Votive Panels and Popular Piety in Early Modern Italy

"In the late fifteenth century, votive panel paintings, or tavolette votive, began to accumulate around reliquary shrines and miracle-working images throughout Italy. Although often dismissed as popular art of little aesthetic consequence, more than 1,500 panels from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are extant, a testimony to their ubiquity and importance in religious practice. Humble in both their materiality and style, they represent donors in prayer and supplicants petitioning a saint at a dramatic moment of crisis. In this book, Fredrika H. Jacobs traces the origins and development of the use of votive panels in this period. She examines the form, context and functional value of votive panels, and considers how they created meaning for the person who dedicated them as well as how they accrued meaning in relationship to other images and objects within a sacred space activated by practices of cultic culture"-- Résumé de l'éditeur Cover 1 Votive Panels and Popular Piety in Early Modern Italy 3 Title 5 Copyright 6 Dedication 7 Contents 9 Illustrations 11 Acknowledgments 15 Title 17 I Dialogues of Devotion: 19 II Tavolette Votive: 40 Totaling the Evidence: Production, Preservation, and Destruction 53 An Object within a Complex 65 The Checkered History of Acknowledging Miracles 77 Chronological Parameters: Circa 1470, the terminus a quo 84 Chronological Parameters: Circa 1610, a terminus ad quem 97 III Determining Functional Value: 103 Humble “Gifts”: Questioning Terminology and Reflecting on Style 106 Attesting Miracles: Advocating the causa of Nicholas of Tolentino in Word and Image 116 Miracles, Sanctity, and the Testimonial Power of the vox populi 125 The Special Case of Mary 133 Documenting the Quotidian with Specificity 140 IV Narrative Modes 144 Structuring Narrative 146 Narratives within the Frame 149 Narratives beyond the Frame 167 V Signs of Faith, Signs of Superstition 181 Amplifying Trent 183 Imaging Exorcism 188 Exorcism: A Contested Ritual 199 Signs 203 Burning the Devil’s Image 207 Afterword 213 Notes 219 Dialogues of Devotion: An Introduction 219 Tavolette Votive: Form, Function, Context 222 Determining Functional Value: Attestations of Fact and Faith 234 Narrative MoDeS 242 Signs of Faith, Signs of Superstition 247 Afterword 253 Selected Bibliography 255 Index 263 9781107023048 "In the late fifteenth century, votive panel paintings, or tavolette votive, began to accumulate around reliquary shrines and miracle-working images throughout Italy. Although often dismissed as popular art of little aesthetic consequence, more than 1,500 panels from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are extant, a testimony to their ubiquity and importance in religious practice. Humble in both their materiality and style, they represent donors in prayer and supplicants petitioning a saint at a dramatic moment of crisis. In this book, Fredrika H. Jacobs traces the origins and development of the use of votive panels in this period. She examines the form, context and functional value of votive panels, and considers how they created meaning for the person who dedicated them as well as how they accrued meaning in relationship to other images and objects within a sacred space activated by practices of cultic culture"-- Résumé de l'éditeur "In the late fifteenth century, votive panel paintings, or tavolette votive, began to accumulate around reliquary shrines and miracle-working images throughout Italy. Although often dismissed as popular art of little aesthetic consequence, more than 1,500 panels from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are extant, a testimony to their ubiquity and importance in religious practice. Humble in both their materiality and style, they represent donors in prayer and supplicants petitioning a saint at a dramatic moment of crisis. In this book, Fredrika H. Jacobs traces the origins and development of the use of votive panels in this period. She examines the form, context and functional value of votive panels, and considers how they created meaning for the person who dedicated them as well as how they accrued meaning in relationship to other images and objects within a sacred space activated by practices of cultic culture"-- Provided by publisher "In the late fifteenth century, votive panel paintings, or tavolette votive, began to accumulate around reliquary shrines and miracle-working images throughout Italy. Although often dismissed as popular art of little aesthetic consequence, more than fifteen hundred panels from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are extant, a testimony to their ubiquity and importance in religious practice. Humble in both their materiality and style, they represent donors in prayer and supplicants petitioning a saint at a dramatic moment of crisis. In this book, Fredrika H. Jacobs traces the origins and development of the use of votive panels in this period. She examines the form, context and functional value of votive panels, and considers how they created meaning for the person who dedicated them as well as how they accrued meaning in relationship to other images and objects within a sacred space activated by practices of cultic culture."--P. [i]