts of the Blessed – claritas, impassibilitas, agilitas, subtilitas (splendour, invulnerability, quickness, keenness) – as expounded in contemporary sermons in his examination of quattrocento pictorial vocabulary. See Baxandall, Painting and Experience, pp. 110, 173. 49 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 248–9. The caption beneath the panel reads: “Como la beata Francesca stando in sancta oratione li vennero certi maligni spiriti con molti sierpi morti / in mano et con essi sierpi fracidi asperissimamente battierono essa beata lassandoli grandissima pucca.” 50 Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers, pp. 103–13. 51 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. by Cecil Grayson (London: Penguin, 2004), pp. 76–80. 52 Filarete, Treatise on Architecture: Being the Treatise by Antonio di Piero Averlino, Known as Filarete, trans. by John R. Spencer, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 306. 53 Cecilia Martelli, “Luca Signorelli dalla Cappella Sistina a Loreto,” in Luca Signorelli, ed. by Fabio de Chirico, Vittoria Garibaldi, Tom Henry, and Francesco Federico Mancini (Milan: Silvana, 2012), pp. 64–5. Tom Henry and Laurence Kanter, Luca Signorelli: The

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Complete Paintings (New York: Rizzoli, 2002), pp. 19–21, 102; Gloria Kury, The Early Work of Luca Signorelli (New York: Garland, 1978), pp. 226–60. 54 Romagnoli analyzes connections between asceticism and mysticism in both Mattiotti’s Vita and in relation to hagiographic accounts of medieval female saints. Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 115–18. 55 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, p. 12. 56 The caption reads: “Como lo eterno Dio se degnavo de venire per pigliare la felice anima della beata Franceaca / quando se partivo dallo suo sacratissimo corpo.” Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 141–3; Lugano, La nobil casa, pp. 108–14; Lugano, I processi, p. 103. 57 Drawing, c. 1485, MS Lat. Misc. d. 85, fol. 16v, Bodleian Library, Oxford. The drawing is reproduced in Patricia Fortini-Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 161–2. 58 Fortini-Brown, Venice and Antiquity, pp. 161–2. 59 For the discovery of Francesca’s incorrupt body upon exhumation, see Lugano, I processi, pp. 143–4. For incorruptibility as a sign of sainthood, see André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. by Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 427–33. 60 Margherita Pelaja and Lucetta Scaraffia, Due in una carne: Chiesa e sessualità nella storia (Rome: Laterza, 2008), p. 73. 61 Weinstein and Bell, Saints and Society, pp. 153–4. See also Vauchez, Sainthood in the Middle Ages. 62 Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 112–16. 63 Ibid., pp. 62–7. 64 See, Katherine Jansen, “Like a Virgin: The Meaning of the Magdalene for Female Penitents of Later Medieval Italy,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 45 (2000): pp. 142–5; Atkinson, “Precious Balsam in a Fragile Glass”; Rollo-Koster, “From Prostitutes to Brides of Christ,” pp. 120–21. 65 For surveys covering the range of imagery depicting the Devil and demonic beings, see Castelli, Il demoniaco nell’arte; Link, The Devil; Lorenzi, Devils in Art. 66 Carpaneto, Il Dialetto Romanesco del Quattrocento, pp. 265–307. The caption reads: “Como la beata Francesca fu menata in visione da l’angilo Raphaele ad vedere l’oribiltà dello inferno/mostravo in que modo sonno punite et cruciate le anime per ciaschedun peccato.” 67 Alberti, On Painting, pp. 60–86; Francis Ames-Lewis, Drawing in Early Renaissance Italy, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 91; Adriano Aymonino, “‘Nature Perfected’: The Theory and Practice of Drawing after the Antique,” in Drawn from the Antique: Artists and the Classical Ideal, ed. by Adriano Aymonino and Anne Varick Lauder (London: Sir John Soane’s Museum, 2015), pp. 15–23. 68 Ames-Lewis, Drawing, pp. 91–2. See also Park, “Masaccio’s Skeleton”. 69 For a discussion of Pollaiuolo’s engraving in relation to quattrocento painting and sculpture, see Lincoln, The Invention of the Renaissance Printmaker, pp. 30–32. See also Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers, pp. 176–81. 70 Ames-Lewis, Drawing, pp. 114–15. William Hood considered the function of monochrome and terra verde techniques for meditative purposes within cloister spaces. Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, pp. 129–45. See also Tempesta, “Arte a Tor de’Specchi,” pp. 214–20.

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Joseph Manca, “Moral Stance in Italian Renaissance Art: Image, Text, and Meaning,” Artibus et Historiae, 22, no. 44 (2001), pp. 51–76. For the San Brizio frescoes, see Jonathan B. Riess, The Renaissance Antichrist: Luca Signorelli’s Orvieto Frescoes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Sara Nair James, Signorelli and Fra Angelico at Orvieto: Liturgy, Poetry and a Vision of the End of Time (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); Creighton Gilbert, How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw the End of the World (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003). Signorelli also worked at the Olivetan monastery of Monteoliveto Maggiore at the end of the fifteenth century. See Enzo Carli, Le Storie di San Benedetto a Monteoliveto Maggiore (Milan: Silvana, 1980); and Carli, L’Abbazia di Monteoliveto. Signorelli was employed in the Sistine Chapel, Pollaiuolo on the commission for the tomb of Sixtus IV. Anna Esposito, “St. Francesca and the Female Religious Communities of FifteenthCentury Rome,” in Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. by Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 197–218. See also Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana: Edizione critica, pp. 129–31; Esch, “Santa Francesca Romana e il suo ambiente,” pp. 34, 42–6; Lugano, La nobil casa, pp. 7–8; and Vecchi, “La congregazione delle Oblate,” pp. 457–69. At this point, women’s patronage in quattrocento Rome is still a growing field. Pathbreaking studies of women as patrons of religious institutions in Rome center on the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, providing methodological models for the examination of earlier communities. See, for example, Dunn, “Piety and Patronage in Seicento Rome”; and Valone, “Women on the Quirinal Hill.”

Epilogue: Imagining the Canonization of Francesca Romana The first post-Tridentine saints were Diego di Alcalà in 1588 and Raimondo da Peñafort in 1601. See the essays published in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Francesca Romana’s canonization (1608–2008): Romagnoli and Picasso, La canonizzazione di Santa Francesca Romana. Martine Boiteux, “La cerimonia di danonizzazione di Santa Francesca Romana: Teatro, riti, stendardi e immagini,” in La canonizzazione di Santa Francesca Romana, ed. by Romagnoli and Picasso, pp. 99–121; Alessandra Anselmi, “Theaters for the Canonization of Saints,” in St. Peter’s in the Vatican, ed. by William Tronzo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 244–69. Papal Auditor Francesco Peña penned an official account of the canonization festivities: Relatione summaria della vita, santita, miracoli, et atti della canonizatione di Santa Francesca Romana […] (Rome: Bartolomeo Zannetti, 1608). H.J. Schroeder, ed. and trans., Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (St. Louis: Herder, 1941), pp. 220–21; Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli, “Il culto di Santa Francesca Romana nella Roma del Seicento,” in Missioni e carità: Scritti in onore di p. Luigi Mezzadri, ed. by Filippo Lovison and Luigi Nuovo (Rome: Centro Liturgico Vincenziano, 2008), pp. 283–319.

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Index Alberti, Leon Battista: 145, 150 Angela of Foligno, saint: 44 Anthony Abbott, saint: 37, 114 Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence: 66 Augustine, saint: 95–96 Averlino, Antonio see Filarete 

Fra Angelico: Plate 1, 7, 10, 27, 40, 50–51, 57–58, 60–61, 89 Francesca Romana, saint see Santa Francesca Romana

Barone, Giulia: 17, 91, n.97, n.99 Belting, Hans: 67 Benedict, Saint  in frescoes at Tor de’Specchi: 20, 33, 42–43, 46, 57, 69, 78–79, 81, 83, 161  Rule of: 31, 33, 45, 70, 111, 129 Bernardino of Siena, saint: 24, 56, 85–87, n.83 Bolzoni, Lina: 85 Botticelli, Sandro: 45, 46, 137, 139–40, 149 Bridget of Sweden, saint: 24

Hamburger, Jeffrey: 82 Hayum, Andrée: 116 Hell, vision of: Plate 8, 31, 46–48, 57, 103, 150 Hiller, Diana: 24, 118 holy dolls: 74 Howe, Eunice: 44

canonization see Santa Francesca Romana, canonization of  Cappella Niccolina see Nicholas V, chapel of  caritas: 23, 27, 30, 35, 39, 50 Carpaneto, Giorgio: 17, 172, 180, 185–87, 189, 191, 193, 197 Carracci, Annibale: 160 Carruthers, Mary: 67, n.37 casa santa: 18 Caterina de Vigri (Saint Catherine of Bologna): 74 Catherine of Cleves, Hours of: 11, 52, 103 Catherine of Siena, saint: 22, 24, 30, 44, 84–85, 101, 155 Cecchelli, Carlo: 112, n.36 charity see caritas  Christus Medicus: 37 Cirulli, Beatrice: 66 clausura: 19, 37, 155 confessor see Mattiotti, Giovanni  continence: 47, 100, 129 Corrandini, Annibale: 57, 160–62 Cosmas and Damian, saints: 7, 40 Curran, Patricia: 15, n.56 D’Achille, Paolo: 112 demons see temptation, demonic  Devil see temptation, demonic  Dionysius the Areopagite: 70 disciplina see penance  Dominic, saint: 53–54, 112 doors, symbolism: 30–32, 42, 45–50, 52, 131–34, 136 enclosure see clausura  Esch, Arnold: 17 Esposito, Anna: 17, 37 Eucharist see Santa Francesca Romana, Eucharistic devotion  Eugenius IV (Gabriele Condulmer): 30, 31, 44, 93–94 Filarete (Antonio Averlino): 30, 93–94, 145 Fontana, Giovanni: 43, 131

Gill, Katherine: 19, 111 Giotto di Bondone: 3, 33 Gonfalone, confraternity of: 78

Ippolito di Roma, Fra: 20–22, 28, 32, 43, 56, 58, 110 Kaftal, George: 64, 72 Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane: 74 Last Supper, images of: 24–25, 54–55, 99–100, 149 Lawrence, saint: Plate 1, 27, 50–51, 58, 89, 146, n.2 Legenda Aurea: 54, 91 Lello, Agnese di Paolo: 66 Lorenzetti, Pietro: 15, 64 Lugano, Placido: 17, 32 Luke, Gospel of: 52 Man of Sorrows: Plate 21, 41, 120–22, 124 Marcellus, theatre of (Teatro Marcello): 34, 47, 48 Mary Magdalene: 20, 57, 69–70, 72, 77, 79, 83 Matthew, Gospel of: 37–38, 106, 107 Mattiotti, Giovanni  as confessor: 18, 21, 64, 95 Vita di Santa Francesca Romana:  21, 28, 30, 45, 48, 68–69, 71, 76–77, 82, 91, 96, 100, 107, 153 Trattati: 21, 24, 34, 38, 63–64, 67, 71–73, 76, 78, 80–84, 88, 95, 97, 100, 109, 133, 136, 140, 142, 147, 158 Meditations on the Life of Christ: 71–74, 81 meditative devotion: 63–68, 70–76 Miles, Margaret: 95 mnemonic practice: 24, 64, 72, 76, 86, 89, 92–95, 116 Monteoliveto, monastery of: 115, 200, n.17 Nicholas V (Tommaso Parentucelli)  chapel of (Cappella Niccolina): Plate 1, 10, 14a, 18, 23, 27–28, 50–52, 59–61, 89, 99, 175–76 papacy: 27–28, 83 Oblates of Santa Francesca Romana  burial chapel in Santa Maria Nova: 24, 34, 66, 83, 96, 162 as art patrons: 18–25, 28, 32, 37, 61, 63–64, 66–68, 71, 82–84, 87, 89–90, 96–97, 99, 107, 116, 127–28, 130, 140, 149, 153, 160–63 charitable work in Rome: 17, 19, 23, 28–30, 32, 37–39, 42, 44, 45, 50, 52, 55, 61, 63, 135, 153 community statutes: 19, 33, 37–39, 43–47, 49–50, 55, 110–11, 118, 122, 125, 129

218  dining practices: 71, 99, 101, 110–12, 118–19, 121, 123–24, 134, 140, 142 dress: 17, 33, 36, 42, 47, 49, 55, 70, 143, 147 penance: 24–25, 63, 118–19, 122–23, 125, 127, 143 vestition ceremonies: 42–43 virginity: 47, 96, 133, 148–49 Onofrio, saint: Plate 20, 38, 39, 113–16, 134 open monasteries (monasteri aperti): 19, 149, 155 optical theory: 24, 68, 95 Ordinationi Statuiti per la Beata Francesca see Tor de’Specchi, community statutes  Orsini, Giulio: 56, 158  Parentucelli, Tommaso see Nicholas V  Paul, saint and apostle: 37, 57, 69–70, 77, 83, 87, 102–03, 109–10, 129, 145, 159 Paul V (Camillo Borghese)  burial chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore: 160 canonization of Santa Francesca Romana: 25, 155–57, 159–61 Peña, Francesco: 157–62 penance: 24–25, 31, 39, 45, 63, 110–11, 118–19, 122–25, 127, 143 Penitential Psalms: 111, 118–19, 125 Peter, saint: 29, 57, 82–85, 88–89, 93–94, 159 pinzochere: 31, 50, 118 Pollaiuolo, Antonio: 4, 48, 49, 52, 136–40, 142, 144, 150–53 Ponziani  Andreozza and Cecilia: 44 family patronage: 44–45 Francesca see Santa Francesca Romana  Lorenzo: 18, 51, 109–10, 133 palazzo in Trastevere: 20, 36–39, 42, 44, 50–51, 56, 77, 109, 114, 134–35, n.48 Vanozza: 36–38, 91, 110, 135 Ponzileoni, Ludovico: 81 processi see Santa Francesca Romana, canonization of rape see sexual assault, images of  Romagnoli, Alessandra Bartolomei: 17, 21, 91 Romano, Antoniazzo (Antonio di Benedetto Aquilo degli Aquili): Plates 2–6, Plates 8–12, Plates 16–17, 2a–d, 4, 12, 17, 19, 28, 64, 161  Rome  Capitoline Hill: 17, 36, 56, 74, 147–48, 153 Forum: 21, 28, 30, 33–34, 36, 43, 56, 65, 84, 91–92, 129 San Giovanni in Laterano, basilica of: 33, 36, 135 San Pietro, basilica of: 27, 30, 50, 93, 155–57, 159–61 Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, basilica of: 44, 91, 106 Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, basilica of: 122 Santa Maria in Aracoeli, basilica of: 74 Santa Maria in Cappella, hospital of: 44, 135 Santa Maria in Trastevere, basilica of: 27, 21, 91–92, 106 Santa Maria Maggiore, basilica of: 160 Santa Maria Nova  basilica of: Plates 2, 12, 20–21, 28, 32–33, 35, 42, 65, 84, 91, 110, 162 burial of Francesca Ponziani in: 21, 56–57, 65–66, 96 Olivetan Monastery at: 28, 30, 32, 42, 94, 115, 129

Index

Santo Spirito, hospital of: 18–19, 44, 99, 135 Teatro Marcello see Marcellus, theatre of  Tor de’Specchi see Tor de’Specchi, monastery of  rosary beads, devotion: 39, 114, 116–17  Rosselli, Cosimo: 149–50 Rule of Saint Benedict (Regula Benedicti) see Benedict, saint  San Francesco in Assisi, basilica of: 3, 33  Santa Francesca Romana  as Madre Presidente of Tor de’Specchi: 42–43 as miraculous healer: Plates 4–6, 23, 28, 36–42, 44, 48–50, 57, 61, 100, 104, 109, 158–59 battles with Devil: 19, 82, 88, 99–103, 111, 117–18, 125 canonization of: 55, 57, 17–18, 21–22, 25, 27–31, 37, 48–49, 51, 55–56, 61, 64, 67, 91, 97, 99–100, 111, 142, 148, 155–63 death of: Plate 11, 18, n.18, 22, 56–61, 65–67, 147–48 demonic temptation: 19–20, 24, 87–88, 99–110, 114–15, 119, 127–35, 144–49 ecstatic visions: 63–83, 101, 109, 117–18, 123, 149 Eucharistic devotion: 82–89, 121–22 funeral of: Plate 12, 14b, 20–21, 56–61, 88–89, 110–11 Marian devotion: 65–66, 78, 91, 116–17 motherhood: 34–35, 74, 96 oblation at Santa Maria Nova: Plate 2, 32–34, 42–43, 50, 57–58, 65, 86, 110–11 receiving Rule from Virgin Mary: 49, 110 semi-religious women see pinzochere  Sensi, Mario: 17, 19, 31 sexual assault, images of: 139–141 Signorelli, Luca: 50, 53, 145–46, 149, 151–53 Sistine Chapel: 18, 24, 99, 117–18, 149–51 Stephen, saint: 10, 27, 51–52, n.2 Tempesta, Antonio: 54, 55, 156–62 Teramo, Jacobus de: 119, 120 terra verde: Plate 18, 19–20, 24–25, 97, 99–100, 128–31, 151–52 Thebaid: 37, 114–16 Thomas, Anabel: 22, 118 Tor de’Specchi, monastery of  acquisition of: 22, 47 architecture: 1, 47–48, 55–56, 112–14,  community statutes: 19, 33, 37–39, 43–47, 49–50, 55, 110–11, 118, 122, 125, 129 oratory: Plates 2–6, Plates 8–12, Plates 16–17, 2a–d, 4, 12, 17, 19, 23–25, 28–42, 45–61, 75–77, 81–89, 99–100, 103–04  refectory: Plates 18–20, Plates 22–25, 33, 35, 36, 42, 19, 21–25, 53, 97, 99–126, 128, 132–35, 141, 145–46, 153  Troup, Cynthia: 71 Turner, Victor: 31 Uccello, Paolo: 129 Valone, Carolyn: n.29 van Gennep, Arnold: 31 Vasari, Giorgio: 27, 129 Vauchez, André: 83

219

Index

Virgin Mary  Madonna della Misericordia: 18, 77–78 Madonna del Soccorso: 40, 120, Madonna Lactans: 34 Queen of Heaven: 34–35, 69, 73, 77, 82, 90–91, 93 Santa Francesca Romana visions of see Santa Francesca Romana, ecstatic visions 

vision (sight) see optical theory  visions (apparitions) see Santa Francesca Romana, ecstatic visions witchcraft: 20, 119, 128 Zirpolo, Lilian: 139