ABSTRACT
Just south of the Piazza dei Miracoli and the Leaning Tower in Pisa, on one of the narrow streets that run towards the River Arno, an arch in one of the walls that define the street is adorned with a coat of arms (Figure 1.1). This is the only marker on the street of the presence of the convent of San Domenico of Pisa. Significantly, the arms are of the Gambacorta family, signaling this family’s patronage of the convent, and the identity of its most famous inhabitant. Inside the small church a visitor may see the preserved body of the foundress, Chiara Gambacorta, and the fifteenth-century sculpted tomb slab that once covered that body (Figure 1.2). This community is a living link to one of the most important female Dominican houses in Italy in the fifteenth century. The vicissitudes of the modern world have not been kind to this community, but the calm of their house in Pisa belies the troubles they have endured.
