Invisible City : The Architecture of Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Neapolitan Convents.

Intro -- Contents -- INTRODUCTION: Convents and Conventual Life in Early Modern Italy -- 1 Cittadelle sacre and the Politics of Conventual Urbanism -- 2 Virginity and Enclosure -- 3 Dowries and Daughters -- 4 Living Like Ladies: Conventual Patronage -- 5 Convents and Conflict: Conventual Urbanism in Naples -- 6 Conventual Optics of Power -- CONCLUSION: Conventual Architecture as Metaphor for the Body -- Notes -- Glossary -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- G -- L -- M -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- V -- Z -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z.

Invisible City vividly portrays the religious world of seventeenth-century Naples, a city of familial and internecine rivalries, of religious devotion and intense urban politics, of towering structures built to house the virgin daughters of the aristocracy. Helen Hills demonstrates how the architecture of the convents and the nuns' bodies they housed existed both in parallel and in opposition to one another. She discusses these women as subjects of enclosure, as religious women, and as art patrons, but also as powerful agents whose influence extended beyond the convent walls.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.