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Hailed in his time as the greatest living artist, Antonio Canova (1757-1822) expressed his genius not only through the masterful conception and carving of his sculptures, but also in the meticulous orchestration of their display. Enshrining his marble figures alongside plaster casts of ancient works, bathing them in candlelight, staining and waxing their surfaces, and even setting them in motion on rotating bases, Canova challenged his audiences to rethink the very nature of sculpture. My dissertation argues, for the first time, that the meanings and impact of Canova's sculpture depended in significant part on the ways in which he and his patrons exhibited them. Canova himself began staging his work in Rome in the 1780s. His patrons, following the artist's lead, subsequently mounted their own dramatic exhibitions of Canova's work. Organized as a series of case studies, the dissertation examines four key exhibitions of Canova's work in four major European centers--Rome, Naples, Venice and Paris--from 1780-1843. These exhibitions had multiple functions. On the one hand, they enabled Canova to showcase his artistic talent and allowed his patrons to advertise their wealth and good taste. More importantly, however, these exhibitions required viewers to transform their interaction with Canova's sculptures into performative moments in which they displayed their own historical, cultural and artistic knowledge. Viewers of Canova's work performed their own position as beholders, and, indeed, my dissertation is as preoccupied with the reception of Canova's sculptures as it is with his and his patrons' display strategies. Not only do viewers' accounts often reveal the particularities of the exhibitions themselves, but the intensity of beholders' responses to Canova's work also signals the way that his sculptures took on a wide-variety of meanings that he and his patrons could not always control. Equally striking is the way diverse visitors continued to find meaning, validity, and subjects for debate in Canova's work despite sixty years of political, historical, and social change. Throughout many transformations, Canova's sculptures remained a focal point for discussions of politics, cultural heritage, archaeology, connoisseurship, artistic production and the development of art history itself. I have focused largely on three Italian centers because Italy was the center of origin for many of aspects of Canova's stagings. In Rome, for instance, Canova was introduced to serious study of the antique and it was there that he began to compare his works of art with ancient masterpieces. The display of Triumphant Perseus next to a cast of the Apollo Belvedere, for instance, generated conversations regarding the nature of imitation and the importance setting and political circumstances had on the understanding of his work. In Naples, on the other hand, the exhibition of Venus and Adonis in a tempietto in the garden of Francesco Maria Berio, Marchese di Salza, launched a city-wide debate regarding modes of artistic production and the best means of communicating those artistic possibilities to an audience. In Venice, in 1817, Leopoldo Cicognara juxtaposed Canova's Polinnia with recently restored Venetian Old Master paintings, including Titian's Assumption of the Virgin, in the Accademia di Belle Arti's new public painting gallery. This exhibition reaffirmed the Veneto's artistic authority at a moment when Venice's political fortunes were at their nadir. Given the primacy French art has held in the study of the nineteenth century, I hope serious reevaluation of this period will contribute to a renewed understanding of the importance Italy had for the history of art at the turn of the century. Yet, I conclude the project by focusing on Paris. It was there, in the French capital, where the exhibition of Canova's Penitent Magdalene in the townhouse of Giambattista Sommariva launched a discussion about expression and the emotional resonance of art. Penitent Magdalene's despair encouraged beholders' self-reflection, and in so doing reinforced notions of individuality and the self, established the sculpture as a particularly "French" and modern work, and perhaps more importantly, forged a direct link between emotional resonance and aesthetic value. Throughout Europe, the staging of sculptures organized by Canova and his patrons generated discussion about the appropriate ways to look at, talk about, and write about sculpture. Reactions to Canova's works inspired wide-spread debates about the nature of artistic production, the writing of art history, the context and significance of exhibitions and personal emotional reactions to works of art. My dissertation reimagines Canova's keystone position in the larger art world of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century by bringing the contexts of exhibition and response into our understanding of the artist and his work.

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In the fantastical world of the Architecture Civile, Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757-1826) designed the architect's space of appearance across a ritual act of representation. The meticulous crafting of the architectural drawing defined the very site upon which his highly syncretic and imaginative ornamental language was developed. It was in the idea of ornament that Lequeu articulated his veneration of, and dedication to the restoration of, architectural beauty and delight. / In the drawing and writing of the orthograph(i)e, Lequeu enacted the promordial trait of the dessinateur to found his art and science of representation. In the shadowed depths of the surface and its edge, the elevation and its section, the portrait and its profile, the figural ornaments of Nature and Architecture were made to appear. These, the principal characteristics of his architectural language, were expressed across all three scales of being: the cosmic-sacred, the mythic-historic, and the poetic-psychic. Lequeu's allegorical and symbolic narratives sought to reveal the problematic relationship that existed between architectural thought and its representation, at the threshold of modernity.

Comparatively few theoretical studies exist on the keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. His music remains largely unexplored. This study investigates formal and functional aspects of the "first halves" in the Venice XIII collection (K 514--K 543) and reveals links to the aesthetics and traditions of his contemporaries. It suggests and examines relationships to the development of the sonata genre. To accomplish this, the study proposes a theoretical base for critical analysis and presents a specialised terminology to examine the features of mid-eighteenth-century sonata forms. The arguments of Michelle Fillion, J. P. Larsen, and Wilhelm Fischer are central to the discussion. Studies by William Caplin, Barbara Foster, Klaus Heimes, Ralph Kirkpatrick, and James Unger also contribute to the development of the theoretical base. An analysis section views the selected repertoire and some contemporary works according to the criteria the thesis establishes. An epilogue sums up pertinent observations made in the analysis section.

The social atmosphere in England at the end of the eighteenth century abounded with visions of new heavens and new earths propagated by political and religious writers. To some, the French Revolution was incontrovertible evidence that the Day of Judgement was near, and that the end of the century would coincide with the end of time. To others, elaborate mathematical calculations produced the same conclusion. Many writers became self-proclaimed prophets who depicted new revelation of the future in detail, and their audience became a culture of anticipation who eagerly awaited the fruition of prophecy and the descent of the New Jerusalem. William Blake was at once related and opposed to this Literature of Anticipation. The collection of illuminated texts known as his "Bible of Hell" adopts the familiar form of prophecy, but acerbically criticizes the action---or inaction---of Blake's contemporaries, and seriously questions the foundation of Christian theology and the beneficence of the Christian God. What emerges from Blake's Bible is a concept of prophecy that stresses an immediacy of vision in sharp contrast with the fruitless waiting of millennialist prophets, and an internal locus of responsibility that dissolves all ties to tyrannical authority.

Violists today have much music from which to choose. Works exist for unaccompanied viola, viola and piano, and chamber ensemble including viola. Many of these works, especially those from this century, were written specifically for the viola. In addition, a number of earlier original viola works have been recently rediscovered. There are not, however, any great number of concertos for viola and orchestra.According to David Daniels' Orchestral Music: A Handbook, there are nineteen works in the general repertoire for viola and orchestra. Closer examination of these works reveals that few measure up to the standard of quality found in the concerto literature for other instruments. Violists, therefore, continue to search for new and rewarding music to play.The purpose of this study is to supplement the concerto repertoire for the viola with a recently uncovered work, the Concerto in E -flat Major by Joseph Schubert.The concerto is put in a historical and analytical context. Discussions of eighteenth-century Dresden's musical life and Schubert's life and works provide a context for understanding the Concerto. A history of the instrumental parts chronicles the Concerto's two versions. A carefully prepared musical text (based on manuscript parts from the Sachsische Landesbibliothek Dresden) is presented, with discussion of sources and emendations. / School of Music