This dissertation focuses on the art and architecture of the Clarissan Order in Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and how these cloistered women participated in the church services from the remote location of their choir. To safeguard the enclosure of the nuns, the choirs of the Clarisse were routinely located in inferior positions that consistently prevented a direct line of vision to the altar. This limited contact with the contiguous lay church severely impacted the nuns’ visual participation in the Mass. By analyzing the spatial experience, architectural layout, sculptural and painted embellishment of extant nuns’ choirs throughout Italy, this research investigates how cloistered viewers sought access to the body of Christ through images, transforming their enclosed precincts into prime resources for ocular communion.

Given the unexplored frontier surrounding the sacramental nature of Clarissan art, this study seeks to fill this research gap by examining how devotional images functioned as visual substitutes to facilitate communion with Christ. While the sealed walls of the choir functioned to regulate nuns’ vision, these entombed spaces became a world unto themselves. These painted prayer chambers provided a bridge to the Holy Land, offering visual foci to reignite the senses by illuminating an alternative path to consume Christ. By performing a series of detailed case studies of surviving works from select foundations throughout Umbria, Lazio, Tuscany, and Campania, this dissertation examines the complex iconography employed within these paintings, revealing an advanced form of visual literacy operating inside the convents of the Clarisse.