The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy explores the rich devotional life of the Italian household between 1450 and 1600. Rejecting the enduring stereotype of the Renaissance as a secular age, this interdisciplinary study reveals the home to have been an important site of spiritual revitalization. Books, buildings, objects, spaces, images, and archival sources are scrutinized to cast new light on the many ways in which religion infused daily life within the household. Acts of devotion, from routine prayers to extraordinary religious experiences such as miracles and visions, frequently took place at home amid the joys and trials of domestic life — from childbirth and marriage to sickness and death. Breaking free from the usual focus on Venice, Florence, and Rome, The Sacred Home investigates practices of piety across the Italian peninsula, with particular attention paid to the city of Naples, the Marche, and the Venetian mainland. It also looks beyond the elite to consider artisanal and lower-status households, and reveals gender and age as factors that powerfully conditioned religious experience. Recovering a host of lost voices and compelling narratives at the intersection between the divine and the everyday, The Sacred Home offers unprecedented glimpses through the keyhole into the spiritual lives of Renaissance Italians.

How did religion colour daily life in the Italian Renaissance home? Peering into the privacy of family rites of passage - childbirth, marriage, and death - the authors expose patterns of piety that helped individuals to confront both the dangers and delights of everyday life, using such material objects as books, artworks, jewellery, and relics.

Madonnas and Miracles' exposes a hidden world of religious devotion in the Italian Renaissance home. Challenging the idea of the Renaissance as an age of increasing worldliness, it shows how religion remained a powerful force that coloured every aspect of daily life. Across the length and breadth of Italy, houses were filled with decorative objects and works of art with spiritual significance, designed to aid members of the family in their devotional lives. A wide range of religious activities, from routine prayers to extraordinary experiences such as miracles and exorcisms, took place within the home, where they were adapted to key moments in the life-cycle, including birth, marriage, sickness and death. 0This illustrated publication explores a variety of devotional objects and images, from luxury items to everyday household goods. Bringing together jewellery and ceramics, manuscripts and printed books, sculpture and paintings, the book offers a vivid encounter with Renaissance spirituality and domesticity. The result is a new vision of a period in which the material world was charged with sacred power. 0Exhibition: Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK (Spring 2017).

The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy explores the rich devotional life of the Italian household between 1450 and 1600. Rejecting the enduring stereotype of the Renaissance as a secular age, this interdisciplinary study reveals the home to have been an important site of spiritual revitalization. Books, buildings, objects, spaces, images, and archival sources are scrutinized to cast new light on the many ways in which religion infused daily life within the household. Acts of devotion, from routine prayers to extraordinary religious experiences such as miracles and visions, frequently took place at home amid the joys and trials of domestic life — from childbirth and marriage to sickness and death. Breaking free from the usual focus on Venice, Florence, and Rome, The Sacred Home investigates practices of piety across the Italian peninsula, with particular attention paid to the city of Naples, the Marche, and the Venetian mainland. It also looks beyond the elite to consider artisanal and lower-status households, and reveals gender and age as factors that powerfully conditioned religious experience. Recovering a host of lost voices and compelling narratives at the intersection between the divine and the everyday, The Sacred Home offers unprecedented glimpses through the keyhole into the spiritual lives of Renaissance Italians.

This volume illuminates the vibrancy of religious beliefs and practices which profoundly shaped family life in this era. Drawing on a wide range of sources, it affirms the central place of the household to Catholic spirituality.

"This beautifully illustrated book is the first to look at the role of the urban Italian house in the development of Renaissance art and culture. "The Renaissance Home" brings together a wide range of objects, from furniture and kitchen utensils to popular prints, jewellery and everyday dress, to reveal how the homes of the upper- and middle-classes made a crucial contribution to the flowering of the visual arts in 15th- and 16th-century Italy. Drawing on a wide array of sources including inventories, account-books, letters, treatises, and archaeological and conservation reports, it offers a completely fresh exploration of the fascinating domestic world of Renaissance Italy."