Thesis (M.A.)--Kent State University, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed November 14, 2007). Advisor: Gustav Medicus. Keywords: Carpaccio; Vittore Carpaccio; Hunting on the Lagoon; Two Venetian Ladies; Social Studies, Venice; Renaissance, Venice; Material Culture, Venice; Gender Studies, Venice; Furniture, Venice; Domestic, Venice; Women's Fashion, Venice; Letter Rack; Venetian Soceity. Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-75).

The Seasons in the City. Artists and Rural Worlds in the Era of Calvino and Pasolini explores rurality in postwar Italy. Between 1958 and 1963, the country underwent an unprecedented yet uneven industrialisation, a period known as the Economic Miracle. Drawing on a relational and dynamic understanding of rural space provided by human geography, this thesis investigates the impact of these economic and socio-cultural transformations on the countryside, and on the ways in which the rural world was perceived and conceptualised in the following decades, especially by contemporary artists and intellectuals. Works of Gianfranco Baruchello, Claudio Costa, Piero Gilardi, Maria Lai, Ugo La Pietra, Antonio Paradiso, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, and Superstudio have been selected and analysed for the complex views on the topography of the country they convey, whilst challenging more conventional forms of art. Organised in themed chapters that find resonance in the contemporary works of two iconic Italian intellectuals, Italo Calvino and Pier Paolo Pasolini, these artistic practices manifest the ways in which Marxist theory and anthropology contributed to artists' identification of rural landscapes and communities at the time. More importantly, this thesis offers an alternative geographical perspective on 1970s Italian art, one that challenges the pastoral myths that were constructed in the country's metropolitan centres.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2001. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 314-327). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Inaug.-Diss.--Munich. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 310-323.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1975. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 207-226).

The subject of this study is the phenomenon of plant and animal illustration as an aspect of naturalism in Italian manuscript art from the mid thirteenth century to the early fifteenth century. 'Naturalism' in the context of this study is defined as the accurate representation of natural objects within the given limitations of period and style. In addition, the term is also applied to the phenomenon of the more frequent occurrence of natural objects like plants and animals in manuscript art. Chief among the factors that gave rise to this type of illustration were the demands of medieval science, in terms of practical works like herbals and hunting treatises. Secondly, the secular interests of the courts, in particular Frederick II's court in the thirteenth century, and the courts of the North Italian despots in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries encouraged the pastimes that generated a need for naturalistic illustration. Although Franciscanism has traditionally been credited with stimulating naturalism in Italian art, there is no solid evidence to suggest that the limited aspect of naturalism discussed here was directly influenced by the movement. The accurate portrayal of both plants and animals can be documented in a number of manuscripts dating from the thirteenth, fourteenth, and early fifteenth centuries. The concentration on accurate portrayal of isolated natural objects resulted in a more sophisticated and at the same time more naturalistic recording of facts about both plants and animals. Eventually, this close observation of nature contributed to certain rudimentary developments toward the mastery of landscape and pictorial space. These developments coincided with, or perhaps even encouraged, the acceptance of the International Gothic Style in Italy. This style incorporated some of the aspects of naturalism discussed in this study, and introduced them into a part of the mainstream of Italian art in the fifteenth century. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

This study takes as its starting point the artist's elusive pictorial surfaces in order to address changing notions of interiority in early sixteenth-century Italy. Correggio's innovative treatment of these surfaces -- what is referred to in the critical tradition in terms of softness, melting, and erasure -- enacts the desire to grasp a divinity at once human and ineffable. As such, it evokes the lyrical self-expression of the language of the Italian reform movements. A varied collection of voices, these currents of religious reform share an emphasis on achieving the ecstatic effects of authentic devotional feeling. The articulation of intense longing characteristic of this discourse coincides with similar modes of expression woven into the criticism around Correggio's painting. The language of Italian reform in this way offers a conceptual frame for understanding the resonance of the artist's distinct pictorial touch. At the same time, Correggio's melting surfaces represent an ideal metaphor for a mode of engagement that can be said to define what might otherwise be characterized only as a loosely connected series of devotional declarations. By tracing the parallels between artistic and spiritual practices, I offer new insights into facets of Italian Renaissance culture that have remained to a large extent unexplored.

This dissertation presents the first full length study of Antonello da Messina's portraits. While Antonello has been justly acknowledged as the first Italian painter to consider the portrait an independent work of art, his portraits are often characterized as imitations of Netherlandish models, and they are rarely discussed outside of the context of Venetian or Netherlandish portraiture. This study reintegrates Antonello's portraits in the wider context of fifteenth century Italy and argues that his portraiture is deeply rooted in the interests of the most prominent early Renaissance theories of painting. Antonello is among the first Italian painters to claim the face as a locus for identification, and to answer the demand that painting capture both the physical and mental aspects of the sitter. The first chapter analyzes the recent literature on the portraits and demonstrates how they have been marginalized by scholarship despite being lauded as highly influential. The second chapter evaluates the portraits as a body of work from the standpoint of form and technique, and incorporating the most recent technical analyses, demonstrates how Antonello achieved certain effects to arrive at what may indeed be considered a wholly independent work of art. The third chapter relates how Antonello's innovations in portraiture corresponded with a growing desire for a new kind of painted portrait in the mid fifteenth century. It reconsiders the origin of the painted, three quarter view portrait in Italy and explains how ancient authors presented a challenge for the painted portrait that could only be met in fifteenth century Italy by an entirely new form and style, represented in the work of Antonello da Messina. The fourth chapter examines the portraits in the context of Venetian patronage, looking more closely at his only known portrait sitters, Alvise Pasqualino and Michele Vianello, and the social and personal identities of Venetian citizens and nobles. This chapter relates how the theoretical demands of humanists translated for real patrons and collectors, and clarifies Antonello's relationship to extant portraiture in Venice at during the last decades of the fifteenth century, particularly the work of Giovanni Bellini. Ultimately Antonello da Messina's portraits had far reaching influence because they addressed some of the fundamental problems and challenges of representation in the early Italian Renaissance, for the first time, in portraiture.

Inaug.-diss.--Basel. / Vita. "Literatur-Abkürzungen": p. [v]-xi.

Revision of the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [231]-248) and index.