Images of Preachers in Italian Art and Sermons

This paper presents several examples illustrating the preaching of major Observant preachers and their images in Tuscany, particularly in Florence. The images discussed are from the Early Modern period, since there are only a very few images of preachers shown in action before the fifteenth century. The intention of the paper is to demonstrate the power of art in depicting preaching, in particular to show how these images were used as a part of the commemoration of preaching events and the cult of mendicant saints in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Florence. A challenging issue in the field of sermon studies is the relationship between preaching and art, particularly the manner in which preachers used works of art in their preaching and described specific pictures in their sermons, and the way in which they were themselves represented in images, delivering their sermons.