Art and Miracle in Renaissance Tuscany

Miraculous images are the focus for an exploration of art and devotion in Renaissance Italy.

Robert Maniura (Author)

9781108426848, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 October 2018

276 pages, 59 b/w illus.
26.1 x 18.4 x 1.7 cm, 0.76 kg

'Art and Miracle in Renaissance Tuscany is a tightly focused study, and the sharpness of its vision allows the narrative it constructs to resonate within the field of early modern art history more broadly … This book is expertly crafted: the story moves, the prose flows, and the reasoning is clearly articulated … This book employs an exciting model of scholarship that will undoubtedly have a lasting impact in the field.' Christopher J. Nygren, Renaissance Quarterly

In this book, Robert Maniura explores the role and importance of the miraculous image in the art and devotional practices of Renaissance Italy. Using the records of Giuliano Guizzelmi, a Tuscan lawyer, he focuses on his stories of miracles of local shrines, including Santa Maria delle Carceri, a painting of the Virgin Mary on a wall of the town prison, and the relic of her belt in the Prato Cathedral. Guizzelmi's stories build a powerful picture of the visual culture of the period, involving images that were kissed, worn and applied to sick bodies in rituals of healing. They also place his devotional activity in the context of his everyday life. Moreover, the paintings of Guizzelmi's burial chapel also engage with contemporary pictorial conventions and show how his concerns can inform our understanding of contemporary art, notably the works of his late fifteenth-century contemporaries, Ghirlandaio, Perugino and Filippino Lippi.

Introduction
1. Giuliano Guizzelmi: a lawyer of Prato
2. The Guizzelmi chapel, the large crucifix and the eucharist
3. The relic of the Virgin: the Holy Girdle
4. The miraculous image of the Virgin: Santa Maria delle Carceri
5. Guizzelmi's miracles: badges and prints
6. Votive offerings: making oneself in wax
7. Making miracles
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Religion: general [HRA], Renaissance art [ACND], History of art & design styles: c 1400 to c 1600 [ACN], History of art / art & design styles [AC]