This article offers a reading of nineteenth-century Roman Catholic theology through the sacred art produced by and for women religious. The practices and devotions that the article explores, however, are not those that drew from the institutional Church but rather from the legacies of mysticism, many of which were shaped in women’s religious communities. Scholars have proposed that mysticism was stripped of its intellectual legitimacy and relegated to the margins of theology by post-Enlightenment rationalism, thereby consigning female religious experience to the politically impotent private sphere. The article suggests, however, that, although the literature of women’s mysticism entered a period of decline from the end of the Counter-Reformation, an authoritative female tradition, expressed in visual and material culture, continued into the nineteenth century and beyond. The art that emerged from convents reflected the increasing visibility of women in the Roman Catholic Church and the burgeoning of folkloric devotional practices and iconography. This article considers two paintings as evidence that, by the nineteenth century, the aporias1 of Christian theology were consciously articulated by women religious though the art that they made: works which, in turn, shaped the creed and culture of the institutional Church. In so doing, the article contributes to the growing body of scholarship on the material culture of religion.

中文翻译：

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“隐藏在人类视线之外的艺术家”：十九世纪修道院的视觉文化与神秘主义

这篇文章通过宗教女性创作和为女性创作的神圣艺术提供了对 19 世纪罗马天主教神学的解读。然而，本文探讨的实践和奉献不是来自制度教会，而是来自神秘主义的遗产，其中许多是在女性宗教社区中形成的。学者们提出，后启蒙运动的理性主义剥夺了神秘主义的理智合法性，将其置于神学的边缘，从而将女性的宗教体验置于政治上无能为力的私人领域。然而，这篇文章表明，尽管女性神秘主义文学从反宗教改革结束后进入了衰落时期，这是一种权威的女性传统，表现在视觉和物质文化上，一直持续到十九世纪及以后。修道院中出现的艺术反映了女性在罗马天主教堂中日益增加的知名度以及民俗奉献实践和肖像画的蓬勃发展。本文以两幅画作作为证据，证明到 19 世纪，厄运1宗教女性通过她们创作的艺术有意识地表达了基督教神学的观点：这些作品反过来塑造了机构教会的信条和文化。这样一来，这篇文章就为越来越多的关于宗教物质文化的学术做出了贡献。