The title of this book signals a shift that occurred when this subject, often shown in narrative cycles of the life and Passion of Christ, came to be isolated as the principal depiction for the end walls of monastery refectories. The tradition began around 1350 with Taddeo Gaddi’s fresco at S. Croce; its most famous example is Leonardo’s mural for Dominican brethren in Milan. From the modern perspective, a growing awareness of such Last Suppers as a type and (principally Florentine) tradition came into focus with Luisa Vertova’s illuminating compendium I Cenacoli Fiorentini, published in 1965. Subsequently, Creighton Gilbert surveyed such refectory Last Suppers, gauging how, by deploying newfound prescriptions for linear perspective during the course of the fifteenth century, painters’ representations of Christ with his apostles seemed to elicit direct response and identification on the part of its monastic audience (“Last Suppers and Their Refectories,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. Charles Trinkaus and Heiko A. Oberman [1974]: 371–402). Accordingly, Andrea del Castagno’s striking fresco at Sant’Apollonia was featured by Gilbert — the first of “our familiar” Last Suppers — but with barely a mention of the Benedictine nuns who were its patrons and its viewers.

We find ourselves in exponentially changed conditions in terms of feminist analyses in general and of inquiries into aspects of women’s piety and the role of the visual arts in the lives of female religious during the late medieval and Renaissance periods. Diana Hiller’s Gendered Perceptions of Florentine Last Supper Frescoes, c. 1350–1490, must be viewed against this expanded intellectual landscape. Benefiting also from significant studies of individual convent Last Suppers, Hiller takes on a large cluster of examples both from the monastic and conventual contexts (six monasteries and three convents). She is guided by Baxandall’s notion of “period eye” as she explores what shaped the differing perspectives of male versus female religious and how gender affected the original viewers’ perceptions of such scenes.

To this end, the author posits distinct educational formations for male and female religious. She argues that with extensive Latin learning and exegetical training the friars had the tools for comprehending pictures with complex layering of meaning; by contrast, the limited exposure of women religious to books and to textual interpretation and their competence mainly in the vernacular necessitated simpler compositions and more didactic presentations for the images in their purview. Other features, such as a communal ethos and sense of fraternity in male religious orders, are contrasted to more personal, even idiosyncratic, responses to life, piety, and sacred depictions on the part of female religious. An openness to outside visitors in monasteries compared with stricter rules of enclosure for convents has its parallel in the relative bounty at mealtimes for male religious compared to frequent fasting and more ascetic food offerings for the nuns, features also discussed by Hiller.

However legitimate such findings may be, the way they are made to pertain to these respective Last Suppers is open to question. Should the compositional coherence of Castagno’s illusionistic presentation be thought of as an easier path for his female audience to follow than the hierarchical and schematic presentation of Gaddi’s Tree of Life/Last Supper, which was destined for the learned Franciscan brethren? Or are such differences important to explain as two artistic high points displaying changed modes of representation at disparate chronological moments? Questions of artistic quality should also enter into an understanding of the status of these images with respect to their viewers. Thus with its extra figures at the left, Stefano d’Antonio di Vanni’s archaic presentation in the San Matteo Last Supper is used as positive evidence for the monastery’s inclusiveness to outsiders, whereas the inscribed (Latin) names of apostles in Castagno’s fresco should confirm the Benedictine nuns’ need of guidance in identifying these figures. Whatever truths may lie in Hiller’s generalizations, they run the risk of seeming like a priori categories, even stereotypes, when applied to, rather than drawn from, the works of art themselves.

Significant versions of refectory Last Suppers in Florence exist well into the sixteenth century (Franciabigio; Andrea del Sarto). Thus Hiller’s cutoff date of 1490 seems arbitrary. An extended time frame would have brought into play the one Last Supper for a convent refectory also painted by a woman artist: the mural-size oil by the Dominican nun Plautilla Nelli, which, needless to say, would provide a stimulating coda to these considerations.