Jeffrey F. Hamburger's groundbreaking study of the art of female monasticism explores the place of images and image-making in the spirituality of medieval nuns during the later Middle Ages. Working from a previously unknown group of late-fifteenth-century devotional drawings made by a Benedictine nun for her cloistered companions, Hamburger discusses the distinctive visual culture of female communities. The drawings discovered by Hamburger and the genre to which they belong have never been given serious consideration by art historians, yet they serve as icons of the nuns' religious vocation in all its complexity.
Setting the drawings and related imagery—manuscript illumination, prints, textiles, and metalwork—within the context of religious life and reform in late medieval Germany, Hamburger reconstructs the artistic, literary, and institutional traditions that shaped the lives of cloistered women.
Hamburger convincingly demonstrates the overwhelming importance of "seeing" in devotional practice, challenging traditional assumptions about the primacy of text over image in monastic piety. His presentation of the "visual culture of the convent" makes a fundamental contribution to the history of medieval art and, more generally, of late medieval monasticism and spirituality.
Nuns as Artists The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent
About the Book
Reviews
"Hamburger's singular discovery of a group of devotional drawings made by an anonymous nun . . . is here presented with magisterial learning, theoretical sophistication, and deep human sympathy."—V. A. Kolve, University of California, Los AngelesTable of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
I. PATTERNS OF PIETY PROTOCOLS OF VISION:THE VISUAL CULTURE OF ST. WALBURG
Delineating Devotions
Printed Exemplars
Manuscript Models
Woven Work
Consecration and Enclosure
II. THE SWEET ROSE OF SORROW
Roses and Remembrance
Passionate Prayer
Agony, Ecstasy, Obedience
III. WOUNDING SIGHT
Exemplary Images
Penetrating Vision
IV. THE HOUSE OF THE HEART
Union and Communion
The Heart as a House
Knocking at Heaven's Gate
An Interior Castle
V. NUNS' WORK
Ora et Labora: Prayer and Work
The Circulation of Images
CONCLUSION:VISION VERSUS SUPERVISION
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Biblical Citations
Index of Manuscripts Cited
General Index
Awards
- Otto Gründler Prize 1999, Medieval Institute
- Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History, American Philosophical Society