Historically, the Roman Catholic Church has used visual imagery as a powerful didactic tool to support and validate the patriarchal structure of the Christian faith. This study focuses on the prevalent visual portrayal of Mary Magdalene as a penitent prostitute. This visual conceptualisation is exposed as an unjust condemnation of a biblical woman whose apostolic calling is validated by the Gospel accounts. A critical examination of the Christian iconography within a representative selection of Mary Magdalene imagery further identifies a bias of condemnation towards women's sexuality. Thus, Mary Magdalene is epitomised as the archetypal immoral woman, and unfavourably contrasted to the chaste purity of the Virgin Mary. The study evaluates the ethical implications of this mis-representation, and proposes, as a corrective to the imbalance, the creative actualisation of positive woman-affirming imagery. · An extended chronological index of Mary Magdalene imagery is appended to the study as Appendix A / M.Th. (Theological Ethics)

This study identifies and addresses representations of Eve and the Madonna exhibited at seven well-known London venues during the Victorian era (1838-1901). The subjects of Eve and the Madonna are here selected for detailed analysis from the broader context of Victorian religious subject pictures, a category of Victorian art that remains arguably under-researched. Nineteenth-century religious art was rooted in a Romantic sensibility and was invested with the purpose of providing a balm during a course, commercial industrial age, which, like the Enlightenment that preceded it, heralded the birth of modern life. Religious art of the nineteenth-century was promoted for consumption by the emerging middle class as a balm to the material age. However, the art that reflected this anti-modern, anti-capitalist impulse served, paradoxically, as both an antidote to and a participant in the materialist marketplace. During the mid-nineteenth century, a moralizing, instructional value was invested in art and religious subjects in general, which experienced a peak in exhibition c. 1850. By the 1860s, however, British art was characterized by a less narrative and didactic sensibility, reflected in Aestheticism, which was concerned with ‘a separation of art from the concerns of ‘real life,’ as well as the Venetian Renaissance. In the 188s, Symbolism emerged, characterized not by style, but a sensibility, which included preoccupation with emotions, dream states, mythologies and religion, innocence, sin, beauty, motherhood, sex, disease, death. Although they were traditional figures, the Madonna and Eve were each invested with, and emblematic of, some of these fin-de-siècle themes. The seven prominent Victorian London exhibition venues examined range from conservative promoters of academicism to sites that promoted the risk-takers of the nineteenth century, such as the Grosvenor Gallery and the New Gallery. These were venues where national tastes were codified, national heroes were made and international artistic values were reexamined and reevaluated. This dissertation examines a nineteenth-century trajectory, from the early Victorian era through the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, identifying styles if art through which to biblical icons of feminine identity, Eve and the Madonna, were expressed, and examining the ideas invested in them, all within the context of the Victorian revival of interest in Renaissance art and the stylistic trends in nineteenth-century art making.

This thesis considers the evolution of narrative art in Judaism and early Christianity, and deals in particular with narrative figure scenes in which Moses is the principal figure. Current theories, espoused by the late Kurt Weitzmann, posit the existence of a Jewish illustrated manuscript tradition dating back to the Hellenistic period, which could have been the source for Old Testament scenes in art. In the light of these proposals and taking into account more recent narrative theory, this study of early Moses scenes in art takes up the suggestion that a large range of visual narrative scenes, closely following a given text and with a tendency for these scenes to be arranged in narrative sequence, might indicate the presence of a lost illustrated manuscript which artists are using as their model. Stories about Moses originate from within Judaism, and are mentioned also in Christian texts for the first three centuries AD, when Moses is regarded as the forerunner of Christ. While earlier Jewish art largely conformed to the proscription against figural art, narrative figure scenes illustrating Old Testament stories are known from the late second century AD. In the synagogue at Dura Europos (AD c.250), the range of biblical imagery includes five or six scenes illustrating stories from Exodus and Numbers, although Weitzmann�s criteria are only partially fulfilled. During the third century AD, when the earliest Christian art is found, Christians use Old Testament imagery as well, including a cycle of scenes illustrating the story of Jonah. The decoration in the baptistery in the Christian house at Dura, like that in the synagogue there, shows some interest in visual narrative, although in this case no Moses scenes are involved. At this time there is only one Moses story certainly illustrated in Christian art, The miracle of the spring (based on Exodus 17), which occurs in funerary art in Rome. The iconography for this scene is used "emblematically" to promote ideas rather than stories about Moses. If at this time Christian artists know of a narrative cycle involving Moses, they show very little interest in reflecting this.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 1983. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 230-235). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Vita. Advisor : Jeffrey Muller. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 441-491).

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This project combines metalsmithing and calligraphy into an expressive art form through which the artist can celebrate and share both her understanding of life and the creative, loving God who motivates her art.The rich, calligraphic imagery of the Hebrew, Uncial (early Christian), and Italic alphabets was chosen as the design source.A solid understanding and skillful implementation of a variety of metalworking techniques and calligraphic skills were necessary to turn concept into form, idea into language.Designed and executed for this project were four liturgical objects, two non-functional forms, three functional forms, and nine pieces of jewelry. / Department of Art

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