Madonnas and Miracles: The Holy Home in Renaissance Italy

In Spring 2017 an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge will explore the material culture of piety in the Renaissance Italian home. It aims to challenge perceptions of Catholicism as a religion dominated by priests and ecclesiastical institutions, instead urging us to consider the agency of lay people in shaping religious life to their needs. This lavishly illustrated publication will contextualise, discuss and illustrate a wide variety of devotional objects and images, ranging from the highest-quality artefacts to rough-and-ready household items. By casting a new light on a range of objects, books and paintings, the book will offer a varied and vivid encounter with Renaissance spirituality which will appeal to a broad readership, allured by objects and images at once striking, unfamiliar and replete with intimate meaning.

Maya Corry is a postdoctoral researcher in the History of Art at the University of Cambridge. She has published articles on beauty in religious art, angels, and Renaissance religiosity.Deborah Howard is Professor Emerita of Architectural History, Director of Research in the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art, and a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.  She has published widely on the art and architecture of Venice and the Veneto; the relationship between architecture and music; and cultural exchange in the eastern Mediterranean.