In Perguia with the Artemisia Art History Abroad group, we looked at a side altar painting in the church of San Domenico. This was a learning experience for me that I would not have if I hadn’t been with an expert.
The painting is in poor condition and the lighting bad for photography. Thus the oblique angle of the below photo.
The subject matter was new to me—a pentecost.
The subject comes from the Bible book of Acts where the apostles gathered together after Christ has ascended into heaven. It shows the Holy Spirit descending onto the apostles in the form of a dove. The apostles are difficult to identify and include the twelfth apostle, Matthais, who replaced Judas. Above each of the apostles’ heads are tongues of fire which will grant them the power to go out to preach the “Word” in many languages.
Below is a different painting of the subject which was in Duke Federico Montefeltro’s collection in Urbino.
An interesting thing about the Perugia painting is that the central figures are all women. One appears to be the Virgin Mary but there are four other women. Each has a tongue of fire above their head. (Notice: no tongues of fire above the women in the Urbino painting.) It is possible to interpret the Perugia painting as indicating these women are being granted the power to go out to preach the teachings of Christ.
The painting is dated to 1540. Women were not allowed to be priests in the Catholic church then—and now. The painting is in a church dedicated to San Domenico or Saint Dominque. His order was famously part of the Spanish Inquisition and dedicated to eradicating heresy from the church. If the Pentecost painting suggested women could be priests, it surely would not have been hung in a Dominican church. Yet it is irresistible to see the painting as suggesting that women could have the ability to preach.
Another interesting aspect is that the painter is Suor Plautilla Nelli. “Suor” in Italian means sister, as in the title for a nun. So this was painted by a woman.
She was a Dominican nun in Florence who lived during the 16th century. She was self-taught as an artist and is believed to be the first female Renaissance artist in Florence.
Suor Plautilla Nelli came from a wealthy Florentine family and became a nun at the convent of Santa Caterina di Cafaggio. The convent was managed by the Dominican friars of San Marco, including for a period, Girolamo Savonarola. Savonarola, best known as advocating the destruction of secular art in the Bonfire of the Vanities, nevertheless promoted painting of religious subjects to encourage devotion and avoid sloth. As a result, Nelli had many patrons for her paintings and the assistance of other nuns.
The large scale of some of her works, including the painting in Perugia, is unusual for a Renaissance woman’s painting. Other Renaissance works by women tend to be small, many are miniatures and many are drawings, not oil paintings, which would have been costly to produce. Nelli is one of the few female painters mentioned in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects—but does not get her own chapter.
I’m told there is also a PBS documentary about her and the restoration of her very large, signed Last Supper in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. I’ll have to look for it when next in Florence.