This thesis is the first detailed modern study of the painted glass installed in the Lady Chapel and presbytery of Winchester Cathedral between c1495 and c1515. The thesis sets the Winchester glass in its wider artistic context. It confirms the glass as a key example of the glass painting style popular at this period, which has been described elsewhere as “Anglo-Netherlandish”, preferring to label it more broadly “Anglo-Continental”. It then describes the physical context for the glass within the cathedral. It considers the building schemes of which the glazing formed part, and discusses new research which helps to date the glass. The analysis of the earlier glass in the presbytery contributes to the debate on the dating of the presbytery clerestory windows. Much of the glass is lost, dispersed, and jumbled, so a crucial task has been to try to reconstruct as much of the subject matter and layout as possible. The thesis also considers what the glass may have meant to its audience, showing how effectively the schemes supported the liturgy. The thesis concludes with a broad discussion on patronage, suggesting the intellectual and social context within which the glass was commissioned. It is argued that the glass was part of a programme of royal commemoration, which was widespread and obligatory under Henry VII. New circumstantial evidence supports the possibility of contributions to the Lady Chapel works by the king, by courtiers and by Bishop Langton. It is proposed that Langton is likely to have been a significant influence on the Lady Chapel glass. Bishop Fox’s contribution to the presbytery work is defined more closely than previously. It is argued that Fox’s glazing, depicting traditional subjects in the most up to date painting style, was part of his attempt to reinvigorate the church on the eve of the Reformation.

This thesis comprises four case studies of the Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei’s museum projects to consider the representation of identity in architecture, and the role of the museum as an architectural type. The reading of Pei’s projects also encompasses debates on architectural styles, the relationship between modernity and history, as well as the political and cultural role of the museum in the city. The thesis has three parts. Part One looks into the representation of national identity, while also considering the manifestation of Pei’s cultural identity in their given context. The two chapters in this part delve in Pei’s earliest museum design, the Museum for Chinese Art, and a contemporary project of the extension to the German Historical Museum in Berlin, to evaluate the connection of Pei’s projects with their historical contexts, and consider the extent to which Pei’s museum projects respond to the notion of national identity and nationalism respectively. Part Two makes enquiries in the often-related relationship of architecture and language. The significance of architectural language is seen from its role in developing the meaning of the museum building as architecture. By taking the Grand Louvre as a case study, Chapter 3 and 4 discuss how the museum operates as a building type, which incorporates languages by architectural criticism and also the language of architectural drawings. Part Three is a conclusion section in my thesis and it provides an overview of Pei’s Museum of Islamic Art. While the project provides an especially helpful focus on the problems discussed in the thesis, it also provokes thinking on Pei’s role in developing the museum to its current form as an international cultural phenomenon.

This dissertation uses object-based case studies to explore how works by Emma Stebbins and Harriet Hosmer—and by extension, the broader field of American neoclassical sculptors—were influenced by the complex visual and historical field of Rome, 1852–1878. This project models different ways of reading and responding to sculptures which are complex works of classical translation, reference, and response, through an object-first and experience-based approach. I discuss four sculptures in three case studies: Hosmer’s Daphne and Medusa (1853, 1853/4), Stebbins’s The Lotus-Eater (1857/60), and Hosmer’s Pompeian Sentinel (1876/8). These case studies have been chosen for their rich, multivalent relationships to previous artistic models, texts, and visual spaces in Rome (both the modern city and the ancient empire). I bring together methodological and critical approaches that have not been previously used for American neoclassical scholarship, especially Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s definition of ‘camp’ and weak theory. I utilize literary models of classical reception, allusion, and intertext, theories of objects in relation to time and to other objects, ecological models, and archaeological theories. My object-first approach draws heavily on first-hand observation of sites in Rome and its surrounding areas, especially Pompeii. Within this thesis, I emphasize this first-hand experience along with the importance of travel to these sites as part of my research method through the strategic use of the first person and an emphasis on the intellectual, emotional responses to sites that I had. This reinforces my dissertation’s aim of enlivening the scholarly discourse around neoclassical scholarship as well as engaging in academic honesty, rather than upholding a dispassionate empiricism that does not reflect the methodological and critical approach of this project. These will be theoretically rich, chronologically complex, and emotionally engaged readings of these works, that embrace the multivalent, anachronic potentials of neoclassical sculpture.

The classical caryatid has been a ubiquitous presence in the art and architecture of Europe from antiquity onwards. This was especially the case from the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries when interest in the motif was at its height and versions of the caryatid made an appearance on a myriad built structures and objets d’art throughout Europe, while its influence was also particularly evident in the work of numerous renowned sculptors and painters. Yet, despite its prevalence across the centuries, and its especial position in Europe’s art and architecture in the long nineteenth century, the caryatid in the modern period remains relatively neglected in studies of art and architectural history. This thesis addresses the lacuna in previous scholarship by examining the modern presence of the caryatid, with a focus on Britain from 1790 to 1914. It comprises two parts, beginning with a historiographical analysis of the caryatid in Europe from antiquity onwards, focusing on Britain from the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, in order to disclose the motif’s visual predominance and to analyse the relationship between its use and contemporary artistic and architectural discourse. This is followed by three case studies that investigate the motif’s notable presence in the architectural designs of John Soane (1753-1837), the drawings and paintings of Frederic Leighton (1830-1896), and the sculptural output of Alfred Stevens (1817-1875) and Alfred Gilbert (1854-1934). These demonstrate the pioneering and exemplary manner in which these British individuals employed the caryatid across a variety of media in the period from 1790 to 1914, which exposes their use of the motif in the construction of artistic identities and as a means of projecting cultural authority, as well as displaying their attempts to align their work with theories of classical ideality and intermediality in art.

This thesis examines the British Empire Exhibition (1924/25), the first example of intra-empire exhibitions during the interwar period. The Exhibition encapsulated postwar anxieties as well as imperial pride and inspired numerous, under-researched interwar propaganda activities, involving the visual arts. Following a substantial historiographical and methodological introduction, Chapter 1 examines the interrelationship between imperial knowledge and imagined (imperial) community. By rereading supplementary publications, I construe how a bird’s eye view and imperial abstract minds, incorporated in the public materials, developed an informed audience of imperial-minded individuals and groups, especially children. In this chapter, I also suggest a new approach to connecting an urban core and its suburbs through imperial urban networks, moving beyond existing scholarship on dominant economic, political, cultural and ceremonial locations in the heart of the city. The ideas of suburban imperialism and circulation expanded the physical experience of the miniaturised empire at the Exhibition to a large number of homes, extending imperial citizenship from the public to the domestic. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the Palace of Arts section of the Exhibition, and provide a close analysis of the public art displays at Wembley, which challenge the conventional division between modernist and non-modernist, and the tension between art and craft/design within an imperial framework. Chapter 3, in particular, underlines the importance of the Queen’s Dolls’ House, designed by Edwin Lutyens, unveiled to the public in the Palace of Arts at Wembley, and now held in the Royal Collection. The House epitomises the characteristics of Britain as a nation and an empire through its English exterior and British objects within.

This thesis explores Spanish cemetery sculpture during the Bourbon Restoration. It looks closely at works which have been marginalised from sculpture studies for their religious, funerary and Spanish character, and for the period in which they were produced. Arguing that cemetery sculpture was central to sculptural development in Spain, rather than tangential to it, it explores how funerary works overlapped and intersected with exhibition sculpture, public monuments, anatomical sculpture and other genres. It uncovers new intermedial connections with theatre, literature, print culture and painting, and shows how Spanish cemetery sculpture was integrated in a cross-border, bourgeois cosmopolitanism, even as it looked to traditional motifs and its own golden ages for inspiration. This study examines the specificity of funerary sculpture in this period, in Spain and more widely, by thinking about the multiple bodies which converge at the tomb: sculpted, dead, and living; earthly and heavenly; present and absent; and visible and invisible. It delves into those relationships between artists, patrons, viewers and the deceased which are particular to the cemetery genre, and explores the impact of the fundamental distinction between self-memorialisation and commemorating illustrious dead men. By examining gender representation, religious orthodoxy, class tension, and theatrical associations, it reveals how the genre was considered inherently problematic; and explores how sculptors, patrons and critics navigated this moral minefield differently. The thesis consists of five chapters, each of them a case study. It focuses on technically and conceptually sophisticated sculptures created by Mariano Benlliure, Julio Antonio, Rosendo Nobas, Antonio Pujol, Enric Clarasó and Quintín de Torre.

The Chantrey Bequest, set out in the Will of sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey, was of primary importance to the foundation and development of a national collection of British art at the Tate Gallery. It constituted the gallery’s main purchasing fund from its opening in 1897 until 1946, facilitating the selection and acquisition of works which expanded the collection of British paintings, and formed, in large part, the first collection of British sculpture displayed in a public London gallery. Scholarly discussion of the Bequest and its influence upon the Tate collection has revolved solely around paintings, and the sculpture collection has been almost entirely overlooked. This thesis constitutes the first study of sculpture in the Chantrey Bequest and at the Tate Gallery between 1898 and 1917. Chantrey’s investment controlled entry into Tate’s national canon through conditions which stipulated that works could have been made by “artists of any nation” but had to have been executed entirely “within the Shores of Great Britain.” Criticism of the Bequest dominated the British art press from the 1870s until the 1920s and provoked two public inquiries in 1904 and 1911. Critics questioned the power of the Royal Academy (RA), as Administrators of the Bequest, to judge what was representative of British art, accusing them of nepotism and institutional bias against modernist and non-Academic art, and the work of foreign-born artists. Central to these debates was the view that the RA were acting in contravention of Chantrey’s intentions. Through an exploration of Chantrey’s intentions for his Bequest and its administration by the RA, I uncover the underlying personal, institutional, and nationalistic agendas which formed a national collection of sculpture at the Tate Gallery, and highlight notable exclusions from its canon. I respond to, and complicate, critical accusations that the RA acted in contravention of Chantrey’s wishes.

Scientifically analysed, photographically exploited, artistically dematerialized, the body of the 1980s and 1990s AIDS epidemic continues to influence the contemporary perception of healthy and ill physicalities. Moving from the identification of a presence in absence dialectic, made of bodies physically absent, and yet still present in the works produced during the crisis, the project explores how the disease has been represented by gay male artists. Written in the first person, the thesis looks at AIDS educational materials, photographs, choreography, and installations under a Lacanian perspective. Dealing with a shattered temporality, the text re-performs the bodies of the crisis as they appear in the Lacanian Mirror of postmodernity, discussing their present and past impact. Structured in four chapters, the dissertation follows my journey through the Mirror, retracing the fragmentation of a body and of a temporality that is in fact uncatchable. The first chapter sets the issues arising from a scholarly reading of the crisis, defining the chronology of the epidemic. Using photographs, drawings, and educational materials, I trace a timeline of the homoerotic body of desire as it appears in the "pre" and the "post-AIDS" reality. The chapter introduces the concept of "Aesthetic of Illness," theorizing its double nature. In chapter two, I analyse the photo-biographies of Arnie Zane, Tom Bianchi, Samuel Wagstaff, and Albert J. Winn, and Richard Sawdon-Smith, reflecting on the ideas of the visible and invisible, and on the patient/doctor relationship. The third chapter marks the beginning of my journey across the Mirror: the text focuses on the choreographic work of Neil Greenberg and Bill T. Jones, presenting the reader with a reflection on death. Finally, the last chapter addresses the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres going back to the body to answer the question that has accompanied the reader throughout the thesis: "What Am I Looking At?"

This study will provide a complete account of the ways in which the Old Testament was visually articulated in Anglo-Saxon England between the seventh and mid-eleventh centuries, in order to establish the extent of the surviving Old Testament imagery in early medieval England. This is vital as, to date, no attempt has been made to establish what survives of such scenes across all media and “time periods” (pre-Viking, Viking and Reformation). The lack of scholarly interest is explained, in part, by the understanding that the Old Testament was not a popular subject to depict in Anglo-Saxon England, especially when compared to the survival of New Testament subjects and the seeming abundance of Old Testament imagery found elsewhere in the Insular world. This perception is further supported by the frequent invocation of the Old Testament in the surviving poetry, exegesis and texts of Anglo-Saxon England; the popularity of the Old Testament in the textual culture seems to emphasise its absence in the visual. With the resulting scholarly focus on a particular “time period” or medium, engagement with how the Old Testament was visualised in Anglo-Saxon England as a whole remains unchartered. By providing an overview of the extant material, this study will establish the accuracy of these perceptions. It will also examine the motives informing the selection of certain Old Testament scenes by considering their iconographic significance/s. This will provide insight into issues of continuity and change in the way the Old Testament was visually articulated from the pre-Viking Period into the Viking and Reformation Period and set these findings within the context of its portrayal elsewhere in the Insular world. By examining the visualisation of the Old Testament in this way this study will reappraise and resituate this largely ignored aspect of Anglo-Saxon art.

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