The Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal is pleased to present the lecture “Art, Medicine, and Miracles: Images in the French Hôtels-Dieu and Italian Hospitals,” delivered by art historian Fannie Caron-Roy.
The tradition of hospital care extends far beyond the French-speaking world. From the Middle Ages onward, hospitals across Europe played a fundamental social role. Through a comparison of the French Hôtels-Dieu and the Italian ospedali, this lecture will explore the close relationship between art, medicine, and spirituality in the early modern period.
Particular attention will be given to Italian hospitals, where sacred images served not merely as decoration but were regarded as powerful instruments of healing and devotion. Some of these institutions were even founded around miraculous images believed to possess the power to heal both body and soul. Through miracle narratives, medical treatises, works of art, and relics, the lecture will shed light on a concept that may seem surprising today but was central to early modern Italy: the therapeutic power of images.
Thursday, August 20, 2026 | 7 p.m.
Musée des Hospitalières de l’Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal
201 Avenue des Pins West, Montréal
Information and reservations:
reservations@museedeshospitalieres.qc.ca | +1 (514) 849-2919
Fannie Caron-Roy is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Queen’s University (Ontario) and a Lecturer at Université Laval. In 2025, she published Le Château intérieur: Art, Space, and Devotion in the Palaces of the Cardinals of Rome in the Sixteenth Century. She has received numerous research fellowships, including appointments at the Dutch University Institute for Art History in Florence (2022–2023) and the British School at Rome (2024). Her current research project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture, examines art as a devotional practice in Europe and New France during the early modern period.