Content area
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on the architectural patronage of Suor Domenica da Paradiso (1473–1553), a Dominican tertiary influenced by Savonarola who founded and built the convent of la Crocetta in Florence in 1511. A mystic, stigmatic, and prophet, Suor Domenica has been the subject of studies that treated her role as a religious leader and prophet in the post-Savonarolan period. However, her status as an architectural patron has never been examined. Suor Domenica's posthumous fame was aided by the legends that claimed her convent was funded by the Virgin Mary and designed by Jesus Christ. Suor Domenica's confessor, Francesco Onesti da Castiglione (1466–1542), was the first to set down the claims of divine financial aid from the Virgin Mary in his biographies of the mystic. These legends became the standard explanation in the seventeenth century for how this lower class woman was able to build a convent.
Though her convent no longer exists in its original location, examination of the documents held in the archives of la Crocetta, the State Archives of Florence, and the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence has allowed for a reconstruction of the process by which Suor Domenica was able to build her convent. These documents, many previously unpublished, reveal that Suor Domenica was in large part funded by a network of members of the Florentine ruling class including Girolamo Gondi, Marco del Nero and Federigo de' Ricci. The political allegiances of the men, divided between the Savonarolan and Medicean parties, caused them to hide their financial support of the charismatic visionary because of the dangers it posed in the fraught political climate of post-Savonarolan Florence. This secrecy protected the men from political repercussions and aided Suor Domenica when she claimed that her convent was “the work of Jesus.” This dissertation reveals Suor Domenica's role as the only lower-class female patron of conventual architecture in post-Savonarolan Florence.
