Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Inaug.-diss.--Zürich. / Curriculum vitae. Bibliography: p. 6-8.

Jan Jiří Hering, painter at the beginning of the Counter-Reformation This diploma thesis deals with Prague based painter Jan Jiří Hering, whose art refers to the first half of the 17th century. The artist's early style is closely associated with the art inspired by the drawings of the Rudolfine Mannerist Era, while the later forms of his paintings show a rather rigid style. It may be presumed that several years spent in Rome during the pontificate of Sixt V. alongside with artistically inspiring atmosphere of Post-Rudolfinian's Prague and consecutive fine art assignments in service of the Catholic Church mainly focused on interior designs, played an important role in developing Hering's artistic expression. As the first Prague painter to begin the Counter-Reformation, Hering dealt with a new kind of fine art assignments in various ways. On the one hand, he used classical patterns to inspire Baroque appearance, dynamism and expression, and on the other hand, he composed pictures of saints according to medieval schemes by combining several scenes into one image space. Given the directly opposed expression of drawing production of the Rudolphine type and the paintings from the period following the Battle of the White Mountain, Hering acts as an artist of two faces. The thesis will attempt to clarify Hering's art and its ties to the first stage of the Counter-Reformation. The research will also focus on the artist's bipolarity in artistic expression with the research for possible parallels and inclusion in the context of Prague's painting scene.

Thesis--Groningen. / Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, p. [245]-260).

Niccolò Menghini’s marble sculpture of Santa Martina (ca. 1635) in the Church of Santi Luca e Martina in Rome belongs to the seventeenth-century genre of sculpture depicting saints as dead or dying. Until now, scholars have ignored the conceptual and formal concerns of the S. Martina, dismissing it as derivative of Stefano Maderno’s Santa Cecilia (1600). This thesis provides the first thorough examination of Menghini’s S. Martina, arguing that the sculpture is critically linked to the Post-Tridentine interest in the relics of early Christian martyrs. The disjunction between the sculpture’s severed head and seemingly living body reinforces the authority of Pietro da Cortona’s 1634 discovery of St. Martina’s relics beneath the old Church of SS. Luca e Martina. The detached and moveable head (rarely seen in early modern sculpture) evokes associations with cephalophory and inventively implies that St. Martina was somehow miraculously involved in the recovery of her own relics. / 2020-09-06

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Counter-Reformation treatises are typically dismissed as determiners of style. This dissertation challenges the prevailing view that rejects Counter-Reformation theory as key motivators of sacred style, and will prove that one treatise in particular, Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti's 1582 Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane, held a considerable amount of authority almost immediately after its publication. Through a close study of the Discorso's nature-centered language and its applicability to the Lombard tradition of presenting "tangible presences," it is evident that one artist, in particular, fulfilled Paleotti's vision for a "reformed" sacred style, and one who seldom appears in connection with the cardinal: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The interconnection of Paleotti's theology of nature, Lombard painting style, and the sacred works of Caravaggio is established through this contextual study of Counter-Reformation Rome in the late Cinquecento and early Seicento. Paleotti's Discorso is evaluated as a whole and as an expression of Paleotti's ideas on sacred art. This examination and analyses of Paleotti's major points and emphases shows how they collectively form a cohesive language and theoretical basis ("theology of nature") for the reformulation of sacred images based on naturalism. Careful readings of Cinquecento and Seicento literature on art (from Vasari to Bellori) draw correspondences between the words used to describe Lombard style and Paleotti's language in his Discorso. The dissemination of his "theology of nature" is demonstrated through reconstruction of Paleotti's Roman circle. Paleotti's important ties to the Oratorians, the Jesuits, the Accademia di San Luca, and his friendships with key cardinal-patrons in the circle of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, provided an ideal network for the dissemination of his ideas that would in fact put him into contact with Caravaggio. Caravaggio's plebian religious scenes and figures correlate with Paleotti's conviction that naturalism served as a bridge between painted subject and Christian viewer. This dissertation fills not only a critical lacuna in Counter-Reformation studies, but also opens new contextualizing avenues of research and dialogue on the intricate and determining relationship between Counter-Reformation theory and style, at which, at the heart, stand Cardinal Paleotti and Caravaggio. / Art History

Transubstantiation and the cult of Corpus Christi became crucial Counter-Reformation symbols which were assigned an even more significant role during the process of Catholic renewal from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. Practices outside Mass, such as pilgrimages, processions, and prayers in front of the consecrated host flourished, in particular, in early modern Bavaria. The former Duchy of Bavaria has generally been regarded as the archetypal ‘confessional' state, as the Bavarian dukes from the House of Wittelsbach took the lead in propagating the cult of the Eucharist. They acted as patrons of Baroque Catholicism which was presented to the public as an obvious visual marker of Catholic identity. This study therefore investigates how the Eucharist was popularised in the Catholic duchy between 1550 and 1750, focusing on three major themes: pilgrimages, confraternities, and the Corpus Christi procession. This study does not, however, approach the renewal of Catholicism in terms of a top-down process implemented by the Wittelsbach dukes as a method of stately power and control. Rather than arguing in favour of a state-sponsored piety imposed from above, this work explores the formation of Catholic confessional identity as a two-way-process of binding together elite and popular piety, and emphasizes the active role of the populace in constituting this identity. This is why this investigation draws primarily on research from local archives, using a rich body of both textual and visual evidence. Focusing especially on the visual aspects of Catholic piety, this project works towards an interdisciplinary approach in order to understand the ways in which Eucharistic devotion outside Mass was presented to and received by local communities within particular visual environments.

Few would refute the didactic nature of stained glass windows, paintings, and sculptures used in Spanish cathedrals during the Counter-Reformation. For hundreds of years the artistic renderings of biblical narratives and of Catholic dogmata had aided both the literate and illiterate alike to internalize the teachings of the Church. In contrast, the seemingly complex web of semiotic signs that form part of the aural and visual spectacle of the auto sacramental has understandably led some to question if such productions could have truly held much meaning for commoners with little formal education. However, as a theatrical genre, the auto sacramental does not deviate much from the literal meaning and allegorical symbolism of the more static art forms that adorn cathedral walls and altarpieces. The usage of ships, highwaymen, and courtroom trials represent some of the most prominent symbols utilized by playwrights to create a Counter-Reformatory drama that facilitated the audiences' ability to decode the plays' allegorical meaning. The repeated use of these semiotic signs allowed the culturally literate public in urban centers across Spain to draw upon their intertextual knowledge of such symbols to appreciate and understand these Corpus Christi performances. Modern readers less familiar with these semiotic signs and their meaning experience an additional handicap because of their inability to see the visual spectacle designed, if not as the primary didactic tool of the genre, then at least as an effective complement to the instructive dialogue that takes place between the different characters of the auto. In spite of these additional challenges that the modern reader faces, the auto sacramental offers some insight into sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain that cannot be found in the more secular genres of the time. The added effort to investigate and understand the missing links of intertextual knowledge open a window that offers a panorama of a largely unexplored landscape of early-modern, Spanish society.

In this PhD thesis I offer an examination of the work of Jesuit Andrea Pozzo (1642-1709), an artist known primarily for his works of perspectival fresco painting. Pozzo's development, his career and his multifaceted practice––which included painting, scenography, architecture, and a two-volume treatise on perspective–– together serve as a prime case study for understanding the relationship of the religious art and architecture of the seventeenth century to the period's culture of ritual and performance. Pozzo's work, I argue, is religious theatre, and the key to reading both his ephemeral scenographies and the permanent works of painting and architecture lies in religious performance. Each of the works, I contend, functions as a work of religious theatre: architectural space, images, narrative, illusion and light are used to communicate messages, to engage the senses and the intellect, to activate the memory and the imagination, and to directly involve the spectator both internally and externally as a performer. In my first two chapters I present an analysis of the environment in which Pozzo emerged, beginning with the religious, intellectual and visual culture of the Jesuits, before turning to the religious theatre of Northern Italy. Here I concentrate on the Counter-Reform culture of religious spectacle, before arriving at Pozzo’s first recorded scenographies. In addition to their ritual function, I demonstrate how these works establish many of the recurring visual themes and techniques we see across Pozzo's work. In the third chapter I study Pozzo's earliest surviving major painting commission: the church of San Francesco Saverio at Mondovì. I present the church as a teatro sacro—a permanent ritual scenography of architecture and painting which evokes the elaborate ritual processions of the time. My fourth chapter focuses on the ephemeral scenographic works of Pozzo’s Roman period. Pozzo’s innovations in scenography and perspectival illusionism in Rome quickly establish his reputation and lead to the major commissions in the church of Sant'Ignazio, which I discuss with several major Roman works in my final chapter. The examination of the Roman projects returns us to the central theme of my thesis: art and architecture as theatre; both a setting for religious ritual and a means of persuasion through intellectual and spiritual engagement of the observer in a ritual performance. In order to pursue this line of argument I have consulted a wide array of sources and secondary literature across a number of fields. Important primary sources studied include Pozzo's two-volume treatise, Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum (1693,1700), Jesuit documents and archived correspondence, eighteenth-century biographies of Pozzo, prints and commemorative publications of festivals, works of classical authors, and theological writings of major figures in the seventeenth century. This project embraces a wide range of topics including painting, perspective, architecture, illusion, theatre and scenography, ritual and spectacle, theology, philosophy, early modern science, Counter-Reform religious culture, and Jesuit history.