ABSTRACT
Writing in 1998, Ann Roberts noted that the history of artistic activity in female convents had yet to be written,1 and while this is still the case, in recent decades, scholarship has dramatically intensified, exploring convent creativity from various perspectives within diverse disciplines.2 Scholars, however, face challenges posed by the extensive loss of art produced by nuns and the fragmentary state of documentary evidence. Suppression of monastic institutions during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to the dispersal and loss of much artistic and archival material, and surviving objects and documents are often difficult to access or contextualize.3
