Saints, Miracles, and Social Problems in Italian Renaissance Art

Diana Bullen Presciutti is Professor of Art History at the University of Essex. Her first monograph, Visual Cultures of Foundling Care in Renaissance Italy (Routledge, 2015), explores how visual culture both framed the social problem of infant abandonment and promoted the charitable work of the foundling hospital. She has published research articles in Art History, Artibus et Historiae, the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Renaissance Quarterly and Renaissance Studies, as well as several chapters in edited collections. She is also the editor of Space, Place, and Motion: Locating Confraternities in the Late Medieval and Early Modern City (Brill Press, 2017).

'How does an act that threatens the stability of society become one that advances its highest values? How do transgressive behaviors evince the presence of the divine on earth? How does society contend with the unimaginable and how do images figure in that process? Focusing on fifteenth-century depictions of miracles performed by six mendicant saints (including Anthony of Padua, Vincent Ferrer, and Catherine of Siena), this comprehensively researched, perceptively analyzed, and lucidly written book considers these questions. Diana Bullen Presciutti's study is a welcomed contribution to art history and the history of religion.' Fredrika Jacobs, Professor Emerita of Art History, Virginia Commonwealth University

• 1. Introduction; 2. The Vita icon reimagined: new (and old) saints, new (and old) miracles; 3. Storytelling with saints: pictorial narrative and viewing experience; 4. Girls in trouble: gendering possession and exorcism; 5. Assault, amputation, absolution: visualizing the power of confession; 6. Thinking with Julian: marital violence and elite masculinity; 7. Bernardino the Peacemaker: visual hagiography and factional violence; 8. Cannibal mothers: picturing madness and maternal infanticide; 9. Making innocence visible (and audible) in the Basilico del Santo.