Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture Commons^™

The Lives And Afterlives Of The Arenberg Gospels: Materializing Medieval Oaths, Sarah Ganzel

Theses and Dissertations

The “social life” of the Arenberg Gospels, a gospel book later used as an oath book in ecclesiastical officiation ceremonies, illuminates the impact and meaning of oath books in medieval Europe. This thesis traces the manuscript’s materiality throughout its life, showing why both words and flesh mattered to oath rituals.

Tractatus De Herbis, Botanical Guide To The Universe: A Case Study For Morgan Ms M.873, Darya Badikova

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the development of the late medieval pharmacopoeial treatise Tractatus de herbis illustrated in M.873, a fourteenth-century manuscript from the collection of the Morgan Library in New York. Particularly, the thesis considers the use and reception of this encyclopedic work by elite contemporary audiences of the Venetian Republic through material and medical history.

Building The Egyptian Canon In Early 20th-Century Germany: The Case Study Of Georg Steindorff’S Excavations, Darby Linn

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a historiographic study of Germany Egyptology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with particular focus on how the different stakeholders involved in that academic environment – scholars, curators, donors and financiers, the German museum-going public, as well as Egyptian people who worked on archaeological excavations – influenced the development of the scholarly canon of ancient Egyptian art. The “canon” is an art historical concept from designating certain objects, styles, and forms as representative of a culture, time period, or artistic movement. Consequently, the canon establishes an artistic hierarchy according to European aesthetic standards that excludes …

The “Trans-Historical Community Of Women” And The Paintings Of Artemisia Gentileschi, Grace T. O. Ray

The Confluence

Though the term feminism did not yet exist, Artemisia Gentileschi’s embrace of the vital force of feminine strength is a distinctive component to her paintings. The woman painter’s life and art were affected by her sex, in a time when women were not only considered property but had to deal with the repercussions of an oppressive patriarchal society. From her youth onwards, Gentileschi witnessed women unjustly convicted and punished for crimes that had men committed, the law would have allowed them to walk free. Sadly, Artemisia was later privy to the misogynistic laws herself with the famous rape trial. It …

A Poor Third? A Reexamination Of Manuscript And Print Markets In Fifteenth And Sixteenth-Century Rouen, Kate Hodgson

School of Art Undergraduate Honors Theses

Manuscript and print scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have deemed Rouen a ‘poor third’ to the workshops in Paris and Lyon. Lacking the cultural status and political influence of these two major centers of book production, Rouen’s manuscript tradition has been coined an “eclectic” group of illuminators who were limited to a local, discontinuous demand for books and whose regional role hardly even bears examination. However, Between 1419 and 1449, Rouen was an epicenter of political and economic exchange between Normandy and England. The city’s manuscript ateliers experienced a period of unparalleled patronage from an international, elite clientele, …

Of Word And Stone: The History Of Medieval Spain Through The Lens Of Architecture And Language, Samantha Hernandez

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Medieval Spain is a unique summation of religious and cultural communities. Through the built forms of Al-Andalus, there is unique preservation of societal imprints that parallel the formation of the Castilian language. These two mediums—architecture and language—are a telling of the culture and history of the region. By first observing the historical formation of Spanish, and in turn the various communities which inhabited the Iberian Peninsula, one may find many correlations with architecture created at the same time. After understanding the historical making of the Spanish language, it is important to analyze the language itself and how it differs from …

Procedural City Generation With Combined Architectures For Real-Time Visualization, Griffin Poyck

All Theses

The work and research of this paper sought to build upon traditional city generation and simulation in creating a tool that both realistically simulates cities and their prominent features and also creates aesthetic and artistically rich cities using assets that combine several contemporary or near contemporary architectural styles. The major city features simulated are the surrounding terrain, road networks, individual buildings, and building placement. The tools used to both create and integrate these features were created in Houdini with Unreal Engine 5 as the intended final destination. This research was influenced by the city, town, and road networking of Ghost …

A Rouen Book Of Hours: Dynamic Religious Accoutrement, Cherished Accessory, And Looking Glass?, Sara Junkins

Art & Art History Student Scholarship

Sara Junkins ’23
Major: Art History and Creative Writing
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Elizabeth Welch, Art and Art History

Sara Junkins submitted an excellent art history thesis in which she mirrors the original owner and patron’s relationship to a 1510 book of hours made in Rouen, France, grappling like the patron with issues of faith, status, gender, and style. An external reviewer highlighted her sophisticated usage of Mircea Eliade’s theory of sacrality, saying that she “convincingly position[s] the book within the dichotomy of the sacred and profane.” Her investigation of the dynamic hybridities and dichotomies in the book—the sacred and the …

Demythologizing Homer: Investigating Religion In Minoan Crete, Elizabeth Rybarczyk

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The Minoan civilization of Bronze-Age Crete has, until recently, been obscured in mythological uncertainty. As a prehistoric civilization, the available evidence for historic analysis is sparse and ambiguous. This paper evaluates the material evidence for ritual activity to chart the religious developments of Minoan Crete. In the earliest periods of their civilization, the Minoans practiced animism, which reflected their ideals towards survival and cooperation. As their prosperity grew due to technological advancements, a social hierarchy formed. The emerging elite employed religion to justify their claim to power by appropriating religion, which culminated in a dual-monotheistic Knossian theocracy. This lasted until …

Salzburg's Baroque Architecture: A Historical Analysis And Poetic Response, Rebecca Malzer

Honors Projects

Salzburg, Austria is a city full of history. During the Baroque era from about the mid sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg designed and modeled the city with Rome, Italy in mind. Their loyalty to the Holy Roman Empire and with the Reformation in full swing, these Italian influences helped to build a pro-Roman Catholic style throughout the city. The Prince-Archbishops and their architects demonstrated Salzburg’s loyalty to Rome through the structures of Schloss Mirabell, Schloss Hellbrunn, and the Franziskannerkirche. In addition, these structures make for great inspiration for creative work, to which …

Piero Della Francesca And The Invention Of The Artist [Book Review], Fern Luskin

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Art Of Patron Sainthood: St. Teresa, Santiago, And The Early Modern Spanish Empire, Laura Martin

Art History Theses and Dissertations

In 1618 and 1626, the Castilian Cortes, supported by the Spanish Crown, named Spaniard St. Teresa of Ávila as Spain’s co-patron saint. This declaration, supported by many cities in the empire, including Ávila, Salamanca, Valladolid, and Mexico City, was still opposed by many who saw this as an insult to the standing patron, St. James, called Santiago in Spanish. Historians have studied this period because it helps explain social, cultural, and political conflicts within the empire. However, the art of this period has not been studied in depth. This thesis examines the artistic production related to the so-called co-patronage, including …

Botticelli's Marvelous Mystery: Idealized Portrait Of A Lady, Alessia M. Buoso

CAFE Symposium 2023

A detailed visual analysis of Sandro Botticelli's "Idealized Portrait of a Lady" that incorporates gender roles in Renaissance Florence and discusses Botticelli's hidden messages and common themes within his works.

Leonardo’S Ancient Inspiration, Willem N. Roelandts

CAFE Symposium 2023

Investigating the hidden ancient inspiration in Leonardo de Vinci’s 'Battle of Anghiari' and it’s significance to the city of Florence. How and why Leonardo chose to incorporate Greco-Roman aesthetics into his art.

Botticelli's Adoration Of The Magi: The Power And Beauty Of Individual, Trang B. Nguyen

CAFE Symposium 2023

Adoration of the Magi in Uffizi was a commission from banker Guasparre dal Lama for his chapel in Santa Maria Novella. The altarpiece was painted by the famous artist Sandro Botticelli. It illustrates one of the most famous scenes in the Bible: The Epiphany of the three Magi greeting the birth of Jesus who would bring salvation and peace to the world of sins. This beautiful piece now resides in Uffizi Museum in Florence. Adoration of the Magi represents the peak of Renaissance art, and carefully reflects the political message of Florence in the 15th century through the figures of …

Botticelli’S Pallas And The Centaur: Virtue Triumphant, Alice N. Nguyen

CAFE Symposium 2023

While waiting to see the Duke of Aosta in an anteroom of the Palazzo Pitti, William Blundell Spence, a painter and Florence resident, noticed a larger-than-life painting on the wall. He immediately informed Erico Rifolfi, then the Director of the Uffizi, because Spence recognized the brushwork of Sandro Botticelli in that little-known painting. Upon the announcement in La Nazione in March 1895, the forgotten piece created a sensation. However, even when exhibited in public, the painting is still veiled in mystery. Pallas and the Centaur belongs to the same time period as Botticelli's famed Primavera and Birth of Venus, commissioned …

Ritual, Spectacle, And Theatre In Late Medieval Seville (Chapter 1), Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

From the fall of Islamic Išbīliya in 1248 to the conquest of the New World, Seville was a nexus of economic and religious power where interconfessional living among Christians, Jews, and Muslims was negotiated on public stages. From out of seemingly irreconcilable ideologies of faith, hybrid performance culture emerged in spectacles of miraculous transformation, disciplinary processionals, and representations of religious identity. Ritual, Spectacle, and Theatre in Late Medieval Seville reinvigorates the study of medieval Iberian theater by revealing the ways in which public expressions of devotion, penance, and power fostered cultural reciprocity, rehearsed religious difference, and ultimately helped establish Seville …

Tintoretto: Painting In The Chaotic Reformations, Summer Markham

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

The following essay investigates Tintoretto’s, a Venetian artist during the 16^th century, artist techniques in his painting the Last Supper and how the period is reflected within it. For instance, the chiaroscuro and sfumato techniques in the painting are used to allude the darkness surrounding the self-indulgence, financial abuses, and religious corruption during the Counter-Reformation. Research of underlying symbolism and historical events further reveal how the Last Supper reflects the dark, confusing time that Europe was in during the Counter-Reformation. Understanding the Last Supper and understanding it’s historical context aids in the ability to observe the emotions during that …

Laying Out A Space: Spectral Geographies, Fictions Of The Soul, Erin D. Yerby

Theses and Dissertations

Laying out a Space: Spectral Geographies, Fictions of the Soul, arises out of my artistic practice, and thoughts behind my current project and MFA exhibition, Spectral Geographies.

Linking the problem of the world ‘out there’ or external space, to inner experience through painting as both medium and practice, my work expresses what I call inner geographies, spaces where intimate immensities, folding inside and outside, find expression. I think of my paintings as beginning with this gesture of laying out a between-space where the intimacies of waking dreams and visions are opened by, and grow into, actual places, …

Mysteries Of The Gothic, Addison Duvall

CMC Senior Theses

By examining the histories of the Notre-Dame and Chartres cathedrals, I will consider three academic schools of thought regarding the high Gothic Cathedrals: the balanced and rational feat of engineering, the communal and social rituals that bond humans to this space, and the iconographic manifestation of the supernatural. Functionalist engineering paradoxically lays at the heart of these cathedrals' capacity to open the human consciousness to the sacred by using recurrent symbolic patterns from nature, music and mathematics to create divine ratios that transport us. Integrated into these larger architectural designs the repeating visual patterns exalting both biblical and supernatural icons …

Engram, Vol. 2 2023, Portland State University. School Of Art + Art History + Design

Engram: A Journal of Art History Student Writing

• Editorial Foreword, Hailey Brink

• Reading Queerness in Hilma af Klint’s Diagrammatic Abstractions, Ana Bane

• Opus Anglicanum and May Morris: An Art Historical Study in Meaning Through Time, Rose Caughie

• The Development of El Greco’s Technique Through Mary Magdalen, Natalie Dunlap

• The Great Gold Belt Buckle of Sutton Hoo: A Look at Scandinavian Influence on Anglo-Saxon Style, Elizabeth Hines

• The Late Avar Treasure of Nagyszentmiklos, Ashley Hood

• Demystifying the Authorship of Artemisia Gentileschi’s 1622 Susanna and the Elders Aaron, Lindsay Wilson

• Research-Based Fiction: Redemption in Ruins, John Hooley

Art And Power: How The D'Este Family Ruled Renaissance Ferrara, Luke Ziegler

Tenor of Our Times

During the Renaissance, the d'Este family ruled the Northern Italian city of Ferrara. To make up for their modest land holdings, the d'Este chose to exert influence and control over Italian politics through artistic patronage. The court of Ferrara became known for its beauty, intelligence, and sophistication. All the dukes of Ferrara contributed to the city's cultural significance, and elevated Ferrara as one of the dominant cities on the Italian peninsula.

Navigating Femininity: Queen Elizabeth I And The Armada Portrait, Julia Maurer

Capstone Showcase

By analyzing the iconographic program of the Armada Portrait, this essay demonstrates the various visual strategies that Queen Elizabeth I employed in order to navigate certain gendered, cultural barriers present in Early Modern England. I argue throughout this essay that Elizabeth was meticulous in her delicate dance of bolstering her individual authority, while not radically undermining the patriarchal dispensation in which she lived and ruled. In particular, I demonstrate that Queen Elizabeth I effectively utilized the visual arts to control the public perception of her reign in ways unique to female regnants, as she both confirmed and denied her femininity. …