Of the eighty-five known Roman mosaics that depict Orpheus charming the animals, or the theatrum, eight of these mosaics are located in Southwest Britain. The Orpheus mosaics were laid at the end of the third through the fourth centuries A.D. in lavish Roman villas at the sites of Barton Farm, Brading, Littlecote Park, Newton St. Loe, Wellow, Whatley, Withington, and Woodchester. Along with the central image of Orpheus, all eight mosaics contain Bacchic iconography. While the Orpheus mosaics in Roman Britain are the topic of several publications, none have addressed the appearance of Bacchic imagery in conjunction with that of Orpheus. This dissertation investigates the relationship between Orpheus and Bacchus in the Classical world in order to explain the frequent appearance of Bacchic iconography on Orpheus mosaics in southwest Britain. In order to understand how the Roman aristocracy viewed the relationship between Orpheus and Bacchus, this dissertation explores three avenues of study. First, the more then seventy-five figures and objects that are part of the Bacchic iconographic repertoire associated with the Orpheus mosaics are identified and their connection with Bacchus established. Second, the connection between Orpheus and Bacchus in the Greek Classical Period is explored to establish a literary and artistic tradition from which the Roman tradition emerged. Third, an examination of Greek and Latin literature from the third century B.C. to the sixth century A.D. is undertaken to describe how Orpheus was perceived by pagan and Christian Roman elite as the founder of the Bacchic mysteries and the author of the sacred texts used in these mysteries. Furthermore, the evidence presented within this dissertation demonstrates that the Orpheus mosaics in southwest Britain were placed in public areas of wealthy Roman villas to reflect the homeowners' knowledge of both the past and present philosophical and theological beliefs. These mosaics advertise the provincial Roman aristocrat's Classical education while maintaining their association with the city of Rome and the imperial court in Constantinople.

Ocularium Lucis: Light and Optical Theory in Guarino Guarini's Church of San Lorenzo is intended to provide theoretical advancement in the understanding of the work of the Baroque architect Guarino Guarini by employing his Church of San Lorenzo as an example. In Part One an historical account of Guarini's life and work is presented. In Part Two, Guarini's methods as an architect are analyzed according to their intersection with the philosophy of science, geometry and astronomy, presented within his many treatises on such subjects. A syllogistic correlation is demonstrated in Guarini's writings between the study of optics, geometry and architecture, which reveals that the architectonic forms which he creates are configured according to a profound interest in light and opticality. In this manner, Guarini's Church of San Lorenzo is understood as an instrument of light and a vessel of divine illumination.

In February 1877, publisher Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington began release of a monthly serial called Street Life in London, by journalist Adolphe Smith and photographer John Thomson. The work aimed to reveal to readers, through novel use of photographic illustrations combined with essays, the conditions of a life of poverty in London. Appearing also as a book in late 1877, Street Life in London did not achieve commercial success in either format and was cancelled after just one year's run. This dissertation aims to demonstrate how Street Life in London was subject to and shaped by a variety of interests and forces, to understand why it failed, and to place it within the overarching contexts of Victorian social exploration and street typology. Historians of photography have justifiably praised Street Life in London as a foundational work of socially-conscious photography, John Thomson's images breaking--sometimes radically--with prior models for depiction of the poor. But they have tended to regard it primarily as a book rather than a serial, and primarily as a book of photographs, not a publication in which text and image work in concert. This dissertation examines the vital contributions of both Adolphe Smith and John Thomson, combining close reading of images, text and sequencing throughout the serial publication to treat the work as a photo-text. It reinscribes the work within the contexts of both authors' overall careers, relates it to prior pictorial and literary models for representation of poverty, and demonstrates the roles of other players such as the publisher and critics in shaping the publication. Ultimately this study places Street Life in London within a matrix of Victorian discourses on poverty, photography, and typology, among others, demonstrating that it was contingent, conflicted, and ultimately incomplete: a flawed but fascinating commentary on the complex and multifarious Victorian era from which it emerged.

This study addresses eighteenth-century illustrations of Mexico City's Alameda Park. The study reads views of Alameda Park for information about the cultural, political, and economic topographies of the colonial city. Alameda Park offered a place of leisure that was free and open to all members of society. It is argued that as a popular, public setting the Alameda represented a discursive space where cultural opinions were shaped. These beliefs found expression in physical objects: views of Alameda Park. Despite the informational value of these expressions, views of Alameda Park remain an untapped resource on account of the ambiguity surrounding their classification as either an objective map or an artful landscape. This study takes a visual culture approach; it calls attention to the ways views of Alameda Park utilize the conventions of both map and landscape. The study analyzes four views of the park. Each view illustrates a moment in colonial history. These include: the 1719 founding of a convent for Amerindian women—the first in two hundred years of colonial rule, the 1774 opening of the Hospicio de Pobres—a facility that incarcerated vagrants in order to rehabilitate them, the circa 1775 renovation of Alameda Park—a project joining citywide efforts to better police the population, and the 1778 promulgation of the Royal Pragmatic on Marriages—a bill designed to preserve Spanish hegemony in a racially-diverse context. Each view speaks a separate narrative; by reading the object, audiences gain detailed information about the shifting cultural landscape of eighteenth-century Mexico City.