Seminar: Carmelites in Siena during the Middle Ages - Reconstructing the Original Arrangement and Topography of a Mendicant Church through Material Evidence and Historical Sources

This presentation is based on my doctoral dissertation, which investigates the production of images and the configuration of liturgical space associated with the Carmelite Order in the Tuscan religious province between the mid-thirteenth and the mid-fifteenth century, with particular focus on the church of San Niccolò al Carmine in Siena. The study takes as its point of departure a tension between two complementary aspects of the Order’s history: on the one hand, the early formation of a cohesive institutional identity, grounded in a distinctive rule and liturgy; on the other, the remarkable capacity of individual Carmelite houses to adapt to different urban, political, social, economic, and devotional contexts.

The dissertation therefore approaches Carmelite imagery not as the expression of a supposedly fixed and self-contained “art of the Order,” but as the outcome of processes of negotiation between the self-representation of conventual communities, public and private systems of patronage, liturgical practices, and distinctive forms of civic devotion. Within this framework, the circulation of Byzantine or “Greek-manner” Marian images and the gradual, parallel promotion of figures from within the Carmelite community are interpreted as instruments of legitimation and local rootedness, through which the Order was able to inscribe itself into civic space and establish a recognizable presence.

The Sienese case forms the principal focus of the thesis. Through the analysis of surviving works, archival documentation, and antiquarian literature, the study seeks to reconstruct, at least in part, the spatial organization of San Niccolò al Carmine, the distribution and dedications of its altars, its systems of patronage, and the strategies that shaped its liturgical arrangement over a span of roughly four centuries. The discovery and systematic examination of several fragments of a sixteenth-century burial register from the Sienese Carmelite church have made it possible to outline a complex sacred topography, in which spaces of conventual self-representation coexisted with sites of lay devotion.

Vittoria Pipino (May 8, 1996) received both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in History of Art from the University of Siena. She is currently finishing a PhD at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, under the supervision of Professors Francesco Caglioti and Roberto Bartalini, focusing on the artistic production related to the Carmelite Order in Tuscany during the Late Middle Ages.

Her research concentrates on Tuscan painting and sculpture between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, with particular attention to artistic patronage and the study of artworks within their original historical and social contexts. Throughout her academic career, she has published in leading scholarly journals and contributed to exhibition projects through catalogue entries.