Resurrecting the ‘Spiritual Daughters’: the Houtappel Chapel and Women’s Patronage of Jesuit Building Programs in the Spanish Netherlands

Abstract

On July 21 of 1640, the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the Jesuit order, a short but grand procession took place inside the Antwerp Jesuit church (Figs. 8.1, 8.2).1 Members of the community’s Marian sodality, a confraternity dedicated to the promotion of the cult of the Virgin, carried a statue of Our Lady of Scherpenheuvel (Fig. 8.3) from the church’s northern lateral chapel, where it had been kept temporarily, back to the southern chapel. The latter had been erected in c. 1620/21–1622 specifically to house this statue, and its walls had just recently been covered with panels of intricately carved, multicolored Italian marble.2 This stonework formed part of an integrated decorative scheme in which every surface was adorned with expensive materials and masterfully executed paintings and sculptures. By the middle of the seventeenth century it was arguably the finest space within an astonishingly richly appointed church,