The articles in Pregare in casa were originally presented at a conference sponsored by Cambridge University and the University of Padua in 2016. They raise and encourage the kinds of questions that have invigorated art history in recent years: How do works of art / material culture function in people's lives? What evidence constitutes documentation of the intersections between art / material culture and daily life? The essays encompass the late medieval and Renaissance periods in Northern Italy, with a special emphasis on Venice and Padua.

Although often practiced publicly and under the aegis of an institution—with all the controls that institutionalization implies—devotion is ultimately a personal, private activity. What is in the heart and mind of an individual in meditation or at prayer will, except in rare circumstances, be unknown to any outsider; this is especially true when devotion is practiced at home. Nevertheless, the authors have mined a wide variety of evidence to help us better understand the role images, objects, and devotional writings could have played in providing inspiration and solace to individuals and families. Inventories reveal what devotional objects were available and where in the home they were located. Descriptions, plans, and surviving buildings reveal the location of chapels in the palaces of leading or privileged families, while simple niches suggest where devotional objects might have been placed. Wealthier individuals might have a cupboard in the bedroom to store the family's devotional images and books. A few frescoes in the bedroom, in chapels, and on the facades of palaces survive in situ. The small scale of domestic devotional objects suggests that they were often moved, implying that devotion was carried out in different parts of the home, as needed by circumstances. Deborah Howard points out that some devotional objects were transported from city palace to country villa; works that remained at the villa were sometimes replaced in town with newer works. For whatever reason, to be effective, devotion sometimes needed to be stylistically up to date.

While paintings with gold-leaf backgrounds can evoke the warm shimmering embrace of heavenly light, the three-dimensionality of sculpture could suggest the physical presence of the divine here and now. Zuzanna Sarnecka studies small majolica narrative scenes popular in the Marches. A representation of the Franciscan sanctuary at La Verna lacks the scene of the stigmatization of the saint, suggesting that the function of this terra-cotta landscape was to inspire the visualization of the miracle in the worshipper's mind. Using inventories and surviving books, Abigail Brundin examines the religious texts—the Bible, books of hours, and prescriptive literature intended specifically for men, women, boys, or girls—available to read at home. Not surprisingly, inventories of the wealthy include more books than are found in those of the less privileged. We need to remember that statistics about book ownership and information about the devotional practices of the poor will always be unknown.

Barbara Maria Savy discusses late sixteenth-century portraits of individuals in contemplation of religious figures and narratives. While these portraits suggest the sitter's internalization/visualization of the religious experience, there is a kind of ostentation about such images that raises the question of audience. Are some of these portraits intended to make a public statement about the piety of the individuals represented? Private chapels with consecrated altars functioned as places for private and familial devotion but may also have been, in some cases, ostentatious demonstrations for external audiences of the owners’ piety and conformity with tradition. Putting a devotional fresco on the outside of one's palace or placing a majolica sculpture over the entrance would suggest to the broader public the piety of the home's inhabitants. This interface between private and public devotion is considered by several authors.

These essays demonstrate that in Northern Italy between 1300 and 1600 the importance of devotion at home can be well documented. The individuals and families who commissioned these fascinating objects and their intended spaces—rooms, niches, storage cupboards—each had a vision of what would be helpful in fulfilling their devotional needs and aspirations. The prayerful or meditative experience that these objects and spaces supported, however, remains private and beyond our understanding.