Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Medieval Painting'

The Virgin of Mercy is a Marian devotional image type recognizable by its portrayal of Mary protecting the faithful with her cloak. This thesis situates the iconography of painted panels within their historical and cultural context in Spain from the late medieval period to the Age of Exploration. I explain the image's origins and introduce its various versions, focusing on three major frequently commissioned subtypes: the Sponsorship of the Virgin, plague commissions, and the Mercedarian's Virgin of Mercy. I present a case study of one famous version of the type, the Virgin of the Navigators, and focus on the Spaniards and Amerindians beneath the cloak, situating them in relation to the historic debate that called into question the very humanity of the peoples of the Americas. The thesis explores the painting's possible statement the patrons may have been making through the artistic treatment of both groups.

The present study explores the production, illumination and reception of Beatus of Liébana's Commentarium in Apocalypsin - one of the most celebrated works of early medieval Iberia - within the wider panorama of illustrated Apocalypses from the early and high Middle Ages. It examines in detail the sub-group of Beatus manuscripts known as family IIa, comprising the Morgan, Valladolid, Urgell, Facundus and Silos examples, which, collectively, constitute the most cohesive and iconographically rich group in the whole Beatus corpus. This thesis addresses the complex questions of how the Beatus illuminations were conceptualised both by their artists and users and, ultimately, what the role of the Beatus as an illustrated text was. Through a systematic analysis of the mechanisms through which the textual was translated into the visual - with particular attention placed on scribal and artistic responses to colour and number in Revelation - this investigation aims to demonstrate that the Beatus visual imagery was not simply a literal illustration of the text it accompanies, but that it performs a role akin to the written medium, inviting and sustaining scriptural exegesis and supporting meditation on (and preparation for) the 'last things'. In addition, it examines scribal and artistic working methods and agency, arguing that a degree of freedom in relation to the sacred texts was permissible, and that fidelity to Scripture depended on the individuals and on their proficiency. In considering the results of this investigation in a broader context, and by comparing them to the evidence provided by the Carolingian and Ottonian Apocalypses, this thesis also determines that the Beatus IIa present the most comprehensive and detailed corpus of Apocalypse images of the early Middle Ages, and that the Beatus manuscripts may have fulfilled various roles over the five centuries of their transmission.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009.
Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 7, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 378-402).

Painters of Christian subjects in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance developed a complex system of geometry which they used to order the various elements in the image. They did this because they were convinced that the aesthetic dimension of their work resided in the structure of the work. More specifically, the artists of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance believed that the particular aesthetic experience which geometric compositional structure provides corresponded to Christian mystical experience. Thus a work of art that combined geometric structure, naturalistic style, and Christian imagery could provide an experience analogous to that of Christian revelation. This paper traces the development of this idea from its origin in the Old Testament tradition, its formalization in Greek thought and its full flowering in early Christian painting.

Este trabalho consiste numa pesquisa pictórica a partir de uma experiência de contemplação de mosaicos geométricos islâmicos medievais. A pesquisa busca fazer um percurso desde o estudo pictórico da urdidura dos mosaicos, mostrando a natureza de seu ritmo e seu movimento até a elaboração e apresentação de um corpo de trabalhos em desenho e pintura que se apropriam deste movimento \"encapsulado\" nos mosaicos, revelando-os.
This work consists in a pictorical research based on the contemplation of Islamic Medieval Geometric Mosaics. The research comprehends the trajectory from the study of Mosaics\' warp, in which are shown their rithm and movement, towards the preparation and presentation of a corpus of works in design and painting that reveals the countless possibilities of moves \"encapsulated\" in the Mosaics.

Aquesta tesi pretén, mitjançant l’estudi de la pintura mural dels segles IX i X a Catalunya, arribar a comprendre de quina manera aquest territori pertanyent a l’Imperi romà va entrar en l’edat mitjana. Per tal d’assolir aquest objectiu, realitzem una anàlisi exhaustiva dels conjunts conservats de pintura mural entre els segles IX i X, és a dir: les restes desconstextualitzades que es conserven al Museu d’Història de Barcelona; les decoracions in situ de Sant Miquel i Santa Maria de Terrassa (Vallès occidental); els frescos anomenats prerromànics de Sant Quirze de Pedret (Museu Diocesà de Solsona, Solsonès); i els frescos desapareguts de Sant Cristòfol de Campdevànol (Ripollès). Els estudis monogràfics se centren, fonamentalment, en la iconografia, sense però deixar de banda les qüestions estilístiques. En darrer terme volem identificar amb la major precisió possible en quin moment van ser executats aquests conjunts, i si es tracta d’obres locals o fruit de la connexió del territori de Catalunya amb centres exteriors. De les anàlisis dutes a terme se’n deriva la constatació, forta i directa, però puntual, d’una influència carolíngia a finals del segle IX en el bisbat de Barcelona –pintures de Barcelona i Terrassa–, així com una influència no menys important però més dilatada en el temps de la cultura carolíngia en el gran centre monàstic de Ripoll que arribarà des del segle IX fins l’XI, que confirmaria algunes de les hipòtesis proposades per a comprendre la producció de manuscrits il·lustrats de l’esmentat monestir. Fruit indirecte i testimoni d’aquesta connexió son les pintures de Campdevànol. Al costat d’aquests lligams de Catalunya amb el món carolingi, el segle X –pintures de Pedret– també mostra l’assimilació local d’alguns elements forans amb elements autòctons.
La presente tesis pretende, a través del estudio de la pintura mural de los siglos IX y X en Catalunya, llegar a la comprensión del proceso por el cual este territorio que había pertenecido al Imperio Romano entra en la Edad Media. Para alcanzar este objetivo, se realiza un análisis exhaustivo de los conjuntos conservados de pintura mural entre los siglos IX y X, esto es: los restos descontextualizados que se conservan en el Museu d'Historia de Barcelona; las decoraciones in situ de San Miguel y de Santa María de Tarrasa (Vallès occidental); los frescos llamados prerrománicos de San Quirico de Pedret (Museu Diocesà de Solsona, Solsonès); y los frescos desaparecidos de San Cristóbal de Campdevànol (Ripollès). Los estudios monográficos se centran, fundamentalmente, en la iconografía, sin olvidar las cuestiones estilísticas. La finalidad última es situar con la mayor precisión el momento de su ejecución y si se trata de obras locales o fruto de la conexión del territorio de Cataluña con centros exteriores. Del análisis realizado deriva la constatación de una fuerte y directa, pero puntual, influencia carolingia a finales del siglo IX en el obispado de Barcelona –pinturas de Barcelona y Terrassa–, y una influencia no menos importante pero más dilatada en el tiempo de la cultura carolingia en el gran centro monástico de Ripoll que se prolongará desde el siglo IX hasta el siglo XI, confirmado, así, algunas de las hipótesis mantenidas para la comprensión de la producción de manuscritos ilustrados del citado monasterio. Fruto indirecto y testimonio de esta conexión son las pinturas de Campdevànol. Al lado de esta vinculación de Cataluña con el mundo carolingio, el siglo X –pinturas de Pedret– también nos ofrece la asimilación local de algunos elementos foráneos con elementos autóctonos

A group of oil paintings completed in partial requirement of my MFA degree is discussed. The paintings are on wood panels and are the result of a combination of old master techniques of under-painting and glazing and more contemporary approaches to the painting process. Each painting represents a particular concept or event from Mormon theology; whereas, the pictorial structure is inspired by Medieval manuscript painting. Thus, this body of work is a synthesis between two worldviews existing centuries apart, yet sharing certain core values and beliefs.

Dans les ouvrages contemporains traitant des arts visuels dans la tradition artistique 'chrétienne' ou 'occidentale' les analyses des œuvres d'art sont souvent effectuées à l'appui d'une approche interdisciplinaire intégrant les méthodes de recherche et les questionnements des sciences sociales ainsi que d'autres disciplines, comme la littérature. Sur se modèle, je tente d’élaborer une méthode de recherche complexe pour l’appliquer dans l’étude de l’iconographie arabe médiévale. Les sources principales de mon travail sont les manuscrits iconographiés de deux 'bestsellers' de la littérature arabe médiévale : les Maqâmât d'al-Harîrî et la traduction arabe de Kalîla wa Dimna de Bîdpây, copiés et peints, pour les premiers au XIIIe siècle, et, pour les seconds, au XIVe siècle, respectivement en Irak, en Syrie et en Egypte. Pour étudier les manuscrits, je propose une approche dont le leitmotiv est l'observation de la relation entre les textes et les images en les considérant comme un ensemble et comme éléments qui constituent des œuvres d'art complexes. Les manuscrits médiévaux contenant des images deviennent ainsi, en tant qu'objets matériels mais aussi comme des produits intellectuels et artistiques, des sources primaires de l’histoire intellectuelle arabe médiévale
In contemporary studies dealing with visual art within the « Western » or « Christian » world, the artworks’ analysis are often proposed on the basis of an interdisciplinary approach integrating methods of different scientific fields such as social sciences, and literature. Following this model, I try to develop a complex method in order to study medieval Arabic iconography. My work’s principal sources are the illustrated manuscripts of the two « bestsellers » of medieval Arabic literature: al-Harîrî’s Maqâmât and the Arabic translation of Bîdpây’s tales, the Kalîla wa Dimna, copied and painted during the second half of the 13th and the first half of the 14th centuries in Irak, Syria and Egypt. In the analysis of the manuscripts, I concentrate on the relationship between text and images while I consider them as elements of a complex artwork, as a whole. While doing so, medieval manuscripts containing images become primary sources of Arabic intellectual history as material objects but also as intellectual products

This submission represents a journey of learning about learning within accounting education, and, in particular, the role of learning technologies and students’ skills in the process of learning. The work presented was published over the past decade and a half and addresses issues concerned with accounting education both past and present, and includes research on the author of the first printed text on double entry bookkeeping, Fra’ Luca Pacioli. The overriding research interest at the core of this submission and which has guided the various and varied phases and themes within in it is a concern to learn from how learning technologies are and have been an integral part of the educational environment, and to gain insight into how learning technologies might best be utilised in the field of accounting education. The work is presented in two themes with an additional two publications related to methodological approach. The first theme is related to students’ skills and technology and the second theme includes historical research into early accounting education. The published work in these themes is predominantly represented by research published in leading refereed journals in the fields of accounting education and accounting history. The additional two publications are included as they relate to and illustrate the methodological approaches that underlie the overall approach to the research that is presented and developed in the two themes: an approach that privileges, as far as practical, subjects’ contextual understandings of their worlds. Given the diversity of the work included in this submission there is no single research question and there are a diverse range of contributions. The work included contributes to our understanding of the introduction and utilisation of learning technologies in the teaching of accounting, both printed books in the 15th century and Information Technology (IT) in the late 20th/early 21st centuries, and the skills required to facilitate learning within the discipline of accounting. The practical value and importance of the research is supported by, inter alia, reference to the author’s applied work (not part of the submission) that illustrates how the published work contributes to good practice in skills development and the introduction and integration of learning technologies in the accounting curriculum. The papers on IT skills adds to our understanding of the IT skills that students bring with them to university, and raises awareness of the need to challenge the taken for granted assumptions about the abilities of new generations of students. The work on generic skills, whilst showing the importance of skills development also highlights the complexities in this area particularly in relation to issues concerned with confidence in making choices, in the subject matter, via modelling choices, and in time management: not knowing what to do, what to study. The paper on matrix accounting in a Russian university illustrates the potential of an approach to accounting education that is facilitated by the use of IT based learning. The work on Pacioli contributes significantly to our knowledge and understanding of Pacioli as a pioneer in the field of accounting education, and the role of his writing within Summa in the education, development and spread of double entry bookkeeping and accounting, in particular by relating the works to literature in fields such as renaissance art, educational systems and social development. In contrast, the sole authored work on Pacioli concentrates on an element of the minutiae of the bookkeeping process, the accounting for goods inventory, traces the longevity of this method of recording transactions, and shows how this had potential to provide important decision information to merchants, who were the prime market for Pacioli’s writing at the time. The two themes addressed in this submission include works that have individually made unique and significant contributions to the fields of accounting education and accounting history, and the two publications included to illustrate the methodological approach have made a contribution methodologically and to the finance literature. Taken together the works presented also provide a significant and original contribution to the knowledge and understanding of the role of learning technologies in accounting education and, by investigating new learning technologies in the different periods of time, provide a platform for further research to help us to appreciate the importance of technologies in accounting, and in accounting education.

Artist Statement I have always found comfort and warmth in my family. When I am not with them, I find myself clinging to the objects they leave behind as a substitute in their absence. As I began to re-create these objects through paintings and ceramics, I realized that I was creating symbolic portraits of my family. These portraits are tangible family moments preserved in pigment and clay. In recent years, my siblings were deployed to war and I began to represent them as various instruments. These instruments, both musical and tools of war, chronicle who they were and who they are now. Where I once presented guitars and violins, now I include rifles and bombs. In my painting process, I use subtle lighting techniques to reveal objects hidden in the shadows. What little light is present reveals a trigger on a rifle or a string on a violin. I want the viewer to consider firing a shot or striking a chord. My ceramic sculptures also take on both attributes of weaponry and music. I sculpt in porcelain and all the pieces are given the resonating chamber (f-holes) of a violin. Although the pieces resemble bombs and grenades, the hollow white porcelain contrasts the destructive purpose of a weapon to beautiful forms that may be capable of producing a tune. These pieces mirror how I see my siblings, as once beautiful souls that are now used as instruments of war.

This thesis examines the novels of George Sand (1804-1876) and analyses representative examples from her entire œuvre. Its overall aim is to re-evaluate Sand’s standing as a writer of intellectual interest and importance by demonstrating that she is engaging with a cultural and intellectual phenomenon of particular relevance to the nineteenth century: the link between different ways of seeing and knowledge or understanding, which I term ‘insight’. The visual dimension of Sand’s novels has so far been overlooked or reduced to a rose-tinted view of the world, and my study is the first to examine vision in her work. I argue that Sand demonstrates a continuous commitment to ways of engaging with the world in visual terms, incorporating conceptual seeing, prophetic vision, as well as physical eyesight. Contesting the prevailing critical view of Sand’s œuvre as one which declines into blandness and irrelevance after the 1850s, this thesis uncovers a model of expansion in her writing, as she moves from her focus on the personal in her early novels, privileging internal vision, to wider social concerns in her middle period in which she aims to reconfigure reality, to her final period in which she advocates the physical observation of the natural world. Rejecting the perception of Sand as a writer of sentiment at the expense of thought, this study argues that her writing constitutes a continuous quest for understanding, both of the physical world and the more abstract, eternal ‘vérité’. I show that Sand transcends binary divisions between science and art, the detail and the whole, the material and the abstract, and that she ultimately promotes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the world. This also enables me to reassess Sand’s poetics by arguing that her rejection of the mimetic model is founded on her conception of the world as multiple and constantly evolving.

This dissertation examines a series of nine paintings depicting the battles of Alexander Farnese in Flanders created by the Cuzco School of Painters in eighteenth-century Peru. This research asks why and how paintings depicting sixteenth-century European battles were meaningful in the eighteenth century. Due to an absence of archival documentation on the authorship, production and patronage of the series, the research method is contextual. Starting with a formal and iconographic analysis of the paintings centered on a comparison between the paintings and the engravings upon which they are based, differences in the use of space and the conspicuousness of individual elements representing opposing forces are studied. These issues are then regarded contextually by way of an examination of the visual characteristics of the Cuzco School, the history behind the creation of the original engravings and the political and social circumstances extant at the time of the creation of the paintings. Building on previous scholarship, this research shows that attribution to the Cuzco School of painters is likely correct given the formal qualities of the paintings. It is possible that the stylistic characteristics of the Cuzco School, which became very popular, served as a marker of place within the Empire in colonial America. One of the main contributions of the dissertation is the identification of a seventeenth-century biography of Alexander Farnese, De Bello Bélgico as the book in which the engravings that served as the sources for the paintings were published. These engravings served as the basis for all of the depictions of Alexander in colonial Latin America. Finally, the paintings were created during the reign of the first Bourbon king of Spain and served to foster a sense of continuity at a time of transition. The series would have been meaningful in eighteenth- century Chile due to its militarization, which continued throughout the colonial period. The use of space and the clarity with which opposing forces are depicted in the paintings left no moral, military or political ambiguities regarding the mission of the greater Spanish Empire.

The study focuses the evil within human beings and evil actions against other humans and the human kind. The evil is defined as evil actions such as murder and actions in war. The questions asked is whether the evil has a face and if it is possible in that case to paint that kind of face. The medieval mural paintings in old churches include Cain murdering his brother Abel based on the Bible. The study also includes reliefs, sculptures in stone describing Cains´s murder of Abel and sculptures with the Massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem according to the Bible. These pieces of medieval art are compared with the paintings of evil faces by some modern artists. The method used in the analysis is Panofsky´s iconological method. The result shows that the medieval art is formally more strictly structurer and that the modern artists have a more personal style. In addition to this fact is the different purpose of the different kinds of art. The medieval mural paintings are storytelling from the Bible and modern art is based on influences from other artists in art history and the artists´own ideas and thoughts in a more persoanl way of painting. The meaning in medieval art is more clear and obvious than that in the modern art. The conclusion reached at is that evil exists but that one cannont talk about a special face of the evil.

En la Tesis titulada “Las vidrieras góticas mediterráneas: composición química, técnica, estilo. El caso concreto de Barcelona y Siena en el siglo XIV” se pretende hacer un estudio comparado entre los conjuntos vítreos del área mediterránea, ejecutados desde finales del siglo XIII hasta mediados del siglo XIV, con especial atención al Monasterio de Pedralbes de Barcelona y a la Catedral de Siena (Italia). Asimismo por lo que se refiere al área catalana se analizan de manera crítica la Catedral de Girona, la Catedral de Tarragona y la Iglesia de Santa María del Mar de Barcelona; en Italia se compara la gran obra pictórica de Duccio di Buoninsegna con el antiguo conjunto vítreo de la Iglesia de San Giacomo Maggiore de Bolonia. Para esa finalidad se ha aplicado una innovadora metodología multidisciplinar donde el estudio histórico-artístico de las vidrieras, y documental, se ha complementado e interpretado gracias a los datos proporcionados por los análisis químico-analíticos de los materiales (vidrio, plomo y pintura).
In the text “Las vidrieras góticas mediterráneas: composición química, técnica, estilo. El caso concreto de Barcelona y Siena en el siglo XIV” is made a comparative study between Mediterranean stained glass windows, executed from XIII to XIV century, with special attention to Pedralbes Monastery (Barcelona) and the Cathedral of Siena (Italy). Regarding the Catalan area it critically analyzes the Church of Santa Maria del Mar in Barcelona and Cathedrals of Girona and Tarragona. In Italy is it compared the great paintings of Duccio di Buoninsegna with the stained glass windows of the Church of San Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna. For this purpose we have applied an innovative multidisciplinary approach where the history of art studies of stained glass, and the documentation, has been supplemented and interpreted by the analytical chemical analysis of materials (glass, lead, painting).

Le Liber diversarum artium, seconde copie d'un traité de technologie artistique vraisemblablement écrit dans les années 1350, est conservé à la Bibliothèque inter-universitaire de Médecine de Montpellier, dans un manuscrit du XVe siècle, le Ms H277 (vers 1470). Ce texte, par sa structure novatrice, les sources connues antérieures aux années 1300 qui l'alimentent, et leur diffusion, nous a autorisé à le mettre en regard d'œuvres peintes sur bois et sur mur des XIIe et XIIIe siècles conservées en Catalogne, comme nous aurions pu le faire avec n'importe quel autre corpus cohérent. Par le territoire « historique » qu'elle recouvre au Moyen Âge, par le nombre d'œuvres conservées et par leur grande variété esthétique et technique, la Catalogne répondait à cette cohérence. Les peintures retenues ont été envisagées du point de vue leur matérialité. La méthodologie développée pour l'aborder s'est articulée dans une dialectique constante entre le savoir écrit, théorique, du Liber ou d'autres traités, et le savoir pratique mis en œuvre par les peintres en Catalogne aux âges romans. L'observation macroscopique des œuvres, ainsi que la collecte de données physico-chimiques concernant certaines d'entre elles, ou encore notre propre expérience, nous a donné une matière propice à la compréhension du métier de peintre. De cette confrontation est née une lecture singulière, mettant au cœur de notre réflexion le peintre dans l'apprentissage et l'exercice de son métier
The Liber diversarum artium, second copy of a treatise on artistic technology probably written in the 1350s, is held at the Inter-university Library of Medicine of Montpellier, in a fifteenth century manuscript, Ms H277 (1470). The innovative structure of this text, the pre-1300s sources it draws on, and their dissemination, enabled us to compare it with works painted on wood and walls in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries preserved in Catalonia, as with any other coherent corpus. By virtue of the "historical" territory it covers in the Middle Ages, the number of works conserved and their wide aesthetic and technical variety, Catalonia provided this coherence. The selected paintings were considered from the perspective of materiality. The methodology developed for the task was structured as a constant dialectic between written and theoretical knowledge contained in the Liber or other treatises, and the practical knowledge applied by painters in Catalonia in the Romanesque period. Macroscopic observation of the works, the collection of physicochemical data concerning some of them, and our own experience, provided us with material that was conducive to understanding the painter's craft. This comparison produced a singular reading, in which thinking is focused on the painter in the learning and the exercise of his craft

La presente dissertazione dottorale si occupa di indagare i rapporti esistenti fra Venezia e l'Oriente nella pittura veneziana rinascimentale. Nel primo capitolo, Venezia e l’Oriente vengono analizzati nel contesto dei legami storici fra essi esistenti, poiché il problema del “proprio-altro da sé” è riflesso nella realtà della vita veneziana del Medioevo e del Rinascimento. Vengono analizzate in modo più ampio e dettagliato le tappe e le modalità con cui i veneziani (non soltanto soldati, mercanti, viaggiatori, ma anche colti intellettuali e artisti) entravano in contatto con le manifestazioni concrete della cultura orientale. Grande rilievo è dedicato alle fasi di penetrazione dell’influenza orientale nella struttura architettonica della città, che per tale motivo è stata associata al concetto di Oriente. Questo, a sua volta, pone il problema di come si debbano intendere le raffigurazioni, per esempio del simbolo di Venezia – la cattedrale di San Marco – nei cicli dei pittori veneziani del Rinascimento. Lo studio diretto delle forme concrete permette di scoprire la specificità dell’atteggiamento verso l’Oriente, tipico della mentalità artistica veneziana. Grande attenzione è riservata all’interpretazione statale delle varie forme dell’Oriente in diversi periodi come base dei programmi pittorici. Il secondo capitolo contiene l’analisi dei motivi architettonici nella rappresentazione dei loci biblici nelle tele dei pittori rinascimentali veneziani. È qui offerta una breve panoramica e un’analisi tipologica e si spiega il significato dei motivi architettonici nella pittura veneziana del Rinascimento. Viene preso in esame l’insieme di rappresentazioni idealizzate e talvolta fantastiche dei pittori veneziani del Rinascimento sia riguardo all’architettura degli antichi sia in generale alle forme architettoniche sacre, comprese ovviamente quelle esistenti nell’area orientale. Seguendo i metodi iconografici e iconologici, la tesi tenta di ricostruire il pensiero artistico dei pittori veneziani del tempo (Cima da Conegliano, Bellini, Mantegna, Carpaccio, Crivelli, Previtali, Bastiani, Moretto, Lotto, Tiziano, Bassano, Veronese, Tintoretto), i motivi e i reali scopi della creazione per loro di programmi da parte dei committenti. Nel terzo capitolo per la prima volta si tenta di dare una rassegna completa e di proporre un’analisi comparativa della rappresentazione dell’architettura di Gerusalemme nelle tele del Quattrocento e del Cinquecento. Domina in questo contesto la letteratura che prende in considerazione il legame fra Venezia e Roma oppure Venezia e Costantinopoli. Sull’esempio della rappresentazione dell’architettura di Gerusalemme nelle tele di Mantegna, Carpaccio, Bellini, Cima, Tiziano, Tintoretto e molti altri, si determina la graduale penetrazione di motivi antichizzanti, che rappresentano il trionfo delle idee del Rinascimento. L’architettura nelle tele dei pittori veneziani del Rinascimento dedicate ai cicli sulle vite dei santi è l’oggetto del quarto capitolo, dove vengono prese in analisi le fonti visive e scritte e i programmi di rappresentazione. Vengono inoltre analizzati i fondamenti storici e pittorico-figurativi dei motivi presenti nelle tele dedicate a San Marco (di Mansueti, Bellini, Tintoretto e altri). Una grande quantità di materiale per l’analisi dell’architettura “orientale” si trova anche nelle composizioni che rappresentano i cicli della vita di san Giorgio e san Trifone (di Carpaccio) e altri. Infine nel capitolo conclusivo viene proposta un’analisi dettagliata della ricezione artistica e storica delle opere «L’accoglienza degli ambasciatori veneziani in una città orientale» (Louvre) e «L’arrivo del futuro doge Alvise II Mocenigo come ambasciatore a Costantinopoli» ” di Antonio Stroma (Museo di Palazzo Moccenigo a San Stae). Vengono inoltre proposti esempi tratti dai bozzetti grafici dei viaggiatori veneziani in Oriente.

La ricerca prende in considerazione il periodo di attività in Lombardia di Giusto de’ Menabuoi, pittore del XIV secolo di origine fiorentina e noto soprattutto per le opere realizzate a Padova, dove lavorò dal 1370 fino alla morte avvenuta prima del 1391. Tra il 1348 e il 1367 circa lavorò anche in Lombardia ma su questo periodo le certezze sono molto poche. Sono state quindi prese in esame le opere date al pittore in questo periodo (affreschi di Viboldone e di Brera, polittico del 1363 e trittico del 1367), cercando di precisare meglio la possibile datazione e di rendere più sicura l’attribuzione. Infine è stata proposta l’attribuzione di un’opera inedita, dipinta da Giusto per una chiesa di Monza. Dalla ricerca si ricava che durante il lungo soggiorno in Lombardia lo stile del pittore cambiò nell’uso di forme e di colori più eleganti e raffinati che influenzarono i pittori lombardi di quegli anni.
My research examines the period of activity in Lombardy of Giusto de' Menabuoi, a painter of the 14 century. He was born in Florence and is mostly known for his paintings executed in Padua where he worked from 1370 until his death just before 1391. Approximately between 1348 and 1367 he worked also in Lombardy but little is known for sure about this period. For the research presented here, some works from this period have been studied: the frescoes of Viboldone and Brera, the polyptych from 1363 and the triptych from 1367), proposing an approach to dating and provide more evidence for the attribution. Finally there is a proposal for attributing an unpublished work by Giusto for a church in Monza. The reseach shows that during his long stay in Lombardy the stile of the painter underwent a number of changes in his use of more elegant and refined colours which influenced other Lombard painters of that period.

La ricerca prende in considerazione il periodo di attività in Lombardia di Giusto de’ Menabuoi, pittore del XIV secolo di origine fiorentina e noto soprattutto per le opere realizzate a Padova, dove lavorò dal 1370 fino alla morte avvenuta prima del 1391. Tra il 1348 e il 1367 circa lavorò anche in Lombardia ma su questo periodo le certezze sono molto poche. Sono state quindi prese in esame le opere date al pittore in questo periodo (affreschi di Viboldone e di Brera, polittico del 1363 e trittico del 1367), cercando di precisare meglio la possibile datazione e di rendere più sicura l’attribuzione. Infine è stata proposta l’attribuzione di un’opera inedita, dipinta da Giusto per una chiesa di Monza. Dalla ricerca si ricava che durante il lungo soggiorno in Lombardia lo stile del pittore cambiò nell’uso di forme e di colori più eleganti e raffinati che influenzarono i pittori lombardi di quegli anni.
My research examines the period of activity in Lombardy of Giusto de' Menabuoi, a painter of the 14 century. He was born in Florence and is mostly known for his paintings executed in Padua where he worked from 1370 until his death just before 1391. Approximately between 1348 and 1367 he worked also in Lombardy but little is known for sure about this period. For the research presented here, some works from this period have been studied: the frescoes of Viboldone and Brera, the polyptych from 1363 and the triptych from 1367), proposing an approach to dating and provide more evidence for the attribution. Finally there is a proposal for attributing an unpublished work by Giusto for a church in Monza. The reseach shows that during his long stay in Lombardy the stile of the painter underwent a number of changes in his use of more elegant and refined colours which influenced other Lombard painters of that period.

El mes de juny de l’any 2000 es va inaugurar l’exposició “Petras Albas. El monestir de Pedralbes i els Montcada (1326-1673)” al Museu-Monestir de Pedralbes. Aquesta exposició, que havia de ser temporal i es va acabar convertint en semi-permanent, estava constituïda en la seva major part per obres del fons de la col•lecció de les monges, amb l’aportació externa d’alguna altra obra per completar-ne el discurs museològic. Els comissaris de l’exposició havien inclòs entre les peces escollides les anomenades “pintures negres”, que són l’objecte principa d’aquesta tesi. Aquestes pintures murals són una de les obres menys vistoses, de les que tenen menys protagonisme, d’entre les que integren la col•lecció del Museu- Monestir de Pedralbes. No semblen, a priori, l’obra més interessant des del punt de vista d’un encàrrec professional per a un conservador-restaurador. però el poc que es coneix de les pintures negres i la seva raresa (es desconeixen altres pintures similars que s’hagin pogut conservar), així com les patologies derivades del seu arrencament i traspàs l’any 1974, aconsellaven aprofundir en el seu estudi, que, mica en mica, va acabar resultant absorbent. Volem posar en relleu amb el treball realitzat el fet que de l’estudi d’un objecte en procés de restauració, aparentment intranscendent i opac, que s’ha mantingut al marge de l’interès dels estudiosos, amb la voluntat de respondre les preguntes menys evidents, és possible arribar a entendre com pensaven i vivien les persones d’una època tan allunyada del nostre temps com és el segle XIV, més enllà d’intentar resoldre els problemes estrictes de conservació que pugui presentar. El treball es va iniciar l’any 2000 amb l’encàrrec de restaurar les pintures negres traspassades per poder-les exhibir en condicions acceptables en l’exposició. El primer contacte amb les pintures va ser una inspecció visual en què es va constatar un problema important de conservació-restauració i es va elaborar una llista de qüestions per respondre que abraçaven un espectre d’àmbits força diversos. La informació que hem anat obtenint de la investigació duta a terme s’ha organitzat en els quatre capítols de la tesi. Al primer capítol s’ha agrupat la informació referent a l’entorn de les pintures: qui les va encarregar i on eren quan es van realitzar. S’ha fet un treball de documentació de la figura de la reina Elisenda i de la seva obra, el monestir de Pedralbes, des de la fundació d’aquest fins la mort de la reina fundadora. Al segon capítol s’han posat en comú dos fonts de documentació fonamentals per conèixer com es va dur a terme l’arrencament i el traspàs de les pintures negres: una filmació en pel•lícula de 16 mm realitzada per documentar el procés i la fitxa del catàleg de l’exposició Barcelona restaura, realitzada l’any 1980. S’ha pogut recórrer també, sortosament, a informació de primera mà d’alguns dels protagonistes de la intervenció: el Sr. Joaquim Pradell i Ventura, restaurador de l’antic Servei de Museus d’Art, i la Sra. M. Assumpta Escudero i Ribot, primera directora del Museu- Monestir de Pedralbes i impulsora de les excavacions que van perpetre identificar part del palau de la reina Elisenda al mateix monestir, tots dos jubilats en l’actualitat. El tercer capítol aprofundeix en el tractament realitzat a les pintures negres en el moment del seu traspàs a un nou suport. En aquest moment, es consuma el canvi d’estat de les pintures, que deixen de ser «pintures murals» per passar a convertir-se de fet en un nou bé cultural moble. S’ha obtingut la informació del procés amb l’ajut de les fonts citades en el segon capítol, però l’estudi de les pintures s’ha complementat amb anàlisis físiques i químiques de la seva estructura i composició. S’ha dut a terme també un estudi de l’adhesiu utilitzat per al traspàs de les pintures al nou suport, el poliacetat de vinil, i del procés d’envelliment o degradació que aquest pateix, atès que és el principal causant de les patologies que presenten actualment les pintures negres El quart capítol vol respondre les preguntes menys pragmàtiques que generen les pintures negres, és a dir aquelles qüestions relacionades amb el seu significat. S’hi recull la informació de l’anàlisi iconogràfica de les pintures i també els referents culturals i religiosos del moment en què es van crear, així com una aproximació a la presència de la mort en la vida quotidiana al segle XIV. Per respondre aquestes qüestions ha calgut recórrer a la bibliografia especialitzada en iconografia i simbologia, i a les mateixes fonts de la literatura religiosa que les ha generades, així com a la bibliografia sobre la història de les mentalitats, el pensament i la vida quotidiana. Finalment, a l’apèndix documental s’aporten documents de referència necessaris per a la consulta durant la lectura de la tesi.

This thesis describes how different 19th century poets and artists depicted elements of the medieval in their artwork as a means to contradict the rapid progress and metropolitan build-up of the Industrial Revolution. The poets discussed are John Keats and Alfred, Lord Tennyson; the painters include William Holman Hunt and John William Waterhouse. Examples of the poems and corresponding Pre-Raphaelite depictions include The Eve of Saint Agnes, La Belle Dame Sans Merci and The Lady of Shalott.

The Wild Beasts springs from my desire to thank my ever-expanding queer chosen family and mentors for their strength. Working through the often violent and othering aspects of the lens and photographic histories I create floral portraits responding to each person’s being and our relationship. Using the 19th century, 8x10 large format view camera—the same used by colonialists and ethnographers to “capture” the divinity of Nature—I erect each as a traditional still life studio setup at the threshold between the natural world and that constructed by humans. These environments speak both to the character of each friend and also to the use of Nature against queer people in most legal systems across the planet. We are deemed unnatural and made criminals through inequitable semantics. The 8x10 negative becomes a portrait, a darkroom contact print that is gifted to each of The Wild Beasts, an intimate artifact of my gratitude. At these borders I lash at the histories of oppression, remaking these lineages and tools into spaces for empathy, tenderness, and love.

The thesis is divided into three sections. The first section discusses the manuscript Marcianus graecus 524, the second looks at the Greek text of the dedicatory epigrams on works of art from the same manuscript, and the third puts these texts in their context. In the first part, the compilation of the manuscript is analysed. I suggest that the manuscript was copied mainly by one individual scribe living in Constantinople at the end of the thirteenth century. He copied the quires individually, but at some point he put all these quires together, added new quires, and compiled an anthology of poetry. The scribe’s connection to the Planudean School and the Petra monastery in Constantinople is discussed. Although their relationship remains inconclusive, the manuscript provides evidence regarding the literary interests of late-thirteenth-century intellectuals. The second part contains thirty-five unpublished dedicatory epigrams on works of art. New readings are offered for the text of previously published epigrams. The third section analyses the dedicatory epigrams on works of art in their context. The first chapter of this section discusses the epigrams as Gebrauchstexte, i.e. texts with a practical use. The difference between epigrams intended to be inscribed and epigrams intended to be performed is highlighted. In the next chapter of this part, La poésie de l’objet, the composition of the dedicatory epigrams is discussed. The conventional character of the epigrams suggests that the poetics express the ritual aspect of the epigram. The last chapter considers the texts from a more pragmatic angle. After a short discussion of the objects on which the epigrams were written, the mechanisms of the twelfth-century art market are presented based on evidence taken mainly from the epigrams. At the end of this part, conclusions are drawn on the understanding of these texts in the twelfth century.

Comment créer une œuvre picturale qui pourrait s'animer? A partir du jeu de cache-cache de la vidéo "Augenblick", l'analyse poïétique de la sculpture OUI-NON de Markus Raetz confrontée aux peintures du Retable de Genève de Konrad Witz révèle une surprenante logique d'animation, Les procès de création de ce retable du 15e siècle déterminent l'actualisation de visions dynamiques dans ce type de construction picturale, également rencontré chez Lorenzo Veneziano, Henri Bellechose, Filippo Lippi ou Sandro Botticelli et dans différents édifices médiévaux. Ainsi, des éléments picturaux souvent considérés comme archaïques participent d'un système poïétique dynamique raisonné proposant des animations significatives au cours d'une vision active autrement dit, d'un déplacement du regard. Le concept plus global de vision à point de vue dynamique étend la réflexion à différents modes de déplacements du point de vue. La vidéo permet une forme d’objectivation des enchainements d'images de ce type de construction picturale vis-à-vis de dispositifs déterminés par ces peintures. Ces tentatives d'objectivation fonctionnent sur un plan didactique mais n'engagent pas un partage sensible en interaction avec l'image. Cette perte de l'interaction dans les films engage une réflexion sur l’indissociabilité du couple faille-fragile qui retrouve une possibilité oubliée d'interaction active avec une image fixe. En dehors de toute dissociation artificielle d'une perception et de son mouvement pour regarder une œuvre, cette interaction engage le questionnement poïétique de l'ouvert par différentes installations et performances
How to create a painting which could animate itself ? Starting from the game of hide and seek in the Augenblick video, a poietic analysis of the OUI-NON sculpture by Markus Raetz, confronted with Konrad Witz's paintings of the Geneva altarpiece, reveals an animation logic. The creation process of 15th century reredos determines the actualization of dynamic visions in this type of pictural construction that is also found in works of Lorenzo Veneziano, Henri Bellechose, Filippo Lippi and Sandro Botticelli as well as in medieval edifices. Thus, some pictorial elements often considered (until the end of the 20th century) as archaic, integrate a reasoned dynamic poietic system offering effective animation during an active vision, that is, the displacement of the viewer during the observation. The broader concept of vision with a dynamic point of view widens the analysis to different modes of displacement of the point of view. Video allows for a form of objectification of the sequences perceived in such pictorial constructions through devices determined by these paintings. These objectification attempts succeed on a didactic level, but fail to engage a sensitive perception though interaction with the image. This loss of interaction in the filmed sequences forces thinking about the inseparability of the "faille - fragile" couple which recovers a long lost possibility tor an active interaction with a still image. Without any artificial dissociation of the perception and the associated movement tor looking at a work, this interaction engages poietic questioning of the open through various installations and performances

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This paper seeks to recognize, understand and systematize the geographic and cartographic knowledge produced in the Middle Ages. But also sought to relate this knowledge with the visual arts, especially the medieval painting. Thus, the guiding element research has been focused on trying to find and display the similarities and congruences in the production process and construction of the knowledge mentioned hours. Notably by studying the production of medieval knowledge, it is observed that geography was aimed at describing places, spaces and unreal and fanciful beings who existed only in the imagination of the Christian and medieval man, and Cartography was used to represent and locate these places and utopian spaces. This is because the design and representation of space by the medieval scholar were far from scientific accuracy of the classical period as well as the artistic and cultural effervescence lived, especially at the dawn of modernity. Clearly, the great technical and conceptual changes occurred in painting from the XIII century seem to decisively influence the development of modern design and representation of space, characterized mainly by the geometrization of form and movement, but also by the technique of creation the perspective is born originally in the sphere of Renaissance painting to then be appropriated by the Geography and Cartography.
Neste trabalho procurou-se conhecer, compreender e sistematizar o conhecimento geográfico e cartográfico produzidos na Idade Média. Mas também se buscou relacionar tais conhecimentos com as artes visuais, especialmente a pintura medieval. Desse modo, o elemento norteador da pesquisa esteve centrado na tentativa de encontrar e apresentar as congruências e similitudes no processo de produção e construção dos conhecimentos hora citados. Notadamente, ao estudar a produção do conhecimento medieval, observa-se que a Geografia esteve voltada a descrever lugares, espaços e seres irreais e fantasiosos que só existiram no imaginário do homem cristão e medieval, e a Cartografia foi utilizada para representar e localizar esses lugares e espaços utópicos. Isso porque a concepção e a representação do espaço pelo erudito medieval estavam distante da acurácia científica do período clássico, assim como da efervescência artística e cultural vivida, sobretudo, na aurora da modernidade. É evidente que as grandes transformações técnicas e conceituais ocorridas no campo da pintura a partir do século XIII parecem influenciar decisivamente o desenvolvimento da moderna concepção e representação do espaço, caracterizada, sobretudo, pela geometrização da forma e do movimento, mas também pela criação da técnica da perspectiva que nasce, originalmente, na esfera da pintura renascentista para, depois, ser apropriada pela Geografia e pela Cartografia.

There are approximately 1300 completely or partially preserved medieval churches in Sweden. Many of these have remains of kalkmåleri (mural paintings at least partially created in lime) from the 12th throughout the 17th century. This dissertation discusses the enactments that formed the revival of this kalkmåleri between 1850 and 1980, with a focus on restoration and conservation. The decorative and monumental paintings that were created at the same time are also discussed. The study is divided into two sections: one concentrates on the mural paintings and the networks that made their (re-)enactment possible, and the second is a case study that examines kalkmåleri in four medieval churches; Vendel and Ed north of Stockholm, and Floda and Vadsbro south of Stockholm. To come close to the paintings, an eclectic methodology with analysis of written and depicted sources, interviews, and studies in situ of the paintings through mapping and analysis of taken samples was designed. The objectives were to investigate the formation of kalkmåleri as phenomena, significant concepts, and conservation practices throughout time and space. Theoretical inspiration was taken from Actor-Network-Theory, critical discourse analysis, and speculative realism. Throughout the study the kalkmåleri is thus seen to have agency. The weave of enactments stemming from different professions and thought collectives that formed the paintings was made visible by following the actors. Some of these enactments were analyzed: i.e. the aesthetic shaping of the room, as religious and iconographic images, historical documents, art, style, technical, or hybrid objects. The latter refers to conservation that did not entirely rely on science, humanist scholarship, craftsmanship, or artistic creativity. Thus conservation is seen as a hybrid activity. Three periods of conservation principles were explored: stylistic restoration, original conservation, and precautionary conservation, which were related to what was perceived as the authentic original. Furthermore some Swedish "traditions" are discussed: that no institute for technical studies of art was formed, the use of "Curman’s principles", restricted retouching from the 1960s onward, and the use of gomma pane for cleaning. Finally appendices are included containing terminology, an index of conservators, and a DVD with mapping, chemical analysis, and photographs.

Forskningsfinansiärer: FoU-medel: Riksantikvarieämbetet, Brandförsäkringsverkets stiftelse för bebyggelsehistorisk forskning, Elna Bengtsssons fond och Tyréns stiftelse.

Ett läsår på Columbia University kunde genomföras med stöd av Fulbright Commission. Erik & Lily Philipsons minnesfond och Axelson Johnsons stiftelse.

Cette thèse a pour objet les images narratives de la Passion du Christ dans les peintures murales tardobyzantines, leur place et leur fonctionnement dans l’espace rituel dont elles constituent le décor. Développé en dessous des images du Dodekaorton, il a une forme et une place très particulières : faisant le tour de la nef et intégrant généralement le sanctuaire dans son parcours, il participe de la construction de l’espace cultuel. Cette approche des images a montré que la forme narrative donnée à ces cycles composant les décors pariétaux, loin d’être fortuite, est porteuse de sens et de discours. Décorant d’abord des fondations byzantines prestigieuses à la fin du XIIIe siècle, le motif ne tarde pas à apparaître dans les églises serbes peintes dans l’entourage du Kralj Milutin, avant de devenir courant dans des monuments plus modestes. Le cycle est envisagé dans sa globalité et non image par image, à l’aide des outils traditionnels de l’iconographie mais aussi de la narratologie, ce qui a permis de mettre en évidence sa structure narrative. Dans une troisième partie, le fonctionnement liturgique du cycle est détaillé, révélant un discours eucharistique et mystagogique qui n’est pas tant superposé au récit en images, qu’il n’est au contraire produit par lui
This doctoral thesis addresses the narrative images of the Passion of Christ in Late Byzantine mural paintings, their place and their ritual function. This cycle, which takes place under the Dodekaorton, has a clear sequence. Going around the nave and generally passing through the sanctuary space, it participated in the construction of the worship space. A study of the images used shows that such the narrative form given to these cycles, far from being accidental, is a carrier of meaning and discourse. Firstly decorating prestigious Byzantine foundations in the late thirteenth century, this kind cycle soon appeared in Serbian churches painted in the Kralj Milutin’s milieu and then became common in more modest monuments. In this study, the cycle is considered as a whole, using the traditional tools of iconography but also narratology, which helped to highlight its narrative structure. At last, the liturgical function of the cycle is explored, revealing a Eucharistic and mystagogic discours produced by the narrative

The thesis, entitled “Pittura e contesto. Guariento”, is devoted to the Paduan painter Guariento di Arpo. Born around 1310, and dead before 1370, the painter is widely known because of the artworks he did for the Carraresi, and in particular the private chapel he painted inside their palace. Since he was an esteemed and much valued painter, his fame soon extended over the city boundaries, and he was involved in other important patrons' commissions. Indeed, the Rossi-Botsch wanted him to paint their funerary chapel inside the Dominican church of Bolzano, and later the Dogi called him in Venice to paint the funerary monument of Giovanni Dolfin, and the huge Coronation of the Virgin in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in Palazzo Ducale. Guariento worked a lot in his native city as well; the Eremitani, in particular, commissioned him two chapels inside their church. Furthermore, Guariento painted several altarpieces, which are now mainly scattered and kept in Museums and private collections all over the world. Despite the fact that many ancient sources underlined the high quality and the innovative character of his paintings, modern scholars tend to underestimate his works. The fact that his most important works are partially or totally destroied, and the ambiguity of his style, has caused an evident misunderstanding of his paintings. Indeed, his models are yet to be identified properly, and the development of his style has been too strictly connected to other artistic schools, as if we were just a passive imitator. Through a new analisys of his paintings, of the sources, and of the historical context in which the painter lived and worked, this research rearranges Guariento's entire artistic development. The thesis consists in four chapters, which are followed by the usual devices, the historical documents and the catalogue of the paintings. The first chapter is devoted to the critical reception: the opinions that ancient and modern scholars gave of Guariento's works are analyzed within the wider historical and cultural context in which they were expressed. The second chapter is focused on the stylistic evolution, which is analyzed starting from the first paintings, reconnected to the context of the giottesque Paduan workshops, to the last ones. Particular attention is also paid to the decorative and material aspects of the paintings, that have been totally ignored by scholars untill now. The third chapter is devoted to patrons; the important frescoes commissioned by the Carraresi, the Rossi-Botsch, the Eremitani and the Dogi are the main subjects of this chapter. These fragmentary paintings are ideally recomposed in their original aspect, relocated in their sites, and analyzed in their inner meaning, that is often connected to the glorification and celebration of their patron. Finally, the last chapter is devoted to panel paintings. Here their functions, typologies and provenances are taken into account.
La tesi, dal titolo “Pittura e contesto. Guariento”, ha per oggetto la figura e l'opera del pittore padovano Guariento di Arpo. Nato attorno al 1310 e morto entro il 1370, l'artista è noto soprattutto per le sue imprese al servizio dei Carraresi, per i quali dipinse la cappella privata di palazzo e, secondo le testimonianze delle fonti, altre sale di rappresentanza all'interno della reggia, distrutte nel corso dei secoli successivi. Pittore stimato e richiesto all'epoca, la sua fama travalicò presto i confini cittadini, e venne infatti ingaggiato da altri committenti prestigiosi dapprima a Bolzano, dove lavorò per la ricca famiglia dei Rossi-Botsch, e poi a Venezia, dove in due diverse occasioni si aggiudicò importanti commissioni dogali. Nella stessa città natale fu attivo in numerose imprese, fra cui le principali, oltre alle carraresi, si individuano nella chiesa degli Eremitani, dove decorò la cappella maggiore e quella dedicata a Sant'Antonio abate. Infine, numerosi dipinti su tavola, per la maggior parte smembrati e conservati in musei e collezioni internazionali, lasciano immaginare una ricca produzione di pale d'altare, in competizione e su modello di quanto si andava contemporaneamente facendo a Venezia, oggi difficilmente stimabile per la scomparsa pressoché totale, e per gli invasivi rimaneggiamenti, dei dipinti stessi. La posizione innovatrice del pittore, pur ben rilevata dalle fonti antiche che lunghi elogi dedicarono alla sua opera, stenta ad essere riconosciuta dalla critica più recente, al punto che Guariento è spesso sottovalutato non solo per la distruzione parziale delle sue opere più importanti, che ne pregiudica l'apprezzamento, ma anche per l'ambivalenza del suo linguaggio, che spesso ha disorientato gli studiosi. Ancora in anni assai recenti, infatti, le radici stilistiche del maestro vengono confuse e male interpretate, così come il successivo evolversi del suo stile, troppo spesso letto in un rapporto di derivazione quasi passiva da modelli di scuole pittoriche diverse, fiorite negli stessi anni. Attraverso la rinnovata analisi dei dipinti, pertanto, delle fonti, e del contesto storico in cui Guariento operò, la ricerca che qui si presenta ricostruisce l'intera vicenda artistica del maestro, restituendo dignità ad un pittore che fu fra i massimi innovatori dell'arte padovana del Trecento. Il lavoro si articola in quattro capitoli, cui fanno seguito i canonici apparati, ovvero il regesto documentario e il catalogo delle opere. Il primo capitolo è dedicato alla fortuna critica; i giudizi espressi sull'opera del pittore vengono contestualizzati nel tessuto culturale in cui furono prodotti, e riletti alla luce delle conoscenze e correnti di pensiero coeve. Segue un capitolo dedicato all'analisi stilistica dell'intera opera del pittore, che viene riveduta a partire dalle fasi iniziali, contestualizzate nell'ambito delle botteghe giottesche padovane di inizio Trecento, fino agli sviluppi gotici più maturi e alla fase estrema, neogiottesca, dell'attività dell'artista; grande attenzione è riservata all'aspetto ornamentale e materico delle opere, finora totalmente trascurato dalla critica. Al fondamentale ambito della committenza è dedicato il terzo capitolo, che focalizza l'attenzione sugli importanti cicli finanziati dai Carraresi, dai Rossi-Botsch, dagli Eremitani e dai Dogi; i dipinti frammentari vengono idealmente ricomposti nella loro veste originaria e al contempo se ne indagano i significati encomiastici e celebrativi. L'ultimo capitolo è invece riservato all'analisi della produzione su tavola, e nello specifico alle funzioni, tipologie e provenienze di tali dipinti, oggi per la maggior parte smembrati. Attraverso lo studio diretto delle porzioni superstiti, lo spoglio delle fonti, e la comparazione con esempi meglio documentati e integri, si propongono nuove ipotesi ricostruttive.

This study examines the iconography of St. Anthony in the 13th and early 14th centuries at the church which houses his tomb (commonly known as ‘il Santo’). The research focuses on the role of the Franciscans in the development of this iconography, as promoters and, in several cases, patrons. No image of St. Anthony of the 13th century has been preserved in the Basilica. For this reason, the research examines the church (the context of figurative works now lost) and the tomb of the saint (the ideal center of the sanctuary). It is suggested that in the 13th century images of St. Anthony existed in the central portal, in some niches in the inner facade, on the high altar, in the windows of the radiating chapels. Some miniatures of the late 13th century seem to confirm the existence of lost paintings. The oldest image of St. Anthony preserved (probably early 14th century), painted in the lunette of the old door of the Sacristy, is discussed in relation of its location. The fresco cycle in the Chapter Hall of the convent is examined in detail, as a turning point of the iconography of St. Anthony. Because of the transformations suffered by the room, new investigations are proposed on the architectural structures of the room; the photoplan of the east wall has been realized with a hypothetical reconstruction of the original dimensions of the frescoed scenes. The iconographic analysis highlights the centrality of the image of St. Anthony and leads to new hypotheses about the meanings of the paintings, commissioned by friars of the Santo. The functions of the Chapter Hall are investigated in detail, as well as some written sources, such as points of reference for the elaboration of new images of St. Anthony. The proposed chronology of the paintings is the first decade of the 14th century, a period of radical changes for the Franciscan community of Padua and for the entire Order of Friars Minor. The frescoes are attributed to Giotto, probably before the cicle in the Arena Chapel. The hypothesis is confirmed by the impact of these paintings on artists of North-East Italy and Rimini. Finally, the remains of frescoes in the space now called 'andito' are investigated in close relation with the adjacent Chapter House: it is very likely that here some images of St. Anthony was present and relevant.
Questo studio prende in esame l'iconografia di sant'Antonio presso la basilica padovana che conserva il suo corpo (nota comunemente come 'il Santo') nel secolo XIII e agli inizi del XIV. La prospettiva di ricerca è incentrata sul ruolo dei francescani nell’elaborazione dell'iconografia antoniana, come promotori e, in diversi casi, come diretti committenti. Non essendosi conservate al Santo immagini duecentesche di sant'Antonio, l'indagine prende in esame l'architettura della basilica (il contesto delle eventuali opere figurative oggi perdute) e la tomba del Santo (centro ideale del santuario). Viene avanzata l'ipotesi che esistessero immagini antoniane duecentesche nel portale centrale della facciata, nelle nicchie della controfacciata, sull'altare maggiore, nelle vetrate delle cappelle radiali. Alcune miniature tardoduecentesche sembrano confermare l'esistenza di opere pittoriche perdute. La più antica immagine antoniana conservatasi, databile tra fine Duecento e inizio Trecento, posta nella lunetta della porta della sacrestia, viene analizzata in rapporto alla sua collocazione. Viene successivamente esaminato in dettaglio il ciclo affrescato nella sala del capitolo del convento antoniano, che si qualifica come un punto di svolta per l'iconografia antoniana. Sono proposte nuove indagini sulle strutture architettoniche della sala, che ha subito molte trasformazioni. È stato realizzato il fotopiano della parete est, su cui si è proiettata un'ipotetica distribuzione originaria delle scene affrescate, oggi in stato frammentario. La rilettura iconografica del ciclo mette in evidenza la centralità delle immagini di sant'Antonio e giunge a nuove ipotesi sui significati dei dipinti, voluti dai frati del convento del Santo con precisi scopi comunicativi. Vengono indagate le funzioni che questo spazio svolgeva all'interno del convento e sono analizzate alcune fonti scritte locali, quali punti di riferimento per interpretare le innovative immagini antoniane presenti nel ciclo pittorico. La cronologia dei dipinti proposta è il primo decennio del Trecento, una fase di radicali e complessi cambiamenti nella comunità francescana di Padova e per l'intero Ordine dei Minori. Gli affreschi vengono attribuiti a Giotto, probabilmente prima del ciclo di pitture nella cappella degli Scrovegni, anche tenendo conto del loro impatto nell'area del nord-est italiano e presso i pittori riminesi. Infine vengono presi in considerazione i resti di affreschi nel vano oggi adibito ad 'andito' della portineria del convento, in stretto rapporto con la contigua sala capitolare, e si ipotizza la possibilità che anche qui l'immagine di sant'Antonio fosse presente e rilevante.

In 1992 the publication of a book on the crosses painted in Sicily highlighted an aspect of artistic production from that island thirteenth century until the mid-sixteenth century had kept the art workshops engaged in the incessant work to meet the needs of liturgical worship and cathedrals, monasteries and parish, can not exist in fact a Christian church without its icons of the cross. From the text, which begins however previous studies mainly by Maria Grazia Paolini, who already in 1959 had identified the peculiarities of the Sicilian production of painted crosses, it is clear that while the rest of Italy this particular genre of painting had already extinct at the end of the fourteenth century, in Sicily it is perpetuated since well over half of the sixteenth century, with a continuous renewal of figurative language from the artists but remain linked to the medieval tradition of the table-shaped cross, adorned with a rich carved frame that only in rare cases has been preserved, where the figures are often forced to strength within the contours tightened. "The originality of the crosses in Sicily since the fifteenth century is even more to be painted on both sides instead of just in the front, as the specimens were Romanesque and Gothic, except for the processional crosses and processional, to other more manageable and small format "(Maurizio Calvesi). In large crosses stational of Sicily, unlike the crosses of small size often carried out in devotional purposes and which provide a wide variety of different images, iconography has also established a pattern of responding to its liturgical function and that, except in rare cases, remains long unchanged. It provides, in the front, the figure of the Crucified at the center, the Virgin and St. John capicroce mourners in the two sides, the Pantokrator or the Arbor vitae with the Pelican's Nest, emblem Christological, top and Mary Magdalene or the cave with the skull of Adam down; in verse we find the figure of the Risen One in the center and the emblems of the four evangelists in the heads-cross. However on that occasion were left unresolved many issues especially some of the specimens presented that are still open chapters in the history of medieval and modern in Sicily; just mention for all the extraordinary cross of the Cathedral of Piazza Armerina, name-piece for the still anonymous artist who painted it. Nearly twenty years from that pioneering publication it seemed appropriate then return to the subject to try to clarify the points were still in shadow and enlarge the field of investigation to other aspects of the exposure of the cross inside the church buildings and Sicilian its enjoyment by the clergy and the assembly of the faithful. It was thought then to extend the research to both liturgical previous models, ie from when in Sicily we have cognizance of a systematic use of the cross framed with certainty, through written and iconographic sources, and corresponding certificates of the Norman period and extend it up the mid-sixteenth century, when the rules or customs and interpretations resulting from the Council of Trent will interrupt the millennial ecclesial centrality of the cross within the classroom; is to include other forms of exposure of the cross, focusing in turn on the diversity of the medium, in terms of support and material used but also change it causes in the reception of the message you want to convey. The chronological boundaries are marked by two specific dates: in 1149 is drawn up an inventory of the movable property of the Cathedral Cefalu in which it is clear, and it is one of the first times, the use of Norman processional cross, which was then detached from its rod and placed on the altar, or fixed in its vicinity; 1555 is actually the year marked on the back of the complex painted wooden machine in the middle of the nave of the church mother of Collesano, which represents the apogee for the crosses Sicilian well as a unique case in Italy of maintaining such a structure that underpins all liturgical space. In re-reading of the sources, documents and historiography on the subject, among which we note the recent and substantial publication Manufacere et sculpt in Lignamine, curated by Teresa Pugliatti, Salvatore Rizzo and Paul Russo, dedicated to wood carving Sicilian emerged not few discrepancies in the interpretation of the data available to us, that since 1992, thanks to numerous discoveries documentaries, have increased the ability to have a more complete picture, although several are still holes to be filled with reliable data, but that we tried to give an answer, however, albeit hypothetical. The research was started trying to focus on a few key points that make up the skeleton of which has developed the whole architecture of the arguments:  The painted crosses should be seen in the broader context of Calvari stational, of which they are a very special synthetic vision accomplished. The documents and iconographic sources suggest in fact that there is a possibility of varied solutions for the display of the cross: the only painted cross, the cross and the mourners painted detected in the round, the cross painted only in the direction and with the crucifix carved in front, the only carved crucifix, the group of Calvary consisting of three statues in the round.  The placement of the cross within the building of the Church. Previous studies have focused only on the vertical, disputing whether originally crosses and crucifixes were hung under the arch of the presbytery, planted on the ground or, more likely, placed above the partition and most frequently named in the documents of the entablature precisely "the trabo" or "the trabe" of the crucifix. Misunderstandings in this regard arise mainly from a misinterpretation on the arrangement of the cross in the Cathedral of Cefalu. In the temple the Ruggero is in fact still present a monumental cross opistografa, the largest of Sicily with over five feet tall, attributed by Genevieve Bresc Bautier before, and Maria Andaloro, then, to William of Pesaro, that he had to perform before 1468, the year in which he was commissioned another cross painted for the cathedral of Monreale that the painter had to make in accordance with that already accomplished for Cefalu. The bishop Preconio probably transfers the monumental cross painted under the keystone of the great arch that separates the nave from the transept of the assembly reserved for the clergy, the fact here is hanging a chronicler of 1592, Bartholomew Carandino, and said this as he created many misunderstandings about the placement of the cross originally cefaludese and other in Sicily; In fact, the crosses Sicilian are also distinguished by not having a base of support of its own, however, are still recognizable in many pin that allowed to fix the partition or to the beam and the rings for the attachment of tie rods which allowed to stabilize it. But it will be only with the internal changes made in the areas celebratory atmosphere of Trent, during which he emphasized the centrality of eucharistic compared to the cross, it is moved or the apex of the arch of the presbytery, not to "annoy" the vision of the liturgical rites, or is placed on a side altar, equated to other images that multiply on the walls of the churches. The same documents tell us, however, the placement of the cross "in mezo of the ecclesia" accentuating the appearance of more horizontal than vertical. The main function of the cross was in fact to divide the church into two zones, one reserved for the clergy and the celebration of the rites and adapted to accommodate the congregation, reflecting what Venantius Fortunatus, hymn writer of the sixth century, expressed in his Vexilla Regis, the most famous liturgical text dedicated to the cross, that at some point, the turns with these words: "his body made six scales."  The liturgical function of the verse painted with the image of the Risen Christ. It has been hypothesized that the bi-frontal crosses Sicilian serve to expose in Easter time the effigy of the resurrection, turning the table on itself. This ritual is not, however, no trace in the sources and in any case, if true, it appears more devotional custom post-Tridentine that a practice of medieval spirituality. To this is added that for some specimens of the cross, of considerable size and with predispositions logistical which did not allow the mobility of the work, even partial, such an operation is very unlikely.  Problems related to stylistic issues and attributive. Many powers, both painted crosses that of the sculptures, are not universally shared by critics as well as in some cases, among which the most interesting is that of conventionally called Master of the Cross of Piazza Armerina, has debated the cultural formation of the artists and about where they came from foreign or local origin. Part of the research has sought to clarify purely liturgical - worship, primarily with the analysis of the sources of the liturgical and patristic texts founding and prescriptive use of the cross in the Roman liturgy and its presence stational and monumental inside buildings of worship. The Latin sources are given in the original language, while those of Greece or in other ancient language in translation; also some times when you are recognized problems of interpretation, we opted for the translation notes in the current language. You are covered both by the general sources of Latin Patrology both local liturgical sources, such as the so-called Missal Gallicano (late twelfth-early thirteenth century.) Kept in the Historical Diocesan Palermo, the liturgical texts of the Seminary Library of Messina (XII sec.) and the most recent of the Central Library of the Region of Sicily and the Benedictine Abbey of San Martino delle Scale, noting that from the regulatory point of view did not exist in Sicily requirements peculiar than the rest of the Christian West. The order of the chapters should not be seen then only as a sequence of events and the works presented, but this is associated typological and functional diversification of the whole substance of the works remained and digressions diachronic general about the different uses of the cross in time. Great attention was also given to the issues related to the iconography and iconology of the images, because I believe that the read-only form and style returns only partial sense the context of this particular category of liturgical furniture. The reading of the various systems of images and the research of their semantic language did not stop the lectio faciliori simplistic, but we tried to go back to the original sources that underlie each of them, which probably over the course of time were not longer perceived as such, but they are still evidence of a figurative tradition unbroken. A significant part of the research has been devoted to the investigation of documents, putting together and rereading uniquely the large amount of documents from Gioacchino Di Marzo (second half of the nineteenth century) onwards have come to light, not having left out when possible integration with new data from unpublished documents or little known. Chapter I is focused on the use of the cross in Sicily during the Norman-Swabian, when there is no documented presence of monumental crosses but only of those small and precious that were used at the same time in processions and then placed at the altar; has analyzed the origin of the cross placed in the context of the altar and its link with the Eucharistic sacrifice and the development of the function to the so-called cross stational, that which preceded the liturgical rituals and paraliturgical the pope and the bishops who were been authorized; they browse the surviving works produced by the workshops of the Royal Palace in Palermo, none of which is now preserved in Sicily, and then the other types ranging from crosses in metal foils to those in enamel production alms. Chapter II deals with the theme of the monumental cross in the center of the church, it analyzes the origin and spread, and then focuses on the few specimens and two fourteenth century who escaped to the degradation of the time, from the Italian import center to those recognized as indigenous production. Also presented is the only specimen of thirteenth-century wooden crucifix to be come down to us, that of the monastery of Rifesi, today in the mother church of Burgio (Agrigento). In Chapter III develops the theme of the Gothic crucifix in relief, which spread during the fourteenth century and is regarded as the birth of devotional crucifix before which pour intentions and hopes of the faithful repented of his sins. Specimens most famous in Sicily, two of the "painful", Palermo and Trapani, and one of the "polite", in Monreale, will be the subject of numerous replicas, that even in the case of the most devoted crucified Palermo will come up in the early twentieth century. Chapter IV deals with the recovery in the fifteenth century the production of painted crosses and characterization of its most distinctive in the original crosses opistografe, presenting the crucifix on the one hand and the Risen other. Here we have tried to give answers, which obviously reflect the views of the writer, on many issues still unresolved about the functions of some of the works or their cultural connotation, trying to argomentarle based on reliable data. Finally, the fifth and final chapter is devoted to the various alternatives to cross painted, ranging from simple solutions, such as the carved crucifix or cross hybrid, with some parts painted and other relief, to more complex ones involving the use of crosses or crucified flanked by images of the two mourners, who have their apex in the great machine of wooden Collesano, 1555. The second part of the text is devoted to the classification of the existing works, starting with the good repertoire of painted crosses and crucifixes published in 1992, integrating them with the works then do not enter, especially in eastern Sicily, and adding the works belonging to the other types analyzed. The results of this investigation were included in a catalog raisonné of any work where there was placement, materials and support measures, provenance, iconography, any markings, date, author. Regarding Section V. of the catalog, namely the one concerning the crucifixes and sculptures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the classification is to be understood as merely illustrative and not exhaustive absolutely, because, in the absence of a preliminary cataloging, too many are works and too vast territory to be able to assume a reconnaissance sweep.
Nel 1992 la pubblicazione di un libro sulle croci dipinte in Sicilia (M. C. Di Natale, Le croci dipinte in Sicilia. L'area Occidentale dal XIV al XVI secolo, Flaccovio editore, Palermo 1992) metteva in evidenza un aspetto della produzione artistica isolana che dal Duecento fino alla metà del Cinquecento aveva tenuto impegnate le botteghe artistiche nell'incessante lavoro di soddisfare le esigenze cultuali e liturgiche di cattedrali, monasteri e parrocchiali, non potendo esistere infatti una chiesa cristiana senza la sua icone della croce (Concilio Niceno II). Dal testo, che prende le mosse comunque dagli studi precedenti soprattutto di Maria Grazia Paolini, che già nel 1959 aveva individuato le peculiarità della produzione siciliana di croci dipinte, si evince chiaramente che mentre nel resto d'Italia questo particolare genere pittorico si era estinto già sul finire del Trecento, in Sicilia esso si perpetua fin ben oltre la metà del XVI secolo, con un continuo rinnovamento del linguaggio figurativo da parte degli artisti ma restando legati alla tradizione medievale della tavola sagomata a croce, ornata da una ricca cornice intagliata che solo in rari casi si è conservata, dove spesso le figure sono costrette a forza entro i contorni serrati. "L'originalità delle croci siciliane a partire dal XV secolo è per altro anche quella di essere dipinte su entrambe le facce invece che soltanto nel recto, come erano gli esemplari romanici e gotici, ad eccezione delle croci astili e processionali, per altro più maneggevoli e di formato ridotto (dalla introduzione di Maurizio Calvesi). Nelle grandi croci stazionali della Sicilia, a differenza delle croci di piccolo formato spesso realizzate a fini devozionali e che prevedono una grande varietà di immagini diverse, l'iconografia si è inoltre consolidata su uno schema rispondente alla sua funzione liturgica e che, tranne in rari casi, rimane a lungo invariato. Esso prevede, nel recto, la figura del Crocifisso al centro, la Vergine e San Giovanni dolenti nei due capicroce ai lati, il Pantokrator ovvero l'Arbor vitae con il nido del Pellicano, emblema cristologico, in alto e la Maddalena ovvero la grotta con il teschio di Adamo in basso; nel verso troviamo invece la figura del Risorto al centro e gli emblemi dei quattro evangelisti nei capi-croce. Tuttavia in quella occasione venivano lasciate irrisolte numerose questioni inerenti soprattutto alcuni degli esemplari presentati che costituiscono ancora capitoli aperti della storia dell'arte medievale e moderna in Sicilia; basta citare per tutti la straordinaria croce della cattedrale di Piazza Armerina, name-piece per l'ancora anonimo maestro che l'ha dipinta. A quasi vent'anni da quella pionieristica pubblicazione è sembrato opportuno allora ritornare sull'argomento per cercare di chiarire i punti rimasti ancora in ombra e allargare il campo di indagine agli altri aspetti inerenti l'esposizione della croce all'interno degli edifici ecclesiastici siciliani e la sua fruizione da parte del clero e dell'assemblea dei fedeli. Si è pensato allora di estendere la ricerca sia ai modelli liturgici precedenti, ossia a partire da quando in Sicilia abbiamo contezza di un uso della croce sistematicamente inquadrabile con certezza, attraverso fonti scritte e iconografiche, e che corrisponde alle attestazioni di epoca normanna e protrarla fino alla metà del XVI secolo, quando le norme, ovvero le consuetudini e le interpretazioni, scaturite dal Concilio di Trento interromperanno la millenaria centralità della croce all'interno dell'aula ecclesiale; sia di includere le altre forme di esposizione della croce, focalizzando l'attenzione di volta in volta sulla diversità del medium, in termini di supporto e di materia utilizzati ma anche del cambiamento che esso provoca nella recezione del messaggio che si vuole trasmettere. I confini cronologici sono segnati da due date precise: nel 1149 viene redatto l'inventario dei beni mobili della Cattedrale Cefalù in cui si evince chiaramente, ed è una delle prime volte, l'uso normanno della croce processionale, che poi veniva staccata dalla sua asta e posta sull'altare, ovvero fissata nei pressi di esso; il 1555 è invece l'anno segnato sul verso dipinto della complessa macchina lignea al centro della navata della chiesa madre di Collesano, che rappresenta l'apogeo per le croci siciliane oltre che un caso unico in Italia di mantenimento di una simile struttura che focalizza tutto lo spazio liturgico. Nella rilettura delle fonti, dei documenti e della storiografia sull'argomento, fra cui si segnala la recente e corposa pubblicazione Manufacere et scolpire in lignamine, curata da Teresa Pugliatti, Salvatore Rizzo e Paolo Russo, dedicata alla scultura in legno siciliana, sono emerse non poche discordanze nell'interpretazione dei dati a nostra disposizione, che dal 1992 ad oggi, grazie a numerosi rinvenimenti documentari, hanno accresciuto la possibilità di avere un quadro più completo, anche se ancora parecchi rimangono i buchi da colmare con dati certi, ma a cui si tentato di dare comunque una risposta, seppure ipotetica. La ricerca si è avviata cercando di mettere a fuoco alcuni punti cardine che costituiscono lo scheletro su cui si è sviluppata tutta l'architettura delle argomentazioni: Le croci dipinte vanno inserite nel più ampio contesto dei Calvari stazionali, di cui esse rappresentano una particolarissima visione sintetica compiuta. I documenti e le fonti iconografiche suggeriscono infatti l'esistenza di una variegata possibilità di soluzioni per l'esposizione della croce: la sola croce dipinta, la croce dipinta e i dolenti rilevati a tutto tondo, la croce dipinta soltanto nel verso e con il Crocifisso scolpito nel recto, il solo Crocifisso scolpito, il gruppo del Calvario composto da tre statue a tutto tondo. ­La collocazione della croce all'interno dell'edificio ecclesiale. Gli studi precedenti si sono soffermati soltanto sull'aspetto verticale, disputando se in origine croci e crocifissi erano appesi sotto l'arco del presbiterio, piantate a terra o, più verosimilmente, poste al di sopra del tramezzo e più frequentemente della trabeazione chiamata nei documenti per l'appunto 'lo trabo' o 'la trabe' del crocifisso. Gli equivoci in questo senso nascono principalmente da una errata interpretazione sulla sistemazione della croce nella Cattedrale normanna di Cefalù. Nel tempio ruggeriano è infatti ancora presente una monumentale croce opistografa, la più grande della Sicilia con i suoi oltre cinque metri di altezza, attribuita da Genevieve Bresc Bautier, prima, e da Maria Andaloro, poi, a Guglielmo da Pesaro, che la dovette eseguire prima del 1468, anno in cui gli viene commissionata un'altra croce dipinta per il duomo di Monreale che il pittore doveva realizzare in conformità a quella già compiuta per Cefalù. Il vescovo Preconio, probabilmente, trasferisce la monumentale croce dipinta sotto la chiave di volta del grande arco che separa la navata dell'assemblea dal transetto riservato al clero, qui infatti la trova appesa un cronista del 1592, Bartolomeo Carandino, e questo come detto ha creato numerosi equivoci circa la collocazione in origine della croce cefaludese e delle altre in Sicilia; infatti le croci siciliane si distinguono anche per non avere una base d'appoggio propria, in molte però sono ancora riconoscibili il perno che permetteva di fissarle al tramezzo o alla trave e gli anelli per l'aggancio dei tiranti che permettevano di stabilizzarla. Ma sarà soltanto con le trasformazioni interne alle aree celebrative operate nel clima tridentino, durante il quale si è accentuata la centralità della custodia eucaristica rispetto alla croce, che essa viene spostata o all'apice dell'arco del presbiterio, per non "infastidire" la visione dei riti liturgici, oppure viene collocata su un altare laterale, equiparata alle altre immagini che si moltiplicano sulle pareti delle chiese. Gli stessi documenti ci dicono però della collocazione della croce 'in mezo di la ecclesia' accentuando di più l'aspetto orizzontale, rispetto a quello verticale. La funzione principale della croce era infatti quella di dividere la chiesa in due zone, una riservata al clero e alla celebrazione dei riti e una atta ad accogliere l'assemblea dei fedeli, rispecchiando così quanto Venanzio Fortunato, innografo del VI secolo, aveva espresso nel suo Vexilla Regis, il più famoso testo liturgico dedicato alla croce, che ad un certo punto, le si rivolge con queste parole: «del corpo suo sei fatta bilancia». La funzione liturgica del verso dipinto con l'immagine del Cristo Risorto. E' stato ipotizzato che la bi-frontalità delle croci siciliane servisse per esporre nel tempo di Pasqua l'effigie della resurrezione, rigirando la tavola su se stessa. Di questo rituale non si trova però nessuna traccia nelle fonti e comunque, se vero, esso appare più un'usanza devozionale post-tridentina che una prassi della spiritualità medievale. A questo si aggiunge che per alcuni esemplari di croce, di notevoli dimensioni e con predisposizioni logistiche che non permettevano la mobilità anche parziale dell'opera, una simile operazione risulta molto improbabile. Problemi legati a questioni stilistiche e attributive. Molte attribuzioni, sia delle croci dipinte che dei gruppi scultorei, non sono condivise unanimemente dalla critica come pure in alcuni casi, fra i quali il più interessante rimane quello del convenzionalmente detto Maestro della croce di Piazza Armerina, si è dibattuto sulla formazione culturale degli artisti e circa la loro provenienza estera o l'origine locale. Una parte della ricerca ha cercato di chiarire gli aspetti prettamente liturgico ' cultuali, innanzitutto con l'analisi delle fonti liturgiche e patristiche dei testi fondativi e prescrittivi sull'uso della croce nella liturgia romana e sulla sua presenza stazionale e monumentale all'interno degli edifici di culto. Le fonti latine sono riportate nella lingua originale, mentre quelle greche o in altra lingua antica in traduzione; inoltre alcune volte, quando si sono rilevati problemi di interpretazione, si è optato per la traduzione in nota in lingua corrente. Si sono prese in esame sia le fonti generali della Patrologia Latina sia le fonti liturgiche locali, quali il cosiddetto Messale Gallicano (fine XII-inizi XIII sec.) conservato nell'Archivio Storico Diocesano di Palermo, i testi liturgici della Biblioteca del Seminario di Messina (XII sec.) e quelli più recenti della Biblioteca Centrale della Regione Sicilia e dell'Abbazia benedettina di San Martino delle Scale, costatando che dal punto di vista normativo non esistevano in Sicilia prescrizioni peculiari rispetto al resto dell'Occidente cristiano. L'ordine dei capitoli non deve essere inteso allora soltanto come successione cronologica dei fatti e delle opere presentate, ma a questa si associano la diversificazione tipologica e funzionale di tutta la consistenza delle opere rimaste e le digressioni diacroniche di carattere generale sui diversi usi della croce nel tempo. Grande spazio è stato dato anche ai temi inerenti all'iconografia e all'iconologia delle immagini, poiché ritengo che la sola lettura formale e stilistica restituisca soltanto in senso parziale la contestualizzazione di questa particolare categoria di arredo liturgico. La lettura dei diversi sistemi di immagini e la ricerca del loro linguaggio semantico non si sono fermati alla semplicistica lectio faciliori, ma si è cercato di risalire alle fonti primigenie che sottendono a ciascuno di essi, le quali probabilmente con l'andare del tempo non furono percepite più come tali, ma rimangono pur sempre testimonianze di una tradizione figurativa ininterrotta. Una parte rilevante della ricerca è stata dedicata all'indagine documentaria, mettendo insieme e rileggendo univocamente la grande mole di documenti che da Gioacchino Di Marzo (seconda metà del XIX secolo) in poi sono venuti alla luce, non avendo tralasciato quando possibile l'integrazione con nuovi dati ricavati da documenti inediti o poco conosciuti. Il capitolo I è incentrato sull'uso della croce in Sicilia in epoca normanno-sveva, quando non è documentata nessuna presenza di croci monumentali ma soltanto di quelle piccole e preziose che venivano impiegate al contempo nelle processioni e quindi collocate presso l'altare; si è analizzata l'origine della croce posta nel contesto dell'altare e il suo legame con il sacrificio eucaristico e lo sviluppo della funzione fino alla cosiddetta croce stazionale, quella cioè che precedeva nei rituali liturgici e paraliturgici il papa e anche i vescovi che erano stati autorizzati; si sono passate in rassegna le superstiti opere prodotte dalle officine del Palazzo Reale di Palermo, delle quali nessuna è oggi conservata in Sicilia, e quindi le altre tipologie che vanno dalle croci in lamine metalliche a quelle a smalto di produzione limosina. Il capitolo II affronta il tema della croce monumentale posta al centro della chiesa, ne analizza l'origine e la diffusione e quindi si sofferma sui pochi esemplari due e trecenteschi che sono scampati al degrado del tempo, da quelle di importazione centro italiana a quelle riconosciute come produzione autoctona. Inoltre è presentato l'unico esemplare di crocifisso ligneo duecentesco a essere giunto fino a noi, quello del monastero di Rifesi, oggi nella chiesa madre di Burgio (Agrigento). Nel capitolo III si sviluppa il tema del crocifisso gotico a rilievo, diffusosi nel corso del XIV secolo e che viene considerato come la nascita del crocifisso devozionale, davanti al quale riversare propositi e speranze del fedele pentito dei propri peccati. Gli esemplari più famosi in Sicilia, due del tipo 'doloroso', a Palermo e a Trapani, e uno del tipo 'cortese', a Monreale, saranno oggetto di numerosissime repliche, che addirittura nel caso del devotissimo crocifisso palermitano arriveranno fino agli inizi del XX secolo. Il Capitolo IV tratta della ripresa nel Quattrocento della produzione di croci dipinte e della sua caratterizzazione distintiva più originale nelle croci opistografe, che presentano il Crocifisso da un lato e il Risorto dall'altro. Qui si è cercato di dare delle risposte, che ovviamente rispecchiano il punto di vista dello scrivente, sui molti aspetti ancora irrisolti circa le attribuzioni di alcune opere o la loro connotazione culturale, cercando di argomentarle sulla base di dati certi. Infine il V e ultimo capitolo è dedicato alle diverse alternative alla croce dipinta, che vanno da soluzioni semplici, come il crocifisso scolpito o la croce ibrida, con alcune parti dipinte e altre a rilievo, a quelle più complesse che prevedono l'uso di croci o crocifissi affiancati dalle immagini dei due dolenti, che hanno il loro apice nella grande macchina lignea di Collesano, datata 1555. La seconda parte del testo è dedicata alla classificazione delle opere esistenti, partendo dal buon repertorio di croci dipinte e crocifissi pubblicato nel 1992, integrandole con le opere allora non inserite, soprattutto della Sicilia Orientale, e aggiungendo le opere appartenenti alle altre tipologie analizzate. I risultati di tale investigazione sono confluiti in un catalogo ragionato dove di ogni opera si è registrato collocazione, materiali e supporto, misure, provenienza, iconografia, eventuali iscrizioni, datazione, autore. Per quanto riguarda la sezione V. del catalogo, ossia quella che riguarda i crocifissi e i gruppi scultorei del XV e XVI secolo, la classificazione si deve intendere come puramente esemplificativa e assolutamente non esaustiva, perchè, in mancanza di una catalogazione preliminare, troppo numerose sono le opere e troppo vasto il territorio per poter ipotizzare una ricognizione a tappeto.

La mise en couleur de l’intérieur d’une église parachève sa construction. Simples badigeons, décors géométriques, rehauts rythmant l’architecture ou programmes iconographiques, cette mise en couleur est appelée à des modifications au fil du temps. La recherche porte sur les petites églises rurales de l’Île-de-France, moins étudiées que celles des villes. Elles sont souvent remarquables par la multiplicité des campagnes de construction encore lisibles dans leurs murs. La mise en couleur des églises suit, en particulier, cette évolution. L’étude du bâti permet d’avoir une chronologie fine qui introduit à l’analyse de la mise en couleur et les modifications de celle-ci au cours des siècles. Une recherche de type historique aussi précise que possible cherche à mettre en évidence les probables commanditaires des œuvres. Les similitudes ou différences dans les techniques, couleurs, types de décor et choix iconographiques analysés dans quelques dizaines d’édifices permettent de saisir les variations sur la longue durée, notamment entre le Moyen Âge "classique" (XIIe et XIIIe siècles), et la fin du Moyen Âge (mi XVe - mi XVIe siècle). Par ailleurs, chaque partie de l’église a une fonction bien précise, et l’on s’attachera à montrer les rapports entre les peintures, leur emplacement dans l’édifice et leurs commanditaires. Au final, il s’agit de mettre en évidence les multiples choix opérés dans des paroisses rurales, et de saisir leurs particularités, pour autant qu’il y en ait, par rapport à celles d’autres régions françaises ou de milieux urbains proches
The colour setting of the church interior completes its building. Distempers, geometrical decorations, highlights putting rythm into the architecture or iconographic programs, this colour setting is doomed to be altered over time. The research focuses on small rural churches of Ile-de-France, less studied than those of towns. They are often remarkable by their multiple building campaigns still to be observed in their walls. Notably, the colour setting of the churches is following this evolution. Study of the building allows getting a finer chronology which introduces to colour setting’s analysis and its evolution throughout centuries. A historical research, as accurate as it can be, tries to highlight the possible sponsors of the painting. The similarities and differences in techniques, colours, kinds of decoration, and iconographic choices among a number of churches allows to capture changes on the long run, particularly between "classic" Middle Ages (XIIth and XIIIth centuries) and the end of Middle Ages (half XVth – halph XVIth century). Moreover, each part of a church has a very specific function to fulfill and we shall attempt to show relationships between paintings, their location in the building and their sponsors. Finally, we shall try to identify the multiple choices made within the rural churches, and to understand their differences, should there be any compared to other regions of France or neighboring towns

Widely found throughout the archaeological and artistic records in capacities ranging from burial contexts to early evidence of artistic expression, red ochre has been studied in archaeological and art conservationist communities for decades. Despite this, literature discussing binders is disparate and often absent from accessible arenas. Red ochre is important historically because its use can be used to help further the understanding of early humans, their predecessors, and their cognitive capabilities. However, there is not much written speculation on the processes involved in binder selection, collection, and processing. Based on the idea of these three activities associated with binders, I propose a schema for what the use of already prepared and obtained items doubling as binders might look like in the archaeological record. Using an experiment in which I used red ochre mixed with various binders to paint standardized shapes on a rock surface, I propose ways in which more experiments could be done in this vein. I suggest ways in which scales of desirability can be created based on different traits painters might have found important in the binder selection process, such as ease of paint reconstitution, texture of the paint, and the appearance of the paint mixture once on the stone. This research is one small step in the direction of expanding and diversifying the literature on binders in prehistoric paintings, and opening new avenues of conversation about the choices and motivations of early painters.

This dissertation reconsiders the early history of ink painting in Kamakura- (1185-1333) and Muromachi-period (1336-1573) Japan, focusing on art in the former administrative capital of Kamakura, the cradle of Chinese-style monastic Zen and the Sinocentric cultural apparatus that accompanied it. I examine the early reception of Chinese painting by the city’s political and ecclesiastical elites and subsequent artistic production by priest-painters active at local Zen monasteries. My study reveals Kamakura as the nucleus of a heretofore disregarded cultural sphere in medieval eastern Japan, one in which Zen priest-painters engaged with nearby collections of Chinese painting to create a local pictorial tradition that would endure, seemingly immune to artistic trends in Kyoto, through the late fifteenth century. I examine the history of ink painting in Kamakura in an introduction, five chapters, a conclusion, and one appendix. Chapter 1 surveys the establishment in Kamakura of Japan’s first two Rinzai Zen monasteries modeled exclusively on Chinese precedents, namely Kenchōji and Engakuji, cultural exchange between Kamakura and the Southern Song Chinese capital Hangzhou, and the early reception of Chinese painting. I use extant diaries and documents to partially reconstruct the vast collections of Chinese works of art held in thirteenth and early fourteenth-century Kamakura and investigate the large-scale deaccessioning of these same objects after the collapse of the Kamakura shogunate in 1333. A full English translation of the only extant inventory of one of these collections, that of the Engakuji subtemple Butsunichian, is included as an appendix. Chapter 2 focuses on the long-term development by local priest-painters of a unique ink painting style derived from works associated with the Chinese master Muqi Fachang (fl. 13th c.), affording the first sustained view of ink painting in Muromachi-period Kamakura. Chapters 3 through 5 focus in varying ways on Kamakura’s enigmatic fifteenth century, characterized by relative isolation from artistic developments in Kyoto and a dearth of extant documentary materials. Chapters 3 and 4 investigate the obscure Kamakura priest-painter Chūan Kinkō (fl. first half 15th c.), known and misconstrued since the Edo period (1603-1868) as “Chūan Shinkō.” Chapter 3 traces the fabrication of “Chūan Shinkō” that occurred piecemeal from the mid-seventeenth century to the present day, while Chapter 4 reimagines the painter as “Chūan Kinkō” through an examination of his relatively large, mostly unstudied corpus of ink paintings. In Chapter 5, I survey a large body of devotional paintings produced by a multi-generational circle of anonymous artists active at Kamakura’s premier Zen monastery, Kenchōji, and posit the existence of a prolific painting studio that served as a primary source of models for painters active at other monasteries in Kamakura and throughout eastern Japan. In the conclusion, I begin to explore the continued impact of this local painting tradition on ink painters active in Kamakura and the surrounding region during and after the recommencement of artistic exchange with the capital in the late fifteenth century.

碩士
國立高雄師範大學
美術學系
96
The 19th century Victorian England is the first modernized mighty country in Europe. However, due to the Industrial Revolution disaffection, as well as to the nostalgia of the passing days, this progressive and rational society is filled with the air “progress into the past”, so-called “medieval revival” phenomenon, in politics, religion, literature, architecture, and art. In art, unified the British rich literature inheritance, it has produced beyond number “Medieval Love Painting” quite different from the European painting tradition. The theme of ”Medieval Love Painting” comes from mostly the medieval poetry, the ballad, the legend, the Renaissance literature and the contemporary romantic poem taking the Middle Ages as the background. On the one hand the content reflects the essence and changing of well-established “courtly love”, on the other hand it elaborates Victorians’ view of love and sex, such as the spirit of chivalry, imprisoned love, femme fatale, adultery, combination of love and death. In art manifestation, we may conclude several kinds of styles interweaving mutually. Besides the reappearance of medieval esthetics, the extremely profound naturalism initiated by Pre-Raphaelites, the inspiration of classical sculpture and Italian Renaissance art, as well as the aestheticism occurred in fin-du-siècle, those make Victorian medieval love painting graceful, sensual, sentimental, and most, exclusively unique.

This dissertation offers a wide-ranging examination of the half-length sacred figure over the door in medieval and early Renaissance Italian art. Drawing on a wealth of visual material that has attracted little attention among scholars, it argues that such images played a vital role in the religious lives of their beholders, transforming doorways into sites of devotional experience both within and beyond the church. Depicted incompletely, the holy body joined with the threshold below it to form a synthetic, composite image, one that invited the imaginative and corporeal participation of the viewer. This project employs various lenses to interpret the meaning and function of works about which scant written documentation comes down to us. In addition to considering scriptural metaphor and exegetical thought regarding the significance of doors, it explores the relationship of overdoor frescoes, mosaics, and reliefs to sacred icon panels, suggesting that the former might be recognized as wall icons, possessive of a heightened devotional appeal. It also uses overdoor images to illuminate broader spiritual and artistic concerns, including the nature of passage to the Christian afterlife, and the interaction between picture and frame, a topic central to Renaissance illusionism. Serving as an introduction to an important yet overlooked aspect of Italian visual culture, this text provides a conceptual framework for understanding a vast corpus of images that were essential to everyday piety, and that inflect our view of familiar art historical narratives.

The obtained results indicate that even though simultaneous with the creation of these paintings in the province of Tuscany, the country of Italy had made great progress in the creation of fabrics, painters have again referred to the iconography of eastern fabrics (both pre-Islamic and Islamic), which the thesis examines how this phenomenon occurs and examines the various ways of this multiplicity by considering Genette’s theory.

This dissertation is the first monographic study of the monk-calligrapher Yishan Yining (1247-1317), who was sent to Japan in 1299 as an imperial envoy by Emperor Chengzong (Temur, 1265-1307. r. 1294-1307), and achieved unprecedented success there. Through careful visual analysis of his extant oeuvre, this study situates Yishan’s calligraphy synchronically in the context of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy at the turn of the 14th century and diachronically in the history of the relationship between calligraphy and Buddhism. This study also examines Yishan’s prolific inscriptional practice, in particular the relationship between text and image, and its connection to the rise of ink monochrome landscape painting genre in 14th century Japan. This study fills a gap in the history of Chinese calligraphy, from which monk-calligraphers and their practices have received little attention. It also contributes to existing Japanese scholarship on bokuseki by relating Zen calligraphy to religious and political currents in Kamakura Japan. Furthermore, this study questions the validity of the “China influences Japan” model in the history of calligraphy and proposes a more fluid and nuanced model of synthesis between the wa and the kan (Japanese and Chinese) in examining cultural practices in East Asian culture.

Duccio’s Maestà, made between 1308 and 1311 for the high altar of Siena Cathedral, is one of the best-known works of medieval painting. Astoundingly complex, with dozens of individual fields and several narrative cycles, it measured around 15 feet or four meters square. It was, and long remained, the largest panel painting ever made. But why did its designers reach so far outside the bounds of normal altarpieces, and why did they stretch the media of panel painting to new heights? Replacing Duccio’s Maestà within its original Trecento context demonstrates that the altarpiece cannot be explained by either earlier Cathedral images or by earlier Marian panel paintings made for monastic churches, whose imagery the Maestà appropriated but drastically expanded. Instead, the creation of Duccio’s Maestà comes into clearer focus when understood in its original setting, the civic Cathedral. Santa Maria della Assunta comprised not just its particular physical space, but a political and economic one. Duccio’s Maestà interacted with the specific, material building, especially the Cathedral’s unique hexagonal crossing and its dense green-black and white stripes; both features may have contributed to a reading of the Maestà’s central Virgin as a symbol for Ecclesia, occupying her own Temple of Solomon. But the Maestà also crucially served as the backdrop to the city’s biggest annual holiday, the Feast of the Assumption. Though generally characterized by scholars as a unifying event, the Feast was in fact a means of social control, regulated by the state, where participation was enforced by law and on point of fine, and whose main event was the legally mandated presentation of candles to the Virgin in the Cathedral. Moreover, Duccio’s high altarpiece was commissioned during a troubled period: threatened by plotting nobles, and having steered the city through a sensitive election for a new bishop, the Government of the Nine was increasingly intent on regulating the Assumption Feast and the Cathedral’s commissioning body, the Opera del Duomo, which was largely funded through the wax donated on the Assumption. Confronted by unique pressures, Duccio and his unknown potential collaborators created unique solutions, contextualizing popular Marian imagery within the Cathedral’s theological and political concerns through the use of elaborate narrative cycles. Faced with the puzzle of fitting an entire image program onto a panel painting, Duccio privileged a coherent spatial setting, drawn largely through carefully-depicted architecture, that allowed him to keep figure size constant and that therefore to create a smooth spatio-temporal reading of the altarpiece; his arragement of the narrative scenes allowed for new meanings and cross-readings; Duccio further used different perspectival constructions to direct the viewer’s reading of the altarpiece. Duccio thus turned painting’s limitation, its lack of time, into a strength, showing new ways in which images could be deployed to interpret narrative; he also spurred a long conversation among artists on the very nature of their medium and what, exactly, it could accomplish: Within 40 years, four altarpieces, occasioned again by architecture, were commissioned for the Cathedral’s patronal altars. Located near to Duccio’s high altarpiece, these altarpieces would reflect their artists’ reception of Duccio’s Maestà. These radical works by Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Bartolommeo Bulgarini include the first narrative altarpiece and probably the first painting to pretend it is a view through a window in Western art. Above all, the patronal altarpieces demonstrate an interest in narrative, played out in the depiction of time and an attendant depiction of commensurate pictorial space.

This thesis examines modernist attitudes towards the past generally and towards the medieval past in particular, by exploring the significance of gothic architecture and stained glass to the constructive pictorial enquiries of Joaquín Torres-García, František Kupka, Robert Delaunay, Otto Freundlich, Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and Josef Albers. Torres-García is taken as a case study given that his painted and written work shows an actual engagement with the medieval that has hitherto gone largely unnoticed. The discussion thus traces Torres-García's complex and changing relationship with the gothic over time, and examines its place in his constructive pictorial practice. Close attention is given to two particular periods in Torres-García's career. Firstly, his transition from Noucentisme to the avant-garde in the mid-1910s in Barcelona, coinciding with his involvement in a stained glass project for a public building. This period is examined under the light of prevalent attitudes towards the medieval in classicist noucentista Barcelona, which are inferred through a comprehensive survey of local modernist magazines. A second period of interest is Torres-García's late-1920s formulation of Constructive Universalism, the distinct primitive-constructive idiom he characterised as "the style of a cathedral," coinciding with a time when he was closely associated with three of the artists also under study here, van Doesburg, Freundlich and Mondrian. The discussion on these, as well as on Kupka, Delaunay and Albers, takes into consideration that, unlike Torres-García, they all developed their practice within a cultural context that celebrated the gothic. Their rapport with the gothic is analysed, when relevant, in the light of Worringer's theories on the subject. Additionally, several of these artists' interest in the pictorial constructive was concomitant with research into the sensorial properties of colour fragmentation and interaction. This area of pictorial enquiry, in which the study of stained glass proved especially useful, is also explored in the relevant cases. The focus on the constructive as a common denominator to the practice of all these artists, and a common motivator of their engagement with the cathedral, implies a largely formal approach to the issue at hand. This, nevertheless, takes into consideration that these artists' rapport with the gothic was mediated by contemporary discourses surrounding the Middle Ages and their legacy. As such, the analysis necessarily considers the ideological factors (political leanings, identitary issues, religious backgrounds) that came into play in each artist's relationship with the medieval. This, ultimately, serves to address the problem of how these forward-looking artists found a legitimate place in their modernist practice for references sourced in the medieval past.
A presente tese explora as atitudes do modernismo em relação com o passado em geral e o passado medieval em particular, por meio de uma análise da relevância da arquitetura e do vitral góticos nas pesquisas pictóricas construtivas de Joaquín Torres-García, František Kupka, Robert Delaunay, Otto Freundlich, Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg e Josef Albers. Torres-García constitui o caso de estudo da tese uma vez que a sua obra pictórica e teórica evidencia um diálogo com o medieval que até a data passou largamente desapercebido. O estudo traça portanto a complexa e variável relação que Torres-García estabelece com o gótico ao longo do tempo, e examina o lugar deste referente na sua prática pictórica construtiva. Dois períodos concretos da carreira de Torres-García merecem particular atenção. Em primeiro lugar, a sua transição do Noucentisme para a vanguarda, em meados da década de 1910 em Barcelona, que coincide com o seu envolvimento num projeto de vitral para um edifício público. Este período é analisado à luz das atitudes predominantes em relação ao medieval no ambiente classicista noucentista de Barcelona, atitudes estas que são inferidas a partir de uma análise abrangente da sua expressão nas revistas modernistas da cidade. Um segundo período de interesse situa-se nos finais da década de 1920, quando Torres-García formula o Universalismo Construtivo, a sua singular linguagem primitiva-construtiva que ele próprio caracteriza como "um estilo de catedral", num momento em trabalha em estreita associação com três dos artistas objeto de estudo desta tese: van Doesburg, Freundlich e Mondrian. A discussão acerca da obra destes três artistas, bem como a de Kupka, Delaunay e Albers, leva em consideração que, ao contrário de Torres-García, todos eles desenvolveram a sua prática num contexto cultural que celebrava o legado gótico. A sua relação com o gótico é examinada, segundo o caso, à luz das teorias de Wilhelm Worringer sobre a arquitetura medieval. Em alguns dos artistas aqui contemplados, ao interesse pela dimensão construtiva da pintura acrescia a pesquisa sobre as propriedades sensoriais da fragmentação e a interação da cor. Esta área de pesquisa pictórica, em que o estudo do vitral se revelou particularmente fecundo, é também explorada aqui para os casos pertinentes.

Before the publication of David Hockney’s book Secret Knowledge: rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters in 2001, it was commonly believed that the first artist to use an optical aid in painting was the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Hockney, however, believes that the use of projected images started much earlier, as early as the fifteenth-century, claiming that evidence can be found in the work of the Flemish painter Jan van Eyck. Without rejecting Hockney’s pioneering work in this field, I nevertheless make the perhaps bolder claim that Italian artists were using the aid of image projections even before the time of Jan van Eyck, that is, as early as 1270. Although much of the information required to make an earlier claim for the use of optics can be found in Hockney’s publication, the key to linking all the information together has been missing. It is my unique contention that this key is a letter that has always been believed to have been European in origin. More commonly referred to as Roger Bacon’s Letter I show in detail how this letter was, in fact, not written by Roger Bacon, but addressed to him, and that this letter originated in China. Chinese knowledge about projected images, that is the concept that light-pictures could be received onto appropriate supports, came directly to Europe around 1250. This knowledge was expanded upon by Roger Bacon in his Opus Majus, a document which arrived in Italy in 1268 for the special consideration of Pope Clement IV. The medieval Italian painter Cimabue was able to benefit directly from this information about optical systems, when he himself was in Rome in 1272. He immediately began to copy optical projections, which stimulated the creation of a new, more individualistic, mode of representation in Italian painting from this time forward. The notion that projected images greatly contributed towards the development of naturalism in medieval Italian painting replaces the previously weak supposition that the stimulation was classical or humanist theory, and shows that it was, in fact, far likely something more technical as well.
Art History
D.Litt. et Phil. (Art History)

This thesis focuses on the complex of medieval mural paintings in the church of St. James the Greater in Libis. It concerns the extant paintings, which are described, explained and compared to analogical works. The thesis turns its attention also to fragments of original paintings for the first time. It deeply touches the uncertain datation of some scenes and considers relevance of the sources, which have served for the datation until today. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

This diploma thesis deals with mural painting of the 13th and 14th centuries in the northwest Bohemia. The first part describes a brief history of medieval mural painting in the region. The most important part of the thesis consists of separate essays on places with surviving murals, i.e. mural cycles from Krupka, Brozany, Slavětín, Dobroměřice, Bedřichův Světec, Židovice, Radonice, Černochov, Volyně, Roudníky, Bečov nad Teplou and Potvorov. These chapters always have two parts: first existing literature on a particular location is critically evaluated and then a description and style and iconographic analysis are conducted. The thesis is specifically concerned with those who ordered the murals, including both famous aristocratic families and monastic communities. For this reason, even localities beyond the borders of the specified region are included, because they are connected with the topic by the donors.