In recent years the life stories of early modern women artists have inspired many works of biofiction; yet often authors know more about what the artists created than the facts of their lives. This essay will explore the intermediality between visual and verbal content by exploring the role of art in two recent novels on the Italian Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola: Donna DiGiuseppe’s Lady in Ermine: The Story of a Woman Who Painted the Renaissance and Chiara Montani’s Sofonisba: Portraits of the Soul. In the process I will explore the Renaissance paragone debate and consider how verbal descriptions of artworks …

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Kalos, Emma Marie Bowden Jan 2022

Kalos, Emma Marie Bowden

2022 Symposium

My work, “Kalos”, is a unique composition made up of 3”x3” canvases with overall dimensions of 24”x30”. This series of acrylic paintings explores the boundaries within the photorealism technique in painting. For this painting, one 3”x3” canvas represents one corresponding square from the photorealism grid on the reference photo. The independent squares open new possibilities for viewer engagement and manipulation. The interactive piece encourages viewers to ponder the idea of beauty and how it can be manipulated.

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Engram, Vol. 1 2022, Portland State University. School Of Art + Art History + Design Jan 2022

Engram, Vol. 1 2022, Portland State University. School Of Art + Art History + Design

Engram: A Journal of Art History Student Writing

Matthew Paris Itinerary Maps, the Holy Land, the Crusades and the Idealization of Pilgrimage, Amber Shrewsbury

Clay Pilgrimage Tokens of Qal’at Sem’an, Ashley Hood

Magical Amulets and Their Uses in Menstrual Health, Kelsey Bucks

Attendant Statues to God Nabu: Gods, Kings, and Scholars, Rose Caughie

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Schemata: The Language Of The Body In Middle Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts, Nava Streiter Jan 2022

Schemata: The Language Of The Body In Middle Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts, Nava Streiter

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

Representations of body language add a vital layer of meaning to middle Byzantine figural art, and they deserve systematic scholarly attention. My dissertation offers a method for unpicking the meanings of individual movements, and, more importantly, it explores the underlying cultural concerns that shaped the form of the body in middle Byzantine art. I argue that Byzantine images of body language are intentionally schematic and programmatic. By combining a restricted vocabulary of motion with pared-down renderings of physical forms, Byzantine artists engaged the vital force of embodied expression, while also transfiguring the body into a metaphoric representation of disembodied ideas …

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Communication Of Values And Morals Through Andrea Della Robbia’S Prudence, Caylin Wigger Jan 2022

Communication Of Values And Morals Through Andrea Della Robbia’S Prudence, Caylin Wigger

Undergraduate Research Awards

Created by Andrea della Robbia in 1475, the circular relief of Prudence, executed in tin-glazed terracotta, exemplifies an intrinsic relationship to religion, morals, and virtues in both medium and subject matter, typical of Renaissance Art. From the development of the della Robbia family workshop, to modern conservation efforts, the della Robbia tin-glazed terracotta method elucidates a timeless and extreme dedication to moral values. The inherent humility of the terracotta, a simple clay dug from the earth, had been recognized even before Andrea created Prudence by close followers of the Christian faith. Not only were the basic elements of Prudence …

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The Art Of Burial In The Medieval Nile Valley: Christian And Islamic Interchange In Religious Funerary Contexts, Arielle Winnik Jan 2022

The Art Of Burial In The Medieval Nile Valley: Christian And Islamic Interchange In Religious Funerary Contexts, Arielle Winnik

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

Christian communities in medieval Islamic Egypt (ca. ninth to twelfth centuries) were active participants in Islamicate visual culture. Indeed, Christians employed the same artistic objects as their Muslim neighbors in secular contexts, and close commonalities were even pervasive in art employed in religious rituals.

This dissertation investigates one such instance of the shared use of objects between Christians and Muslims in distinct sacred contexts. Christian and Muslim burials shared deep similarities, including the use of burial shrouds and grave markers with almost identical iconographic and compositional features. I draw attention to ways that Christians deployed an interreligious visual and material …

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The Medieval Ideal: Utopian Medievalism In The Life, Thought, And Works Of William Morris, Benjamin Michael Kimball Jan 2022

The Medieval Ideal: Utopian Medievalism In The Life, Thought, And Works Of William Morris, Benjamin Michael Kimball

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Interpreting the past often reveals as much about the interpreter as it does about the subject they interpret. This was the case with William Morris and his utopian mythologization of the Middle Ages. His art, writings, politics, and philosophy are suffused with a utopian vision of the medieval past. It runs through the whole body of his work and even in affected his personal life. It became a lens through which he could understand the world around him, a source on which he could draw for his political, social, and artistic critiques of Victorian Society. Through three different vantage points, …

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