Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Gendering Art History In The Victorian Age: Anna Jameson, Elizabeth Eastlake, And George Eliot In Florence, Antje Anderson

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis investigates how three professional Victorian women writers, Anna Jameson, Elizabeth Eastlake, and George Eliot, wrote about Renaissance art in Florence. As nineteenth-century women, they were excluded from certain realms of knowledge, agency, and influence. This exclusion (complicated by their privilege in terms of class, nationality, and education) influenced the way they experienced and wrote about art. The introduction addresses how changing modes of travel, broader access to publication, and art history’s gradual emergence as an academic discipline helped shape their careers as women art writers—the well-known “Mrs. Jameson” as a popularizer of art history for a broad readership; …

Of Water Jars And Women: A Re-Evaluation Of Fountain House Imagery On Late Archaic Black-Figure Hydriai, Christopher Askew

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

From approximately 530 to 500 BCE, images of fountain houses became popular subjects on black-figure hydriai produced in or around ancient Athens. These scenes often involve groups of unidentified women gathering around a fountain spout, typically attached to an ornate architectural structure, in order to fill their water jars. Although isolated pottery sherds depicting these scenes have been discovered in Greece, approximately seventy-five of these scenes have been identified on Attic hydriai depicting such scenes were discovered in Etruscan tombs. Past scholarship has categorized these images either as genre scenes, which represent a domestic activity characteristic of everyday life, or …

Patronage And Portable Portraits: Early English Miniatures: 1520-1544, Ashley Owens

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis examines function and patronage of early sixteenth-century portrait miniatures by Lucas Horenbout (d. 1544) and Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8-1543). Portrait miniatures, a unique form of portraiture emerging in the sixteenth century, have a long tradition in England, but hold an ambiguous place within art history because of their size, variety, and multifaceted function. Scholarship on the topic of early English portrait miniatures defines and discusses the tradition as it applies to the Elizabethan miniatures of Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619), the first major English-born artist. Therefore, the miniatures prior to Hilliard have been studied as predecessors to his works …

The Talismanic Seal Stone Of Crete: A Re-Evaluation., Catherine Stram

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis presents a re-evaluation of the talismanic seal stones of Crete. Its purpose is to present previous scholarship on these seal stones, introduce the reader to a new way of recording and viewing seal stones through Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), and to offer the data from a study on 384 talismanic seal stones.

Seals were small stones or pieces of wood or ivory with intaglio, meaning designs were cut into their surface in order to create a relief when stamped in wet clay or a similar substance. They served several purposes: as identification, as a way of showing ownership, …

Viewing Heaven: Rock Crystal, Reliquaries, And Transparency In Fourteenth-Century Aachen, Claire Kilgore

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis examines reliquaries and objects associated with medieval Christian practice in fourteenth-century Aachen. The city's cathedral and treasury contain prestigious relics, reliquaries, and liturgical items, aided by its status as the Holy Roman Empire's coronation church. During the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (r. 1349-1378), reliquaries, pilgrimage, and architecture reflect late medieval interests in vision, optics, and transparency. Two mid-fourteenth century reliquaries from the Aachen Cathedral Treasury, the Reliquary of Charlemagne and the Three-Steepled Reliquary, display relics through rock crystal windows, in contrast to the obscuring characteristics of earlier reliquaries. Not only do the two reliquaries visually …

Shattered Ceilings: Roof Tile Analysis On Survey Archaeology Projects, Rebecca Salem

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Finding a roof tile on an archaeological survey demonstrates that a structure had previously stood nearby. Rarely found in their entirety, tiles are fabricated from terracotta, which, while durable when in its proper place, breaks when falling from a roof. The nature of these fragmentary finds has made tile analysis limited and tiles are often not included in publications or only a select few are included with ceramic finds. Additionally, unlike pottery with its typographic chronology, roof tiles have restricted dating potential. However, there are several specific types of tile that can greatly help with dating. Though limited, some of …

The Origins And Identity Of Roman Mithraism, Charles R. Hill

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis is a reassessment of scholarship concerning the origins of the cult mysteries of Mithraism in its Roman form during the Imperial Period. While much has been published in the debate over the cult’s true origins, we are still left without a satisfactory answer. The present work is an attempt to reconcile some of the arguments posed in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries with those of the later 20^th and 21^st centuries, focusing mostly on the cult’s art and iconography in Mithraea, the central spaces of Mithraic worship. First will be a summary of …

Representing Propaganda: Anti-Tyrannical Art Of The Greek, Roman, And French Populist Agendas, Katherine Norgard

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

History is often shaped to fit certain agendas. Regular, flawed individuals become heroes and martyrs. The truth is often more complicated, as proven by the fact that Harmodios and Aristogeiton gained their fame by publicly slaughtering a well-liked ruler for encroaching on their pederastic relationship, Brutus gained his fame by murdering Julius Caesar for getting too close to his mother (and sister), and Jean-Paul Marat was exalted and worshiped for violence-inciting journalism.

Harmodios, Brutus, and Jean Paul Marat all serve as symbols of equalitarianism. Their public portrayals were crafted to be symbols that fit the [needs of] revolutionary agendas. As …

Lucas Cranach's Samson And Delilah In Northern European Art, Jacqueline S. Spackman

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis explores images of Samson and Delilah in northern Europe in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. My research focuses primarily on Lucas Cranach’s painting, Samson and Delilah of 1528-30, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. By examining prints and decorative artworks that include the Samson and Delilah narrative, it is my goal to understand where Cranach’s painting fits into the larger art historical picture. Through examining the locations and suggested meanings of other works, I hope to establish that it is also possible to understand the intention and meaning behind Cranach’s painting. I analyze the work …

Between Historical Truth And Story-Telling: The Twentieth-Century Fabrication Of “Artemisia”, Britiany Daugherty

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This research focuses on the twentieth century rediscovery of the seventeenth-century Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi by scholars, novelists, playwrights, filmmakers, and artists. I argue that the various authors who told her story constructed two distinct “Artemisias,” what I identify as the “Academic Artemisia” and the “Celebrity Artemisia.” The “Academic Artemisia” results from writings by scholars focused on her 1610 Susanna and the Elders, who used approaches from formalism and connoisseurship, to feminism and iconography. The “Celebrity Artemisia” stems from popular fictions that refashioned the life and art of Artemisia according to pop culture tastes. Studying what has been said about …

The Imperial Temple At Antiochia Ad Cragum: Aspects Of Architecture And Iconography, Geraldine S. Dobos

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Along the northeastern Mediterranean shore lies Antiochia ad Cragum, an ancient city located in the western area of the Roman province of Rough Cilicia. It is now known as the village of Guney, in southern Turkey. The Northeast Temple is the first Imperial structure at Antiochia that has been revealed in its entirety and its reconstruction is anticipated. This excavation by the University of Nebraska (Antiochia ad Cragum Archaeological Research Project, or ACARP), is directed by UNL Professor Michael Hoff.

The hypothetical reconstruction of the Northeast Temple’s geison course, which I present, emphasizes certain diagnostic features that may be used …

Zoomorphic Penannular Brooches In 6th And 7th Century Ireland, Esther G. Ward

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

In this thesis the author examines the evolution, manufacture, and societal significance of zoomorphic penannular brooches, a type of metal dress fastener used in early medieval Ireland that is often decorated. The brooches examined are dated to the 6^th and 7^th centuries, during which the Irish underwent a process of religious conversion from Celtic paganism to Christianity, and social rank was paramount. It is in this social context that the brooches are examined. Despite the significance of this time of social change, brooches from this period tend to be overlooked by scholarship in favor of the more ornate …