Humility as a Virtue: Oral and Visual Religious Indoctrination to Purify the Female Gender in Italy in the Early Quattrocento

Abstract

The Madonna of Humility has been a subject of great interest in the twentieth century. Scholars such as Millard Meiss and H. W. van Os have long dwelled on the origin and dissemination of this emblematic iconography. Nevertheless, scholars have said little regarding its role and possible reverberation on women of the late Middle Ages. The need to domesticate the female gender inspired great orators like Saint Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444), who used humility as a means to control society. Not only could humility, if perceived as a virtue, keep women within their limited social spaces, it would have allowed them—by following a specific fabricated way of life—to spiritually lead their households, gaining the possibility of eternal salvation. This article explores the faith-based concept of humility to unlock the forces that pushed toward the diffusion of a religious iconography, capable of imposing a modest way of life that was more in keeping with the Catholic teachings of the late Trecento and early Quattrocento. Several portrayals of the Madonna of Humility are proposed to investigate the role these paintings might have played in Italy in exalting humility as a noble virtue.