The Novgorod icon of Divine Wisdom is a great innovation of fifteenth-century Russian art. It represents the winged female Sophia flanked by the Theotokos and John the Baptist. Although the icon has a contemporaneous commentary and it exercised a profound influence on Russian cultural history (inspiring, among others, the sophiological theory of the turn of the twentieth century), its meaning, together with the dating and localisation of the first appearance of the iconography, has remained a great art-historical conundrum. This thesis sheds new light on this icon and explores the message, roots, function and historical context of the first, most emblematic and most enigmatic Russian allegorical iconography. In contrast to its recent interpretations as a Trinitarian image with Christ-Angel, it argues that the winged Sophia is the personification of the Orthodox Church. The Novgorod Wisdom icon represents the Church of Hagia Sophia, that is Orthodoxy, as it was perceived in fifteenth-century Rus’: the icon together with its commentary was a visual-textual response to the Florentine Union between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, signed in 1439 but rejected by the Russians in 1441. The thesis is based on detailed interdisciplinary research, utilising simultaneously the methodologies of philology, art history, theology and history. The combined analysis reveals that the great innovation of the Novgorod Sophia icon is that it amalgamates ecclesiological and sophiological iconographies in new ways. Hence the dissertation is also an innovative attempt to survey how Orthodoxy was perceived and visualized in medieval Rus’. It identifies the theological questions that constituted the basis of Russian Orthodox identity in the Middle Ages and reveals the significance of the polemics between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches for the history of Medieval Russian art.

Cases of Italian embedded self-portraiture appear in the sacred art of some of the most renowned artists of the Cinquecento and early Seicento, artists such as Bronzino, Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto, and Caravaggio. This thesis first examines the history of the practice from its origins in Quattrocento Florence and Venice then argues that an important development in the function and presentation of embedded self-portraits can be observed as Cinquecento artists experienced broad shifts in religious and cultural life as a result of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. It also assesses three works by Caravaggio to suggest that embedding self-portraits in religious art was a variable and meaningful convention that allowed artists to inject both their personal and public emotions. This thesis argues that in the Cinquecento and early Seicento, the very gesture of embedding a self-portrait in sacred artworks provided a window into an artist's individuality, personality, and piety.

Les peintures murales de Baouît ont suscité dès leur découverte l’intérêt des historiens de l’art et en particulier des spécialistes de l’Orient chrétien. Devenues un corpus emblématique de l’art copte, à la charnière de l’Antiquité tardive et du haut Moyen Âge, elles représentent une manne iconographique d’autant plus exceptionnelle que les décors de cette période sont rares autour du bassin méditerranéen. Tout en se faisant l’écho des édifices protobyzantins en grande partie disparus, elles rendent compte d’une communauté monastique florissante au début de l’époque arabe. Elles constituent également une source précieuse, complémentaire des textes, sur la vie spirituelle des moines d’Égypte. La présente étude est le fruit d’une synthèse opérée entre la relecture de la documentation ancienne et les données apportées par les investigations récentes. La reprise des travaux archéologiques sur le site invitait à reconsidérer l’ensemble du matériel pictural mis au jour au début du XXe siècle, en vue notamment de préciser, à la lumière des programmes iconographiques et des nouvelles découvertes, la fonction et la datation desdites chapelles. Enfin, elle apporte un éclairage unique sur les peintres qui ont œuvré à Baouît et qui ont transmis, par l’intermédiaire de leur travail pictural, une image de leur communauté et une part de la spiritualité égyptienne. / Since their discovery, the wall paintings from Bawit aroused art historians’ interest, especially among scholars of the Christian East. They are an emblematic corpus of Coptic art, in the transition period between the Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Their significance is even more exceptional, considering the fact that they are very few around the Mediterranean basin. While echoing the largely extinct early byzantine buildings, they reflect a flourishing monastic community at the beginning of the Arab era. They are also a valuable source of information, complementary to the texts, about the spiritual life of the Egyptian monks. This study is the result of a synthesis between the proofreading of the archives and the data provided by the recent investigations. The new start of excavations on the site invited us to reconsider all the pictorial material discovered at the beginning of the 20th century, in order to clarify the function and the date of the said “chapels”, in the light of the iconographic programs and new discoveries. Finally, it gives a unique insight of the painters who have worked at Bawit and who have transmitted, through their pictorial work, an image of their community and a part of the Egyptian spirituality.

Giovanni Boldini's La Zingara is an image fraught with mystery. As a lesser-known artist, scholarship on him and this painting is sparse. This thesis details the innovations that Boldini exhibited as an artist working in nineteenth-century France, using the lenses of feminist and Marxist art historical readings for a new interpretation of this piece. Participating in the oppressive systems of capitalism, sexism, and prejudice, Giovanni Boldini created the image of La Zingara for personal gain. Painting a subject from a marginalized community, the Romani, Boldini benefitted from those systems. He "others"his Italian heritage and modern art developments to construct a portraiture totally unique to him and his oeuvre. While other artists worked on similar subjects at the time, Giovanni Boldini set himself apart through his updating of classic styles, drawing upon on the Christian iconography of the Byzantine tradition, the portraiture of Trecento and the Renaissance, and some ancient Roman conventions. Additionally, the artist capitalizes on the growing interest and commodification of japonisme to create a highly marketable work. Furthermore, this thesis explores issues of gender and class to acknowledge the difficult place that women have filled in the history of art. Finally, this thesis argues that Boldini deserves a greater place in the history of art.

The Massacre of Chios (1824) by Eugéne Delacroix illustrates the titular genocide from the Greek War of Independence. This genocide was a veritable razing of the entire island by Ottoman Turks in 1822. Today, a replica of Delacroix's painting resides on the island inside the entrance of the Chios Byzantine Museum, located in a converted mosque built on the ruins of a Christian church. This site is a case for the existence of non-Western temporalities, including liturgical and Aegean temporalities, as they pertain to the commemoration of the massacre through interaction with the replica. These temporalities are not causal or linear as in the West. On Chios, everyday interactions with history happen through the orthodox devotions and concomitant emotions of the present, with temporally transcendent icons, relics, and rituals promoting the imbrication of temporalities. The layout of the mosque, in its simplicity, conforms roughly to the plan of a Greek Orthodox church with the museum space organized to emphasize this, encouraging a liturgical temporality. Given that Chiots remember the massacre victims as tantamount to saints, the saturation of Christian elements in Delacroix's composition communes with the museum space to create an active site of memory, with the replica functioning like the Holy Greek Orthodox icons in the adjacent room, inviting a liturgical temporality. A comparable site, Agio Minas, a major massacre site in Southern Chios, also exhibits genocide victims as saints through eikonic imagery; here, victims' remains are displayed as relics alongside an icon of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, setting the stage, so to speak, for the naos where blood still stains the stone floor. In a similar way, the replica located in the "narthex" of the museum mediates a preparatory experience that overlays a narrative of Christian martyrdom onto the museum's "naos," where visitors engage with the icon collection. The proximity of replica and Byzantine collection overlays Chios' destruction with that of Constantinople's, collapsing time and presenting the two as related events. The Chios Byzantine Museum exemplifies what anthropologist Nicolas Argenti has termed "Aegean temporality," where past and present overlap in physical and incorporeal sites of memory. Orthodox icons do just that: transcendent and a-temporal by nature, their efficacy lies in bringing the pictured figure into the present moment and "enfleshing" remembrance as a current reality. The replica Massacre of Chios likewise acts as an active a-temporal object. Because of affordances granted by the narthex space and eikonic associations, it sacralizes the museum space into a living site of memory. With Aegean temporality facilitating a constant re-experiencing of the massacre, the massacre's presence and potency is not something left in the past. The painting's status as a semi-icon supports the immediacy of the massacre, as the viewer spiritually interacts with the image in the present.

Cette thèse porte sur l’iconographie des Rois mages du Xe au XIIe siècle à travers l’étude de son adaptation sur supports monumentaux dans l’Occident latin, pour déceler la reformulation du thème dans la « société féodale ». Pour ce faire, le premier fil conducteur est la conception du statut royal qu’acquièrent les Mages de l’Évangéliste Matthieu au Xe siècle, analysée parallèlement à celle de la figure dirigeante élaborée sur cette période et décrite par Marc Bloch dans Les Rois thaumaturges (1924) et par Ernst Kantorowicz dans Les deux corps du Roi (1957). L’optique est de définir la place des nouveaux Rois mages dans les intrications de liens « d’homme à homme » dépeintes par Marc Bloch. Le second est la notion d’espace féodal, étudiée en profondeur par Robert Fossier, autour du concept « d’encellulement », et par Alain Guerreau qui applique cette idée à l’espace sacré. La notion d’espace féodal régit à la fois le corpus des décors étudiés, leur intégration dans l’espace ecclésial et la conception de l’espace iconique lui-même. Une analyse phénoménologique fait ainsi apparaître une figure des personnages dans l’« imaginaire féodal », pleinement investis de la fonction royale et de son aura, trouvant leur place dans un système mental que l’analyse de grands ensembles iconographiques permet de définir. En tant que figures universelles abstraites, les Rois mages forment ainsi une projection claire de l’idée de groupe, modulée selon diverses consciences fédératrices, de sa cellule la plus restreinte à l’universalité chrétienne. / This dissertation deals with the iconography of the Three Kings from the Xth to the XIIth century, by means of a study of its adaptation on monumental decoration in Latin Europe, so as to unravel how it was adapted by feudal society. In order to do so, the first question is that of the new royal status acquired in the Xth century by the Magi from the Gospel of Matthew, analyzed thanks to the concept of “ruler figure” that emerged at the time and was depicted by Marc Bloch in Les Rois thaumaturges (1924) and Ernst Kantorowicz in the The King’s Two Bodies (1957). The aim is to define where the newly defined Three Kings stand in the intricate network of “ties between man and man” theorized by Marc Bloch. The second question is that of the notion of feudal space, studied in depth by Robert Fossier, with his concept of “encellulement” (1982), and Alain Guerreau, who applies this idea to the sacred space. The notion of feudal space informs the corpus of studied pictures, their integration in the ecclesial space and the conception of the iconic space itself. A phenomenological analysis reveals the features of the characters in the “feudal imaginary”, fully invested with their royal function and its aura, and finding their place in a mental system whose mode of functioning can be unveiled thanks to the study of great iconographic sets. Being abstract universal figures, the Three Kings constitute a clear picture of the notion of social group, modulated according to various unifying consciences, from the most basic unit to Christian Holism.

La thèse traite du catholicisme en Basse-Bretagne, du début du 19è siècle à nos jours, à travers l'étude des bannières de procession présentes dans les églises du diocèse de Quimper et Léon , soit le département du Finistère. Les quatre parties s'organisent autour de la production des bannières, de leur comptage à partir des différents types d'inventaires disponibles, des piétés qu'elles mettent en évidence, voire des évolutions sociales dont elles témoignent.L'approche est quantitative et qualitative. Cela implique une visite systématique des églises et la conservation de traces photographiques de toutes leurs bannières. Il est fait appel aux sources classiques que sont les rapports des visites canoniques et à d'autres qui le sont moins, comme les inventaires de 1906.L'étude de la vie de deux paroisses, un doyenné datant du concordat et une anciennne ville épiscopale, a permis de mettre en évidence les mobiles générateurs de l'acquisition de bannières. Si les bannières paroissiales sont de règle, les bannières de congrégations témoignent du dynamisme des groupes de piété et de leur évolution au fil des siècles.Des approches quantitatives permettent de proposer une hypothèse de riposte, par bannières interposées, à la politique des lois laïques, parallèlement aux évolutions sociales.Si l'iconographie montre une influence lointaine des arts, c'est surtout l'importance du négoce qui apparaît, laissant cependant des possibilités d'expression d'une créativité, voire d'une spiritualité différente. Le chapitre final est consacré aux bannières réalisées à l'occasion de la Mission 2012. / This thesis is about catholicism in Lower Brittany through the study of processional banners from the beginning of the 19th century to our days. These were found in tthe churches of the diocese of Quimper and Leon , in the french county of Finistere. The thesis is divided into four parts : the production of banners, their counting from the various types of available inventories, devotion which they highlight, even social evolution of which testify.The approach is quantitative and qualitative. It involves a systematic visit of churches and the conservation of a photographic record of all their banners. Classic sources are used such as the reportsof the canonical visits, and others vho are less so the inventories of 1906.The study of the life of two parishes, a deanship dating from the concordat and a former episcopal city, allowed to highlight the generative motives of the acquisition of banners. If parochial banners are the norm, the banners of congregations reflect the dynamism of the groups of devotion and their evolution in the course of the centuries.Quantitative approaches allow to propose a hypothesis of reponse to the policy of the Laic laws by interposed banners, in parallel to social evolutions. If the iconography shows a distant influence of the arts, it is especially the importance of trade that appears. However it leaves possibilities of expression for a different creativity and even for a different spirituality. The last chapters concerrn the revival starting from the seond third of the 20th century. The last chapter is dedicated to the banners made for the Mission 2012.