The remaining central panel to an altarpiece Rogier van der Weyden completed in 1435, known as The Descent from the Cross, is one of the finest examples of the work of The Flemish Primitives. Their paintings are characterised by their technical innovation, superlative workmanship, purity of realism as well as their, often tranquil spirituality and emotional expression. Yet despite these qualities, they have never sat comfortably within the general oeuvre of Western Fine Art Studies, as has the work of the Italian Renaissance: Theirs was the last flowerings of the French Gothic. Additionally, given that the painting it is a pre-Reformation work, it can never, legitimately, be separated from the Christian religious culture that bore it. That culture had two important elements in the early fifteenth century, the piety of the laity and the mysticism that had developed from the early 1200’s. How may these facts be linked, to facilitate a greater understanding of this painting, from those critical pre-Reformation years? Whilst aware of research during the last twenty years, my aim is to contribute to a greater understanding of the religious context of Rogier’s Descent from the Cross. I have approached the task in the manner in which the devout would have considered a mystical ascent: exploring the physicality of the work alongside its historical situation and increasingly seeking the deeper theological references. I began by looking at artist and commissioners, the more obvious clues within the work and the Chambers of Rhetoric who dramatised Scriptural events; the very active life of the era. Mary has a dominant role in the painting and though dismissed by Reformation, she has a vibrant history and presence. Uniting the visual image with mysticism required a ‘journey to Byzantium’, to consider the legitimacy of the image within Liturgy, and understand how differently its use evolved in the West. And lastly, to draw the laity into both, I called upon three eminent theologians from the second millennium St. Anselm, St. Bonaventure and the Blessed Jan van Ruusbroec.

This investigation reaches beyond one single discipline or mode of discourse, exploring current possibilities for contemporary abstract painting and spiritual experience. Types of experience associated with previous 'spiritual' abstract painting are explored in view of the need for new languages for abstraction and spirituality in both word and image. This is developed alongside. the recognition of the importance of engagement with the contemporary world for abstract painting (in this case via technology). The investigation is given a theoretical critical context through reference to and analysis of writers such as Donald Kuspit, Peter Fuller, James Elkins and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe and three leading painters Gerhard Richter, Jan McKeever and David Reed along with a record and analysis of my own painting and digital images. Abstract painting and spiritual experience are subjected to critique and reinterpretation within this investigation and a contemporary concept of the spiritual emerges through an opening of thought found within postmodernism and a renewed critical interest in negative theology. .' Negative theology is seen as having similarities to a broader apophatic outlook found both in contemporary thought and art. This leads to a contemporary model of abstract painting and spiritual experience using a language of doubt through terms such as the unknowable, unrepresentable or unintelligible. The initial process based paintings of this investigation explored problems surrounding authorship and of authorial suspension via process, however a counter and more positive aspect of process emerged from an alternative alchemical or hypostatic view of process painting as a deep. engagement with matter. The limitations of process painting are considered, for example, basic repetitiveness, lack of surface and form, lack of imaginative engagement and most importantly the lack of risk on an emotional or psychological level. Previous modernist models of spiritual abstraction are seen to be made problematic by contemporary critical theory resulting in the need for a new, contemporary language for spiritually motivated abstract painting. Through the use of image deconvolution software (normally used within the sciences) relatively formless process paintings gave rise to new digitally generated form. Subsequent paintings were a response to the potential of these digital forms arid reintroduced both brushstrokes and form within an abstract, illusionistic space. This investigation explores a language of the unknown and unfamiliar within a broader context of doubt as positive strategy. Process and technology along with a critical reintroduction of authorial subjectivity and imaginative response gave rise to strange and unpredictable paintings which exist within a contemporary discourse of the apophatic, a mode in which, I argue, a contemporary form of spirituality may also be encountered.

The intention of this thesis was to demonstrate that, with in-depth analysis, a carefully and deliberately constructed narrative could be revealed within the ceiling paintings of Skelmorlie Aisle, Largs, Scotland (c.1638). The ceiling adorned a burial aisle, which was erected by Sir Robert Montgomerie, seventh of Skelmorlie, in honour of his wife, Dame Margaret Douglas. The paintings, executed by Edinburgh apprentice James Stalker, are the only surviving example of the genre signed and dated by the artist. The ceiling was composed of forty-one individual compartments each one containing different combinations of emblems, designs, human figures, animals, birds and heraldic representations. Of the forty-one compartments, four of these contained landscape paintings, depicting the seasons, and their associated labours. Two unusual paintings were also executed each containing representations of a female figure on the land and by the sea. By a study of semiotics, this dissertation systematically re-constructed the narrative concealed within the paintings. This revealed the intrinsic meaning of the iconography. The thesis argued that simple observation revealed very little information relating to the understanding of the paintings and in-depth study was required to elucidate this. The narrative began with an exploration of seventeenth-century nobility with a particular focus on the patron, Sit Robert Montgomerie of Skelmorlie. It then considered the role of architecture and design in Early Modern Scotland with a discussion on domestic architecture and burial aisles. An exploration into the painted ceiling in seventeenth-century Scotland was also included as was a consideration of the role of the artist and patron. A focus on the sources available to artists in Scotland during the Early Modern period, followed with a particular investigation into those used within the ceiling iconography of Skelmorlie Aisle. Whether it was intended that the ceiling iconography was to be read in a specific order was also included. These initial stages provided a platform from which an in-depth analysis of the iconography within the paintings, could be undertaken. The methodology applied here was that composed by German born art historian Erwin Panofsky. Panofsky argued that identifying objects, shapes and forms did not convey why certain components were chosen or what they meant. The first step was to ascertain the genesis of the sources, as this provided a greater understanding of the narrative and why they were chosen by Montgomerie. The research revealed that, with the exception of generic designs of floral patterns and scrollwork, the iconography within the paintings was not chosen at random; each component was selected for a very specific reason. When all of the factors were considered and the iconography analysed in depth, the full narrative became exposed.

This thesis addresses the striking proliferation of Moses imagery in sixteenth-century Venice by considering the images as a distinctive category. Although the narratives of Moses can be found elsewhere in Italy, the Venetian treatment of these subjects is distinguished by their number and their placement not in private chapels but in locations available to a broad audience. Additionally, a contrast can be made between the central Italian examples, which display variations on a political theme originally established by St. Thomas Aquinas, and the peculiar Venetian approach to the prophet, influenced by the city’s Byzantine roots and its constitution. In tracing the development of this imagery in the sixteenth century, initial consideration must be given to the roots of its stylistic interpretation in the Veneto where paintings for chapels of the Sacrament exhibit the group-oriented compositions that characterize the works throughout the period. In this context, the pioneering work of Jacopo Tintoretto forms the principal focus of this thesis, arguing that he was the first to introduce Moses imagery into Venice on a monumental scale. In his works for the main chapel of the Church of the Madonna dell’Orto and the ceiling of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, the image of Moses takes on heightened theological significance in the general religious context of the Counter Reformation and in particular Venetian contexts of parish and confraternity. The interplay of such monumental painting and printed book illustration is also considered. It is the influence of Tintoretto’s approach to Moses on later artists that forms in part the foundation for the proliferation of the subjects in the later years of the sixteenth and the early years of the seventeenth century.

My research uses my painting practice as an experimental and investigative tool to test the capacity of practical aesthetics to generate similar or analogous experiences to the non-dualist reception aesthetics of certain key examples of post-Tridentine (1563) Catholic Counter-Reformation devotional imagery, particularly, The Ecstasy of St. Theresa (1647-1652) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and the Incarnation (1596-1600) by El Greco. I apply an interpretative method to the development of Christian imagery within painting in the post-Reformation period and its relationship to the economic system of modern capitalism and the Enlightenment aesthetic of the sublime. My research aims to see what, if any, meanings and experiences, which, I believe, were present in the affective aesthetics of certain Counter-Reformation imagery can, through the contemporary aesthetics of my painting practice, be reconstructed or re-generated again as similar experience to those original pre-Enlightenment non-dualist meanings and experiences. The experience I aim to generate in my paintings is an affective and experiential narrative of presence, - Eliot's 'unity of thought, feeling and action', which I argue is found in the meaning and experience of those key Christian devotional images.

Ma recherche porte sur l'iconographie de la Nativité du Christ dans la peinture italienne médiévale, avec un corpus de 300 images incluant les petits retables destinés à la dévotion privée comme les grands cycles de fresques. L'enquête commence autour de 1250 par la production des peintres qui précédèrent Giotto et Duccio, et s'achève autour de 1450, avec les oeuvres de Beato Angelico et Filippo Lippi. L'objectif est d'étudier l'évolution de chacune des figures constitutives de la scène (Marie, Jésus, Joseph, l'âne et le boeuf, les bergers, les sages-femmes, etc.) et surtout de la scène comme ensemble, à partir du motif figuratif du personnage agenouillé en adoration, motif toujours plus fréquent dans la Nativité au cours de la période et symptomatique des usages dévotionnels de l'image dans l'Italie médiévale. / My research scrutinizes the iconography of Christ's Nativity in italian medieval painting, dealing with 300 images, ranging from small altarpieces for private devotion to major fresco cycles. It starts around 1250, with the generation of painters who were teachers to Giotto and Duccio, and it ends around 1450, with the works of Beato Angelico and Filippo Lippi. My aim is to provide a complete study of each figure's evolution (Mary, Jesus, Joseph, the ox and ass, the shepherds, the midwives, etc.) and of the scene as a whole. The increasing proportion of kneeling figures – the adoratio flexis genibus – in the scene testifies the evolution of devotional practices and the use of images for praying.

La relation entre la peinture et la littérature persane était étroitement liée pendant toute l'histoire del'Iran après la conquête de l'Islam. Ce sont souvent les sujets mystiques qui dominent la littérature persane et ils se manifestent également dans la peinture par l'illustration des divans et des ouvrages soufis. C'est ainsi que la peinture persane est le grand témoin de l'approche gnostique et elle possède une dimension mystique transcendante. Les éléments et les symboles, inspirés des métaphores sublimes de la littérature soufie persane, nous orientent vers des interprétations mystiques dont on trouve la manifestation explicite dans la plupart des suppléments de la peinture persane. Les conceptions soufies se sont manifestées également dans la peinture des écoles dérivées de la peinture persane comme l'école de la peinture inde-persane et l'école de la peinture moghole. Il faut souligner que la circulation de la langue persane avait un rôle remarquable dans ce parcours. Notamment, d'une part le persan était la langue officielle de l'Inde sous le règne d'Akbar, l'empereur moghole passionnée de la culture persane, et de l'autre part les vagues d'émigrations des poètes et des peintres iraniens vers l'Inde, sous la pression des docteurs religieux safavides développaient l'influence de la culture persane dans le sous-continent indien.Les deux raisons essentielles qui préparaient la base d'un grand mouvement artistique. L'affection des rois moghols envers les confréries soufies, hérité de leur grand ancêtre Tamerlan, se manifestait par le respect qu'ils avaient pour les soufies et, en particulier, pour les Sheikh (s) naqšbandî. / Persian painting and Persian literature were closely linked during the history of Iran after the conquest of Islam. lt is often the mystical topics of Persian literature, which have an effect on the Persian painting. During the Timurid dynasty, Sufism has occupied a central place in the society of Iran. The Sufism ideology, in particular the naqsbandî beliefs, has brought a transcendent mystical dimension to the illustrations of this period of history of Persian art. We can find the explicit mystical influence of the big naqshbandî master and the last great medieval mystic, Jami, on the painting of Kamâl al-Dîn Bihzâd. Obviously, the success of Bihzâd disciples, who were under his influence, gave birth to the lndo-Persian painting in Mughal court.Moreover, Akbar (1542-1605) and his great passion for the Persian language and culture had adecisive role in the development of the Persian mystical thoughts in lndia. The Persian language became the official language of the lndian Mughal Empire du ring his reign.The devotion of Akbar for the Sufism was particularly manifested in his special respect toward naqsbandî Sheikhs. At the same time, under the religious pressure of the Safavid dynasty some of the lranians were obliged to leave their country. The big passion of Akbar in one hand and the immigration waves of lranians, especially Sufis, poets and artists to the lndia, on the other hand,prepared the society for intellectual and artistic movements.ln fact, the naqsbandî traditions and ideas have travelled from Iran to the northern lndia. Bokhara played a great role in the circulation of beliefs and ethics of the naqsbandî order between Persia and India.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.