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This thesis is divided into three parts, each following a specific methodological perspective:

“The Design of Confession” shows how the confessionals were introduced to discipline the physical execution of the ritual and provide a public setting for its performance. The earliest examples were built as open frames in which groups of penitents would take the sacrament in close proximity to each other and in plain sight. The ultimate aim of their design, then, was neither privacy nor seclusion, but the public exposure of the ritual.

“The Space of Confession” illustrates how the arrangement of the confessionals along the entire length of the side aisles was an expression of the public, collective, and even gregarious character of confession. Designed to accommodate more than forty people at the same time, these imposing wooden structures were integrated into the side walls to produce a condition of “perpetual equality,” and hence to erase any distinction of status within the community. Their spatial arrangement was thus aimed not to the cultivation of the individual self, but to its ultimate negation.

“The Materiality of Confession” examines the replacement process undergone by different groups of confessionals. The evidence of their material degradation, wrought by repeated use and natural processes such as woodworm infestation, reveals that these objects would be dismantled and rebuilt over time, even if retaining the same design and spatial configuration. Unlike traditional artworks created to leave enduring traces to posterity, the confessionals belonged to an art of the provisional, whose ambition was not to last but to survive.