ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how and why the widow saint was depicted in Florentine art of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The tension between social expectations of widowhood and representations of an ideal widowhood was particularly acute in Florence, where due to the complex dotal system, a widow was caught between the conflicting ambitions of her natal and marital families. The ideal of female sanctity was constructed around the virtues of virginity, chastity and humility. Thus, the construct was largely founded upon passive and introverted values and easily fits in the much-used model of feminine space belonging to the private world of domesticity and restriction. The state of widowhood presented difficulties in its visual presentation. Widowhood, defined by the death of a husband, was passive, and although hagiographers could define it as 'liberation' from the cares of the world, a dramatic conversion scene was unusual in the vitae of widow saints.
