Saints, Miracles, and Social Problems in Italian Renaissance Art

In this book, Diana Bullen Presciutti explores how images of miracles performed by mendicant saints-reviving dead children, redeeming the unjustly convicted, mending broken marriages, quelling factional violence, exorcising the demonically possessed-actively shaped Renaissance Italians’ perceptions of pressing social problems related to gender, sexuality, and honor. She argues that depictions of these miracles by artists-both famous (Donatello, Titian) and anonymous-played a critical role in defining and conceptualizing threats to family honor and social stability. They also presented the mendicant saint as both potent thaumaturge and efficacious ‘social worker’. Drawing from art history, history, religious studies, gender studies, and sociology, Presciutti’s interdisciplinary study reveals how miracle scenes-whether painted, sculpted, or printed-operated as active agents of ‘lived religion’ and social negotiation in the spaces of the Renaissance Italian city.