In the fifteenth century, the Oblates of Santa Francesca Romana, a fledgling community of religious women in Rome, commissioned an impressive array of artwork for their newly acquired living quarters, the Tor de'Specchi. The imagery focused overwhelmingly on the sensual, corporeal nature of contemporary spirituality, populating the walls of the monastery with a highly naturalistic assortment of earthly, divine, and demonic figures. This book draws on art history, anthropology, and gender studies to explore the disciplinary and didactic role of the images, as well as their relationship to important papal projects at the Vatican.

Suzanne Scanlan is a Lecturer in the History of Art and Visual Culture at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI.

List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Demonic and Divine BodiesChapter 1: Sanctity on the Threshold: Liminality and Corporeality at Tor de'SpecchiChapter 2: Painted Visions and Devotional Practices at Tor de'SpecchiChapter 3: Dining and Discipline at Tor de'Specchi: The Refectory as Ritual SpaceChapter 4: The Devil in the Refectory: Bodies Imagined at Tor de'SpecchiEpilogue : Imagining the Canonization of Francesca RomanaAppendix A: Statutes of Ordination for the Beata FrancescaBibliographyIndex