Title: Sensory Piety as Social Intervention in a Mechelen Besloten Hofje
Abstract: 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.It does so in part by invoking pious practices tied not to sight but to the other senses, despite the visual pull of the work.Furthermore, integrating the hofje's portrait wings interpretively with a garden, as this essay is the first to do, opens a new means of analysis that reshapes proposed models of production for such works.Among its conclusions: the sisters did not produce this and other hofjes associated with the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwegasthuis as previously proposed.Rather, the works were likely made in professional workshops in Mechelen that perhaps collaborated with nuns at contemplative convents in the city.This revised understanding of production realigns the hospital sisters' agency with reception rather than production.