Divinus amor extasim facit: Fra Bartolommeo and mysticism in Renaissance Florence

The paintings of Fra Bartolommeo (1472-1517) are often recognized as exemplary of "high" Renaissance compositions. Yet the focus on their balanced geometry obscures what is in fact their complex mystical content. In this study, I argue that after assuming the Dominican habit in 1501, Fra Bartolommeo dedicated his career as a friar-painter to picturing the union of man and God that the order believed could be achieved through contemplative practice. This was no easy task considering that rapture is ineffable. But by cleverly manipulating pictorial devices borrowed from the tradition of devotional imagery---especially inset images and text/image juxtapositions---the paintings did more than simply narrate the experience of ecstasy: they directed the beholder in the meditative process necessary to attain mystical union for himself. This inquiry into the novel ways in which Fra Bartolommeo's paintings operate as devotional guides contributes to current scholarship on Renaissance "medievalisms" and the maniera devota.;Chapter one examines Fra Bartolommeo's first project as a Dominican, The Vision of St. Bernard (1504-1507), as evidence of his burgeoning interest in mysticism. Chapter two focuses on the God the Father with Saints Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Siena (1509), which offers his most complex iteration of mystical theology. Scholarship after Vasari tends to claim Savonarola as the sole source for its iconography; I argue that the philological interests of his contemporaries in San Marco contributed most to shaping his interpretations of visionary' experience. Chapter three calls attention to the way Fra Bartolommeo restages the standard Sacra Conversazione as a visionary subject in the Carondelet Altarpiece (1512) by featuring a provocatively framed landscape at its center. Chapter four reconciles the devotional aims of the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (1511) with its political use as a diplomatic gift by the Soderini Republic by revealing how its project of bringing man closer to God was transformed to bring Florence closer to France. Finally, chapter five corrects misperceptions about the late works; rejecting claims that his piety supplanted his artistic ambitions, I argue that it propelled him to continue tackling the problem of representing rapture in new and interesting ways.