NIRIT BEN-ARYEH DEBBY, Images of Preachers in Italian Art and Sermons

SUMMARY

This paper presents several examples of the preaching of major Observant preachers and the images they employed in Tuscany, and particularly in Florence. The intention of the paper is to demonstrate the power of art in depicting preaching and to show how these images were used as a part of the commemoration of preaching events and the cult of mendicant saints in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Florence. A difficult question in the field of sermon studies is the relationship between preaching and art, particularly the manner in which preachers used works of art in their preaching and described specific pictures in their sermons, and the way in which preachers themselves were depicted delivering their sermons by artists. My decision to concentrate on Tuscany is due to its importance as a center of preaching and of artistic production during the Renaissance. My choice to discuss Observant preachers in particular is based on the fact that they were the most prominent and most often depicted preachers in the visual tradition — a sign of their popularity and impact.