Invisible city : the architecture of devotion in seventeenth century Neapolitan convents / Helen Hills.

Main entry:

Hills, Helen.

Title & Author:

Invisible city : the architecture of devotion in seventeenth century Neapolitan convents / Helen Hills.

Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2004.

Description:

xii, 268 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-251) and index.
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.

Summary:

"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. Though often ensconced in convents owing to their families' economic circumstances, many of these young women were able to extend their influence as a result of the role convents played both in urban life and in art patronage. The convents were rich and powerful organizations, riven with feuds and prey to the ambitions of viceregal and elite groups, which their thick walls could not exclude."--Jacket.

Resources:
Contributor biographical information
Publisher description

ISBN:

0195117743
9780195117745

Subject:

Monastic and religious life of women Italy Naples History.
Convents Italy Naples.
Church architecture Italy Naples.
Aristocracy (Social class) Italy Naples.
Vie religieuse et monastique féminine Italie Naples Histoire.
Architecture chrétienne Italie Naples.
Aristocracy (Social class)
Church architecture
Convents
Monastic and religious life of women
Frömmigkeit
Mönchtum
Architektur
Naples (Italy) Religious life and customs.
Naples (Italy) Church history.
Italy Naples
Neapel

Form/genre:

Electronic books.
Church history
History

Holdings:

Location: Library main 231198
Call No.: BX4220.I8 H5 2004
Status: Available

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