"Hamburger's singular discovery of a group of devotional drawings made by an anonymous nun . . . is here presented with magisterial learning, theoretical sophis

"This jewel of a book is a great pleasure to read. In point of fact, it is not a book one reads but savors."--Narciso G. Menocal, author of Architecture as Natu

Witchcraft. Arson. Going AWOL. Some nuns in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy strayed far from the paradigms of monastic life. Cloistered in convents, su

In the eighteenth century, New Spaniards (colonial Mexicans) so lauded their nuns that they developed a local tradition of visually opulent portraits, called mo