ABSTRACT
The problem under investigation of the architectural qualities of a commission from a congregation of Carmelites brings into play the notion of patronage. Within patronage studies, there is a smaller specialised body of research focused on women,1 and, within this, one on religious women in the Renaissance when ‘the decisions of individual nuns and communities of nuns sometime affected the architectural and decorative projects undertaken by the monks of their religious order, a larger and more influential group’.2 In the historiography of the art and architecture of the twentieth century, the narrower market-oriented notions of ‘commission’, ‘client’ and ‘collaboration’ have replaced the multivalent term of ‘patronage’. (Once again, historiography is embedded in, and reflects, history.)3 But how does one approach the fact that these ecclesiastical patrons are female? To this question there have been four different approaches.
