This dissertation examines the confluence of ideas about classicism, commerce, and authorship in Britain in the final decades of the eighteenth century, when the commercial potential of classical forms and, conversely, the artistic potential of ‘mechanical’ forms of production both seemed greater, and yet more vulnerable, than they had ever been. While classical antiquity was a crucial source of artistic authority in this period, the emergence of a model of individual, inwardly generated, original authorship provided a different opportunity for commercial classicists to distinguish themselves in a crowded and competitive marketplace. In successive chapters of the dissertation, I discuss four makers whose works were produced in the context of competing models of authorship and authority: the architect, Robert Adam; the potter and manufacturer, Josiah Wedgwood; the painter and printmaker, Angelica Kauffman; and the sculptor and designer, John Flaxman. Each of these authors straddled the worlds of the mechanical and liberal arts, using a self-consciously classical artistic vocabulary in conjunction with highly commercial production and marketing strategies. They increasingly shaped and presented their works and style as their own proprietary creations, capitalising on emerging concepts of original genius and individual authorship: the very concepts that seem to be at odds both with academic classicism and with reproductive practices. Adam, Wedgwood, Kauffman, and Flaxman demonstrate how classicism, the idea of genius, and commercial, industrial modernity were mutually constitutive, resulting in the creation of artistic styles that are still associated with their authors today.

The volcanic area west of Naples known as the Phlegraean Fields, or Campi Flegrei, has been an alluring destination since antiquity. Then as now, it is characterized by monumental ancient buildings, natural hot springs and a gentle climate. Yet the same underground supervolcano that is responsible for its thermal power charges the area with instability. This dissertation centers the Campi Flegrei as a specific environment whose unique properties artists responded to during the early modern period. Picturing this place in a variety of media, they made visible its inherent contradictions—the coexistence of loss with continuity, the entanglement of the natural with the humanmade—and brought these tensions to bear on local history and identity. Manuscripts, prints, maps, and images from printed books form the core body of material discussed. Taking an interdisciplinary and embodied approach, this study draws on the history of medicine, science and the environment and is based in firsthand experience of many of the sites discussed. The first chapter concerns a body of illustrated manuscripts and printed books that figure the bathing sites of the Campi Flegrei. It traces the popularity of Peter of Eboli’s late twelfth-century or early thirteenth-century poem De balneis Puteolanis (On the Baths of Pozzuoli) through the Renaissance and early modern periods, when it was copied and its images elaborated upon. The practice of bathing itself connected people directly to a rich local history, and these images emphasize the potency of that direct physical experience embedded in the landscape. The second chapter brings us to the extensive subterranean spaces of Naples, especially its underground aquatic infrastructure. The viscera of the city played an important role in daily life, but were also fertile settings for stories of the city’s past. This chapter contrasts the lack of imagery figuring the Neapolitan underground with the plethora of artworks showing a more porous relationship between above and below in the Campi Flegrei. The visual identities of Naples and the Campi Flegrei were consistently evolving, but constructed and perceived in relationship to one another. During periods in which Angevin, Aragonese, and early viceregal Spanish rulers attempted to impose a new order on the urban fabric of Naples, the Campi Flegrei were pictured in contrast, as the city’s untamable chthonic neighbor. The third chapter follows specific artists and writers into the Campi Flegrei, where their works turn towards mistaken topographies, visual lacunae, nonlinearity, and loss, teasing out visually the mechanisms by which transformation could come about. Working in an expanded context in which images of the Campi Flegrei and Naples circulated beyond the local, they developed new ways to tether their visual languages in drawings, prints, and paintings to local identity.

This paper compares two art museums, both created during the French Revolution, that fostered national unity by promoting a cultural identity. By analyzing the use of preexisting architecture from the ancien régime, innovative displays of art and redefinitions of the museum visitor as an Enlightened citizen, this thesis explores the application of eighteenth-century philosophy to the formation of two museums. The first is the Musée Central des Arts in the Louvre and the second is the Musée des Monuments Français, both housed in buildings taken over by the Revolutionary government and present the seized property of the royal family and Catholic Church. Created in a violent and unstable political climate, these museums were an effective means of presenting the First Republic as a guardian of national property and protector of French identity.

En 1946, la parution à New York de l’Histoire de l’impressionnisme de John Rewald consacra l’aura d’une historiographie scientifique du mouvement, cautionnée par un investissement documentaire. Cette qualité l’opposait à un monde profane, dominé par une tradition orale et en particulier la réputation de certains témoignages. Un examen attentif ne saurait pourtant donner raison au postulat d’une nature exclusivement savante du document. Une documentation impressionniste se constitua en effet, dès le début du XXe siècle, par l’intermédiaire de producteurs hétéroclites, artistes, témoins, héritiers, critiques, journalistes, aussi bien qu’historiens professionnels, conservateurs et universitaires. Elle peut ainsi être envisagée autant comme le fruit d’une quête de la vérité factuelle que comme l’appropriation d’un objet d’étude populaire, à travers ses empreintes écrites et visuelles. L’appareillage des lectures de l’impressionnisme réunit de la sorte : les autographes ; les memorabilia, meubles ou immeubles chargés du souvenir des peintres ; les technologies photographique et cinématographique. Ces documents participaient en outre d’une culture visuelle plus vaste, incluant les monuments et les plaques commémoratives dans l’espace public, ou encore les motifs transformés par l’acte pictural en points de vue remarquables. L’étude historique et critique de l’écriture de l’histoire impressionniste comme (dé)monstration documentaire permet de revenir sur les circonstances sociales et visuelles de sa mise en œuvre, sur les enjeux de carrière auxquels elle participa, et sur les missions qui lui furent assignées au sein de différents discours sur l’art, savants et profanes. / In 1946 the publication of John Rewald’s History of Impressionism in New York consecrated the aura of the movement’s scientific historiography, supported by documentary investment. This quality confronted laymen’s narratives, which oral tradition and some witness’s accounts’ reputations dominated. Yet, a close consideration could not agree with the assumption of an exclusive scholarly nature of the document. Since the beginning of the 20th century, varied producers, such as artists, witnesses, heirs, critics, journalists, as well as professional historians, museum curators and academics formed an impressionist documentation. It thus can be interpreted as a quest for factual truth, as much as an appropriation of a research object through its written and visual marks. The equipment of impressionist readings hence gathered are: autographs; memorabilia, movable and physical assets as souvenirs of artists; photographic and cinematographic technologies. Moreover, these documents fit into a broader visual culture which included monuments and commemorative plaques of the public sphere, or motives transformed by pictorial acts into remarkable viewpoints. A historical and critical study of such a writing of history as documentary (de)monstration allows here to look back to its execution’s social and visual contexts, the career issues in which it participated, the goals that had been assigned to it within both scholars’ and laymen’s art discourses.

In this dissertation, I argue that Yves Bonnefoy, a major 20th-century French poet and a heir to French poetic modernity, pursued the dialogue between poetry and painting that has been central to French poetry, and in doing so praised some specific artists in the 20th century in a coherent manner, outlining what I call a counter-history of 20th century art. This counter-history, I argue, reveals his fundamental opposition to modern art. What emerges from the study of his prose writings on 20th-century art is the fact that Bonnefoy continued modernity yet critiqued it. In doing so he was influenced philosophically by Heidegger and poetically by Baudelaire, and also marked by his break with Surrealism and Breton. This leads me to conclude that Bonnefoy was a sort of "antimodern"; and that he laid out the foundations of an "antimodern" vision of 20th-century art. My research reveals a coherent family of artists emerging from Bonnefoy's writings, who saw themselves as part of this alternative art history.

Cette thèse est consacrée à l'étude des peintures d'un des manuscrits les plus importants de la tradition persane : une copie du Bustân de Sa‘di réalisée à la cour timouride de Herât vers 894 H./1488. Elle démontre que ces peintures incarnent un changement de fonction de la peinture, d'un dispositif de représentation à un objet de performance. Les peintures présentent plusieurs aspects inédits, qui contredisent la fonction illustrative généralement associée à la peinture persane de manuscrit. La surface de la peinture se couvre de formes qui n'ont aucun rapport avec le texte qu'elle est censée illustrer (chapitre I). Le peintre a également inséré des vers poétiques dans les peintures, qui évoquent le spectateur et constituent un panégyrique de l'image (chapitre II). On note aussi une miniaturisation des formes, visible en particulier à travers la prolifération de motifs linéaires infimes. La finesse de la ligne s'accompagne de la présence, dissimulée dans les détails de la composition, de la signature du peintre Behzâd (chapitre III). Ces aspects donnent à la peinture une dimension réflexive, qui détourne le spectateur du contenu de l'œuvre au profit d'un questionnement sur le statut de l'image et le talent du peintre. Ce changement de fonction s'explique par le rôle croissant du majlis, une assemblée où artistes, poètes et patrons se réunissent pour discuter des œuvres. Dans ce contexte qui annonce l'émergence des écrits historiographiques sur l'art, la peinture est conçue comme un objet de performance, où le peintre dissémine des éléments qui indiquent son talent, et que le spectateur peut utiliser en retour pour créer des discours et des fictions sur l'artiste. / This dissertation examines the paintings of one of the most important manuscripts of the Persianate book tradition: a copy of the Bustân of Sa‘di, executed in the Timurid court of Herât, ca. 894 H./1488. It argues that these paintings embody a shift in the understanding of painting from a device of representation to an object of performance. In the three chapters of the dissertation, I analyze several new characteristics that appear in the paintings of the Bustân. First, the painting becomes filled with elements that are not related to the text copied in the book (chapter I). Second, the monuments depicted are inscribed with poetic verses emphasizing the admiration of the viewer towards the paintings (chapter II). Lastly, the visual information becomes extremely miniaturized. The most meticulous details appear to be minute linear motifs. This emphasis on the line accords with the presence of the signature of the painter Behzâd, embedded in each composition (chapter III).All of these elements shift the attention of the viewer from the content represented in the paintings to the artistic process that led to their creation. By contrasting the paintings with the historical scenarios of their reception, this dissertation sheds light on a hitherto unnoticed aspect of late 9th/15th century Persian painting, one which foreshadows the development of art historiographical writings: the paintings signed “Behzâd” are conceived not only as representational devices, but also as objects of performance, that the painter uses to inscribe his gesture, and whose contemplation causes the viewer to elaborate discourses and fictions on the artist.

This thesis explores the reception of Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Italian art scholarship, 1755-1834. Winckelmann posed a problem: he was a presence in Italy that could not be ignored, yet the views he expounded were Italophobic and contentious to an Italian readership. In light of this dilemma, the research question asked is how did Italian art scholarship respond to Winckelmann in this period and why did it respond in that way. The core argument advanced is that there were two opposing reactions to Winckelmann, both of which were motivated by nationalism. On the one hand, Italian art scholars presented Winckelmann, his works, and his views as less attractive to an Italian readership than they would otherwise have appeared and, on the other hand, they presented him as more attractive. Through these reactions – termed foreignization and domestication respectively – art scholarship either defended against and ostracized Winckelmann or, when presented as less offensive, welcomed and embraced him amongst Italians. Thus this thesis argues that both reactions demonstrate a nationalistic attempt to portray Winckelmann in the manner most auspicious to the yet-to-be-united peninsula. In order to explore this response to the German scholar, the thesis centres on three media: translations, art literature, and artistic journalism. Both foreignization and domestication are evident throughout the sources analysed, yet there is a predominance of domestication, achieved through a variety of methods. This investigation adds to existing literature by examining the previously overlooked dilemma that Winckelmann posed. Moreover, employing the original conceptual framework of foreignization and domestication allows for a re-evaluation of how the art scholarship of the period engaged with the German scholar. Finally, demonstrating the infiltration of nationalistic sentiment in this period, even extending to Italian art scholarship, this thesis is the first to posit that nationalism played a significant role in Winckelmann's critical legacy.