Empreintes architecturales de femmes sur les routes de l'Europe : étude des couvents des annonciades célestes fondés avant 1800

Monastic architecture is a familiar theme to both researchers and the general public. But beyond the ideal image of the medieval abbey or the baroque Jesuit churches, this architecture remains, in fact, unknown. More specifically, the first studies of the architecture of convents in Modern Europe began only twenty years ago. However, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, monastic institutions multiplied, occupying a significant area within the cities of Catholic Europe, so much so that historians now speak of a true “conventual invasion”. Among the new religious orders which emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Annonciades Celestes (or Blue Nuns), founded in Genoa in 1602 by Vittoria Fornari, are particularly representative of the Catholic Reform. Extolling renunciation of the world in order to be better able to pray, the Annonciades Celestes could not design their spiritual project and their identity without a strict enclosure. I must say that since the mid-sixteenth century, nuns faced the great paradox imposed by the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545-1563): to live in narrow enclosure and to find a place in urban areas. In the fifty-four buildings remodeled and built in Europe (Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovenia), the Annonciades Celestes – as well as other religious orders – found architectural solutions to this ambiguity. Thus appeared this middle ground, a permanent (economic, urban, human) compromise between the physical constraints imposed upon them and their celestial aspirations, from the temporary location of the religious founders until the construction of permanent buildings. Built with local materials by master builders often recruited in the same city, these monastic complexes are functional, like real “architectural machines” used in the service of the spiritual projects of the communities. Enriched by the analysis of the vestiges, of written and iconographic sources, the study of the convents of the Annonciades Celestes allows us to bring a new and contrasting light to the post-Tridentine religious architectural production in Europe. By comparing these convents with those of other female religious congregations (contemporaries of the Annonciades), we are permitted to distinguish and relativize the architectural specificities of a religious order, while inserting them into their religious and artistic, as well as social and economic contexts.

Grantor dc:publisher

UCL - Université Catholique de Louvain

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Piront, Julie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Bragard, Philippe

• Architecture monastique
• Annonciades célestes
• Temps Modernes
• Europe
• Arts & humanities
• Art & art history
• Arts & sciences humaines
• Art & histoire de l’art

Language dc:language

fr

Identifier

info:hdl:2268/202833

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:orbi.ulg.ac.be:2268/202833