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The frescoes of the Egyptian story of Isis, Osiris and the bull Apis that were painted by Pinturicchio and workshop on ceilings in the Vatican Palace in 1493 have attracted attention, particularly since the rooms were restored in the late 1890s. That they were commissioned for Rodrigo Borgia (1431–1503) for a room, the Sala dei Santi, in his private suite, the Appartamento Borgia, shortly after he became Pope Alexander VI in August 1492, has added to speculation as to how they should be interpreted. It has been widely held that they were inspired by Annius of Viterbo (1424–1502), a Dominican monk and fraudster, because a few years later he included a similar story in a genealogy of Pope Alexander VI. Leading interpretations have assumed Annius’ involvement and have suggested that the story was chosen for these frescoes because the Borgia emblem incorporated a bull, or to reflect the Ottoman threat to the Church. This thesis demonstrates that Annius could not have inspired these frescoes and thus challenges previous interpretations. By considering who else might have inspired this theme it proposes an alternative interpretation. The Venetian humanist Ermolao Barbaro (1454–1493) was well positioned to have been involved. In May 1490 he had visited Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) who had recently been translating the Neoplatonist Plotinus’ works relating to daímones, intermediaries between man and the gods. Plutarch’s account of the Isis and Osiris myth, knowledge of which would have been necessary to have specified the detail of the frescoes, casts Isis and Osiris as daímones. It is proposed that these frescoes depict an allegory of intermediation with the gods as part of a theurgical programme of syncretising Christianity with ancient religions, and that the central figure in the largest wall fresco in the room is a portrayal of Plotinus.

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The format of this thesis is a series of seven chapters, which examines the local and foreign influences that affected Paris Bordon (1500-1571), both artistically and personally, and which establishes the contemporary and posthumous effect of his art in Italy, France, Germany and The Netherlands. In doing so, it seeks to address the conundrum of his apparent lack of popularity in Venice itself, both during his lifetime and in more recent times. It also demonstrates that, although there is no documentary evidence to link the artist with the trip to France mentioned by Vasari, there is sufficient pictorial confirmation. At the same time, this thesis also charts the growing interest in Bordon’s works in the auction houses of Europe and his greater representation in major exhibitions throughout the world. Chapter One provides a historical and historiographical background to the artist. The first part places Bordon within the context of Venice’s political and cultural relations with Treviso, France, Milan and Augsburg, suggesting that these conditions may have shaped his art. The second section of  this chapter discusses his critical reception since the sixteenth century. The next six chapters are defined by genre, and his works are considered in chronological order.  However, because his religious output was substantial, this segment of the body of his works is divided between three chapters (Chapter Two, Three and Four) and consequently between three headings, discussing his works before 1540, from 1540 onwards and his altarpieces. Chapter Five deals with his portraiture and attempts to dispel several erroneous attributions and also to expand his body of works with some new discoveries.  Chapter Six brings together his Mythologies and examines the eclectic influences upon these works.  Chapter Seven is the first comprehensive examination of a group of works, the Architectural Perspectives, which was fairly unique to Bordon and which was to provide a model for French and Netherlandish artists. The seven chapters are followed by a conclusion and by three appendices, which comprise a catalogue of Bordon’s works, a comparison in English of the accounts of the life of the artist by Vasari and Ridolfi, and a register of documents translated into English.

This thesis is a study of the works of the 16th century painter Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594) using Deleuze’s concept of the diagram. In particular, it uses Deleuze’s diagrammatics to think the problem of Tintoretto’s difference. Methodologically, this is staged in two parallel parts: an activation of the concept of the diagram for an analysis of Tintoretto’s works and the innovations they introduce, and an explication of Deleuze’s concept of the diagram, through a reconstruction of its place and function in Deleuze’s philosophy. Neither is undertaken as an essay in explication. Against the re-presentation of what is known about Tintoretto, I propose a new evaluation of his difference; against any re-presentation of the Deleuzian philosophy, I propose a use of it for the sake of the problem of difference raised by Tintoretto’s works. The first register of the thesis, oriented towards Tintoretto’s works, includes a critical subversion of his empirical, and historicist positive treatment by art history, an overview of the norms of painting in his time and the criteria by which he has, through the reception of his contemporaries, passed into history, an exploration of the methods of his practice and the way they give rise to his difference, and a tracking of his historical reception beyond his own time, including in the works of other artists. The second register of the thesis undertakes a reconstruction of Deleuze’s philosophy through the concept of the diagram. This includes an in-depth exploration of Deleuze’s idea of constructivism and its functional relation to his transcendental empiricism, alongside an account of the main philosophical sources – Kant, Maimon, Peirce and Nietzsche - that inform this constructivist ontology. Two of the claims associated with this undertaking are: firstly, that the diagram fulfils a central philosophical function for Deleuze, as the agent of constructivism; secondly, that a renewed idea of aesthetics can be extracted from the Deleuzian philosophy. In addition, I use this conceptual nexus to propose a notion of diagrammatic temporality, with particular reference to Deleuze’s 3rd synthesis of time. It is the temporal ontology of constructivism that is returned to my considerations of Tintoretto’s diagrammaticity. That is, it is not as an atemporal analysis of the innovations of his works that my work remains, but as a temporalized thought of their difference as transhistorical return in experience. This includes the activation of the idea of an untimely modernity that is inaugurated in Deleuze’s ontology through an exploration of selected instances of Tintoretto’s return.

The present study analyses Filippo Lippi’s frescoes in the main chapel of the Prato cathedral and Domenico Ghirlandaio’s decoration of the Tornabuoni chapel in Santa Maria Novella in Florence. It focuses on the relationship between the frescoes and the ritual practices of the period, in particular, the religious spectacle. The aim of the research is to analyse the little-known and somewhat elusive relations between the two chapel decorations and other public expressions of devotional culture, such as the religious spectacles performed in the city during religious festivities. Chapter 1 provides a necessary theoretical and historiographical background to the work, while chapter 2 examines the performative production of Florence. It locates the tradition of religious plays within the context of the fifteenth-century devotion and analyses a sample of texts of sacre rappresentazioni. Chapter 3 provides archival evidence of the involvement of Florentine artists, including the two at the centre of this research, with the social and cultural world of the lay confraternities. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the two fresco decorations. The iconographic analysis allows us to recognize the hagiographic and philosophical sources of the paintings. The study shows the influence of Renaissance culture on the sacred iconography, and the introduction of new themes to the sacred narratives, such as Ficino’s idea of prisca theologia. Finally, the study discusses the relationship between the frescoes and the drama and asks questions about the relationship between the decorations and the ritual. The argument of the thesis is that the visual elements coming from the religious spectacles penetrated to the Florentine narrative paintings thanks to the personal exchange between both environments. Moreover, the study suggests that these inserts were meaningful and allowed the frescoes to become part of the ritual of intercession. Finally, the research shows in which ways the ruling elite participated to the cultural life of the city and used its visual aspects in order to promote their values and to obtain political consent.

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No description available.

This thesis challenges existing studies on Giovanni Mansueti (active 1485-1526/27) that have generally tended to undervalue his contribution to Venetian narrative painting. Rather, drawing on extensive primary research my work demonstrates how Mansueti was one of the major interpreters of the “eyewitness style”, in fact a master able to picture the unique requirements and expectations of his various patrons. Chapter 1 analyses Mansueti’s little-known cycle in the church of San Martino, Burano (The Betrothal of the Virgin, The Adoration of the Shepherds and The Flight into Egypt, c. 1510), with reference to practices of private devotion in Renaissance Venice. I investigate the paintings by drawing on textual sources that were commonly used in private devotional practices, showing how the paintings projected an ideology built on specifically Venetian interpretations of the Apocrypha. Chapter 2 is a contextual analysis of the Scuola Grande di San Marco. Using original archival findings, it firstly reassesses the Scuola’s art patronage system and bureaucratic procedure; then it investigates the identity of the individual Scuola’s members responsible for commissioning the St Mark Cycle originally decorating the walls of the Sala dell’Albergo. Chapter 3 provides an analysis of Giovanni Mansueti’s three paintings for the Scuola (The Baptism of Anianus and The Healing of Anianus, 1518; Three Episodes from the Life of St. Mark, 1525) in respect to the Sala dell’Albergo narrative cycle. The study focuses on the paintings as visual projections of the Scuola’s ideological understanding of the Muslim ‛others’. It investigates the contextual motives that prompted the Scuola’s merchant brothers to represent their commercial associate as the very tormentors of St Mark.

This thesis examines the reconstructed altarpiece formed by the Madonna del Voto, the Coronation of the Virgin, and the twelve narrative panels dated circa 1267 and attributed to Guido da Siena, currently dispersed in museums in Europe and America. The reconstructed altarpiece is vital to the study of early Sienese art because of its association with the Madonna del Voto in Siena cathedral, the most venerated icon believed to be once on the high altar. If proven, it represents a significant rediscovery of an altarpiece commissioned to commemorate the miraculous intercession of the Virgin who granted Sienese victory over Florence in 1260 at the Battle of Montaperti, giving birth to Siena’s identity as ‘the City of the Virgin’. Moreover, it reveals a more comprehensive view of the precedent of the complex altarpiece, the Maestà by Duccio di Buoninsegna dated 1308-11. However, the unconventional format and the iconographical programme of Guido’s reconstructed altarpiece has been criticised, and its original location on the cathedral high altar is questioned. The four chapters of this thesis reassessed the validity of the reconstruction of Guido’s altarpiece and its original location on the high altar by combining the methodological tools of altarpiece studies and pictorial narrative studies. Chapter 1 clarified that the reconstruction is highly probable from a technical viewpoint. Chapter 2 proposed an alternative interpretation of the historical documents suggesting its original location on the high altar. Chapters 3 and 4 examined the two extra-biblical episodes (the Ascent of the Cross and the Coronation of the Virgin), which are often associated with Franciscan commissions, and argued that they were selected to emphasise the Virgin’s intercession. The reconstructed altarpiece of exceptional format and iconographical selection was thus probably an invention for the important commission for Siena cathedral where art embodied the Marian civic identity.