Art, Reform and Female Agency in the Portuguese Dominican Nunneries: Nuns as Producers and Patrons of Illuminated Manuscripts (c.1460-1560)

This thesis aims to address the nuns’ agency in the production and patronage of illuminated manuscripts in the Portuguese Dominican nunneries in the period 1460-1560, which was marked by the expansion of the Observant movements. Through this concrete case, it is my goal to contribute to the current knowledge on the role of nuns in the production and patronage of art for their convents, a field that, besides benefiting from a great development in regions such as the German speaking lands, the Italian Peninsula or the Hispanic Kingdoms in the last three decades, is still practically unexplored in Portuguese territory. By linking the contexts and agents behind the development and history of the Portuguese Dominican nunneries with the information provided by the surviving books produced and commissioned by the nuns, I will try to bring to light new hypothesis on matters connected not only to the dynamics of production and commission of books in and for these religious houses, but also in other matters such as the functionality and usage of these books; nuns’ temporal and spiritual autonomy; their level of literacy; and the connections between illumination and communal memory and devotion. In order to tackle the hurdles imposed by the meagre number of surviving documental sources, and present a contextualized analysis of the Portuguese scenario, I will also provide examples of other Dominican provinces and religious orders in which the use of art was also marked by the reformative environment of the Observant movements from the Late-Middle Ages to the Early-Modern period.