Mary as Embodied Love

A different aspect of the writings about Mary by Italian women is considered in this chapter. She is seen as a more human and earthly creature, connected to her family, to her husband Joseph, and to the child Jesus, caring for him especially. It considers first a prose work on the Annunciation by Maddalena Campiglia, in which the young Mary is seen as an independent woman both in her youth and as a young spouse; then it presents the charming images of Mary within the Holy Family, caring for the infant Jesus, as expressed by Francesca Turini Bufalini in her collection of sonnets on the Rosary. However, the main aim of this chapter is to show how Mary as mother is a model for bodily, corporeal awareness even for nuns, exploring how she appears in poetry collections authored by nuns (particularly the anonymous Devotissime compositioni rhythmice and Maria Alberghetti’s poems).