Volume 9, Issue 2 (Summer 2017) Sensory Piety as Social Intervention in a Mechelen Besloten Hofje Andrea Pearson
[email protected] Recommended Citation: Andrea Pearson, “Sensory Piety as Social Intervention in a Mechelen Besloten Hofje,” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 9:2 (Summer 2017) DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2017.9.2.1 Available at https://jhna.org/articles/sensory-piety-social-intervention-mechelen-besloten-hofje/ Published by Historians of Netherlandish Art: https://hnanews.org/ Republication Guidelines: https://dev.jhna.org/republication-guidelines/ Notes: This PDF is provided for reference purposes only and may not contain all the functionality or features of the original, online publication. This PDF provides paragraph numbers as well as page numbers for citation purposes. ISSN: 1949-9833 Sensory Piety as Social Intervention in a Mechelen Besloten Hofje Andrea Pearson Besloten hofjes compel sensory devotion, and sight provides the privileged point of entry into the works. Paradoxically, a female devotee from Mechelen, identified here as visually impaired, is represented in a wing hinged to one example. By prioritizing physical disability over spiritual interiority in the study of the hofje, this essay recalibrates sensory piety as socially persuasive. The investigation in turn complicates previous models for the production and reception of Besloten hofjes in general. Previously untapped archival and visual evidence reveals that the hofje was likely commissioned by the impaired woman’s parents, probably for the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwegasthuis (Hospital of Our Lady) in Mechelen, where she was professed. There, the hofje asserted a meritorious status in piety that claimed salvation for members of the familial triad, all three of whom were rendered spiritually suspect by the woman’s disability.