DOI issue:
Nr. 4
DOI article:Recenzje
DOI article:Sarnecka, Zuzanna: "Madonnas and Miracles": Mounting a Late Medieval and Early Modern Exhibition at the University of Cambridge
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.71009#0831
Recenzje
815
10. View of the wall with ex-votos. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
© The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
prayer that Renaissance Italians connected with the
divine: they were exhorted to pray in their homes
every day and to make wide use of sacramentals such
as holy water or blessed rosaries.
Apart from showing visually compelling traces
of Italian Renaissance devotion, Madonnas and
Miracles aimed to make scientific contribution to the
field by demonstrating how prescriptions for devo-
tional practice differed amongst various socio-eco-
nomic, gender, and age groups. The rooms ad-
dressed such important and hitherto understudied
notions as piety in non-elite households, children
being taught to participate in the religious activities,
the significance of physical pilgrimage to holy sites
and mystical meditation, the role of Italian Jews and
their devotional practices. Moreover, to reflect the
geographical and chronological interests of the Do-
mestic Devotions project, the display included many
objects created specifically for one of the three in-
vestigated regions and addressed changes in devo-
tional practices over the course of two centuries.
The exhibition was informed by the series of fo-
cused reading sessions during which the team has
considered the recent scholarship on the Early Mod-
ern home and piety to nuance the distinctions be-
14 Geraldine JOHNSON, "Beautiful Brides and Model
Mothers: The Devotional and Talismanic Functions of
Early Modem Marian Reliefs", [in:] The Material Culture
tween the domestic, private and institutional reli-
gious practices. One specific example of how prima-
ry sources and secondary literature influenced the
exhibition display was the idea of permeability. The
inquisition records from sixteenth-century Naples
revealed that offensive prayers and illicit acts against
the sacred, which took place inside the home were
not always private. They might have been observed,
overheard and reported by relatives, servants, neigh-
bours or strangers. At the same time, devotions en-
acted at home in front of highly personalised reliefs
of the Virgin and Child protected the devotee also
outside the domestic confines.14
Various contemporary accounts confirm that
people sought protection from the Virgin identified
with the image from their home. A Venetian six-
teenth-century text, Miracoli della gloriosa vergine
Maria historiati, describes one such event. It was a
habit of all members of one Lombardian family to
salute and pray to the image of the Virgin in their
house. One day the youngest boy from this family
played with his friends by the river and fell into the
water. The other boys escaped crying and thinking
that their friend was dead, but when they returned
with his parents, the boy was standing on a rock in a
of Sex, Procreation, and Marriage in Premodern Europe,
eds A. L. McClanan, K. Rosoff Encamación, New York,
Palgrave, 2002, pp. 135-161.
815
10. View of the wall with ex-votos. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
© The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
prayer that Renaissance Italians connected with the
divine: they were exhorted to pray in their homes
every day and to make wide use of sacramentals such
as holy water or blessed rosaries.
Apart from showing visually compelling traces
of Italian Renaissance devotion, Madonnas and
Miracles aimed to make scientific contribution to the
field by demonstrating how prescriptions for devo-
tional practice differed amongst various socio-eco-
nomic, gender, and age groups. The rooms ad-
dressed such important and hitherto understudied
notions as piety in non-elite households, children
being taught to participate in the religious activities,
the significance of physical pilgrimage to holy sites
and mystical meditation, the role of Italian Jews and
their devotional practices. Moreover, to reflect the
geographical and chronological interests of the Do-
mestic Devotions project, the display included many
objects created specifically for one of the three in-
vestigated regions and addressed changes in devo-
tional practices over the course of two centuries.
The exhibition was informed by the series of fo-
cused reading sessions during which the team has
considered the recent scholarship on the Early Mod-
ern home and piety to nuance the distinctions be-
14 Geraldine JOHNSON, "Beautiful Brides and Model
Mothers: The Devotional and Talismanic Functions of
Early Modem Marian Reliefs", [in:] The Material Culture
tween the domestic, private and institutional reli-
gious practices. One specific example of how prima-
ry sources and secondary literature influenced the
exhibition display was the idea of permeability. The
inquisition records from sixteenth-century Naples
revealed that offensive prayers and illicit acts against
the sacred, which took place inside the home were
not always private. They might have been observed,
overheard and reported by relatives, servants, neigh-
bours or strangers. At the same time, devotions en-
acted at home in front of highly personalised reliefs
of the Virgin and Child protected the devotee also
outside the domestic confines.14
Various contemporary accounts confirm that
people sought protection from the Virgin identified
with the image from their home. A Venetian six-
teenth-century text, Miracoli della gloriosa vergine
Maria historiati, describes one such event. It was a
habit of all members of one Lombardian family to
salute and pray to the image of the Virgin in their
house. One day the youngest boy from this family
played with his friends by the river and fell into the
water. The other boys escaped crying and thinking
that their friend was dead, but when they returned
with his parents, the boy was standing on a rock in a
of Sex, Procreation, and Marriage in Premodern Europe,
eds A. L. McClanan, K. Rosoff Encamación, New York,
Palgrave, 2002, pp. 135-161.