Scholars often describe Caravaggios paintings as inspired by scenes from quotidian life. A few see his work as influenced by popular dramas such as the commedia dellarte. While one might think these are conflicting explanations, close examination shows that a wide variety of popular dramatic forms was as much part of daily life as daily life was part of popular drama. Caravaggios theatricality is the careful depiction of quotidian life, expressed through the familiar language of popular dramatic forms, a sort of visual vernacular known to all classes. Caravaggio appropriated specific elements both found in a wide variety of popular theatrical media and recommended in treatises on oration, preaching, Jesuit spiritual exercises, and memory models, because they were proven to engage the emotions and make imagery memorable. Caravaggio went against painterly tradition and filled his shallow pictorial spaces with sharp side-lighting, deep shadow, and personages based on everyday life to make his paintings distinctive and to bolster his reputation among the general public, who was fascinated with dramatic entertainment. In Spanish Lombardy, Caravaggio saw public spectacles hosted by Spanish officials; the Entierro, a torch-lit procession with live actors and painted statuary; stage-like Sacro Monte chapels filled with polychrome statuary; and action packed and often violent illustrations from epics such as the vastly popular Orlando Furioso, which was frequently represented in street theater. In Rome, he frequently saw secular and religious street dramas and associated with elites, such as Cardinal del Monte and the Colonna family, who used various forms of popular theater to enhance their reputations. In southern Italy, Caravaggio looked to Italian/Spanish hybrids of local drama, travelling commedia dellarte troupes, local and Iberian drama and literature, and the Neapolitan presepe for inspiration. In the south, he transformed his polished Roman painting style into one with rough, brushwork, dark palette, somber mood, and deep psychological complexity, reflecting the current writings of the Spanish mystics, local dramatists and memory scholars. Thus, the artists work serves as a lens that focuses, with illuminating intensity, on the wide range of dramatic forms found in Spanish Italy that were common sights in daily life.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate some of the ways in which diagrammatic structures may have informed the layout and experience of architectural space in the middle ages. The Cathedral of Chartres is a unique case because the post-1194 building and its decorative program survive relatively complete and because the preceding century saw at Chartres the emergence of a sophisticated school of thought, many of whose precepts may be shown to bear upon the design of the monument. The writings of William of Conches and John of Salisbury in particular I consider central to an intellectual debate between Chartrain Masters and their intellectual rivals the Cornificians. The library at Chartres still preserves several manuscript copies of medieval texts and commentaries pertinent to this debate. In turn, I suggest this is fundamental to reading the decorative program of the cathedral and to experiencing its spaces. Thus the monument represents a fusion of disciplines which in turn may serve as an enlightening means of understanding the middle ages in general, its art, its architecture, and its viewer. Using the Cathedral of Chartres as an object of study, an environmental experience, and as a multi-vantage point visual dialogue, this dissertation examines the idea of medieval diagrams as templates for medieval architectural construction and conceptualization. By examining the layout of the medieval stained glass that retains its original position, I claim that the themes of the windows serve as placemarkers for diagramming. The windows are also examined individually as separate entities with their own diagrammatic orderings that suggest that the small scale, as well as the large scale, is organized in a diagrammatic way. Ultimately, I suggest that a diagrammatic structure underlies the layout and design of the windows, based on the ideas of Chartrain master William of Conches. I suggest that this diagrammatic structure forms the basis of a discourse between the Chartrains and their intellectual rivals, the Cornificians. Central to the argument is the disposition of the Signs of the Zodiac in the cathedral and a calendrical layout for the hagiographic windows.

The period of Six Dynasties (221-581CE) has traditionally been thought of as a time when the Five Barbarians brought disorder to China. During this period, present-day Northern China was ruled by non-Han leaders, including the Xianbei, a pastoral people from Chinas northern frontier who founded the Northern Zhou Dynasty. In addition, Chinese historical texts from the Six Dynasties refer to merchant barbarians generally assumed to be Sogdians, who lived in oasis states in Central Asia in present-day Uzbekistan and came to China across the Silk Road. Most scholarship has assumed that the period of Northern Zhou ruled by non-Chinese leaders was sinicized, and the adoption of Chinese features in burial and artifacts in foreigners tombs is evidence of that acculturation process. This dissertation, however, uses newly excavated materials from tombs dated to the Northern Zhou period, including the tombs of Xianbei leaders, Xianbei and Chinese generals, and Sogdian merchants, and proposes that visual arts and mortuary ritual played a role in creating and/or maintaining multiple sociopolitical and cultural identities for these residents of Northern Zhou. The theorization of power, agency, and cultural identity in recent publications has helped me analyze the processes involved in the construction of individual identity, group boundaries, and the interrelationships between socio-cultural groups. Theories of agency have helped me focus on choices made by different social and occupational groups. This dissertation has explored how the patterns of use of mortuary objects documented multiple identities for these three classes listed above with specific ethnic backgrounds: the sovereigns who were Xianbei; the military class of Xianbei and Han-Chinese; and the merchant class of Sogdians. I have discussed how aspects of political, military, and merchant life in the Northern Zhou period created a setting that contributed to multiple roles and identities in each group. My study has demonstrated the construction of multiple identities among elites and how they consistently distinguished themselves from other members of society. This dissertation will be the first contextual analysis focused on the visualization of class, social roles and cultural affiliation by examining mortuary art in the Northern Zhou.

The canonic Chinese theme Pictures of Agriculture and Sericulture 耕織圖 (Chinese: gengzhitu, Japanese: kōshokuzu) was transmitted to Japanese painting circles from the fifteenth- through the nineteenth- centuries. Paintings with agrarian motifs decorated the palaces of the Ashikaga shoguns and the abbots quarters in the Daisenin temple, and were reproduced many times by masters and disciples of the Kano school throughout the Edo period (1603-1868). From the eighteenth century on, agrarian vignettes also appeared in woodblock prints of various types: from the encyclopedic guidebook to the erotic color print. My dissertation focuses on this theme as a case study of painterly transmission. The first chapter compares the wall-paintings in the Daisenin with earlier Chinese paintings, and demonstrates that Japanese painters consciously altered the original figures in order to change their Confucian messages. Thus, I propose that the transmission of k!shokuzu exemplifies that painters and patrons consciously appropriated this theme to convey varied messages in changing ideological discourses. In the second chapter I argue that the Japanization of Chinese farming figures and motifs reveals that Kano painters used printed painting manuals imported from China to a much greater extent than has hitherto been suggested. Additionally, I link the rise of proto-nationalistic schools of thought to the Japanization of the portrayed landscape. In the third chapter, I concentrate on the print artist Tachibana Morikuni (1679-1749) and argue that his popular painting manuals cannot be the source through which Kano secret models were leaked to ukiyo-e artists. Rather, his work was part of a growing trend in the Japanese market of using printed books as painting manuals. Later print artists, such as Harunobu (fl. 1765-1770), acknowledged their transmission of Morikunis models by parodying his books. The fourth chapter surveys the history of Pictures of Sericulture. I link the lack of sericultural images and the inattention to their study to their association with a female audience. I also detail how weaving women in ukiyo-e served as parodies of Neo-Confucianism and in later Meiji-period prints as propaganda for imperial technology.

After the invention of photography, modern theoreticians were hopeful that photographys faithfulness to nature would resolve painterly deficiencies by providing a more recognizable and convincing reproduction. Paradoxically, the advent of photography did not improve upon paintings failures, but exhibited an inherent problem. In particular, aspects of temporality hindered photographys ability to reproduce a convincing likeness. Concerning this issue, Gombrich opines that it could be [] true to say that we never see [in reality] what the instantaneous photograph reveals, for we gather up successions of movements, and never see static configurations as such.1 Because the constant motion of the eyes as well as the ephemeral nature of existence limits perception, I am studying the techniques used to convey aspects of likeness in the celebrity photo-portraits by Henri Cartier-Bresson. To establish what stylistic choices contribute to a recognizable portrait, I will analyze Bressons photographical methods which he delineated in The Decisive Moment. Bressons concept of the decisive moment, far from falling within modernist accounts of photographys medium specificity, actually traces back to a much older discussion, one concerned with unearthing relations between photographs and paintings. As examples of this discussion, I look to ideas expressed by late nineteenth-century photographer-scientist Francis Galton and police officer Alphonse Bertillon. These theorists ascertained that photographs are not representative of a sum-total or synthetic image which humans perceive, but are indicative of an imperceptible instant. While Bressons conception of photographic likeness relates to ideas espoused by Francis Galton, I also prove that Bressons work is distinct from Galtons as it relates to human typicality. Whereas Galtons ideas concerning likeness relate to a need to arrive at ideal types, a comparison of Bressons work with broader developments in the history of the concept of objectivity and image making reveals the ways in which Bressons conception of typicality is distinct from that of Galton. 1 Ernst Hans Gombrich, The Image and the Eye: Further studies in the psychology of pictorial representation. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1982, p. 50.

This dissertation focuses on the refashioning of Veronas urban space and identity during the Fascist regime. Traditionally, Fascist-sponsored restoration projects were interpreted as top-down undertakings decided and directly controlled by central state authority. Only recently have studies begun to test this thesis and show the involvement of local forces in the reshaping of Fascist Italys urban spaces. My research builds on this recent scholarship by showing the active role played by Veronas socio-political elites in the refashioning of the citys urban fabric. However, my study also extends the current literature on Fascist-sponsored restoration projects by discussing the contribution of international narratives to the debate surrounding the refashioning of Italys built heritage. In this study I explore the ways in which these narrativesparticularly those advanced by tourism and the Hollywood film industryinfluenced local and national socio-political groups, forcing them to renegotiate their project of appropriation of the citys historic heritage within a broader framework of international assumptions about Veronas famous history. Far from being a top-down undertaking, the reshaping of the citys urban space emerges as a complex process of mediation between distinct groups, with different interests at stake, each trying to capitalize on Veronas world-wide reputation to further its own agenda. While preservation groups insisted on the importance of maintaining and restoring the citys multiple historical layers, the local socio-political elite pressed for an idealalthough sometimes fictitious recreation of Veronas built heritage with the intent to foster tourism and support their myth of identity. The central government, on the other hand, fully supported local initiatives in order to build consensus for the regime as long as such projects could be reconciled with Fascisms agenda of nation and empire building. The study of the refashioning of Veronas architectural fabric shows that Mussolini appropriated the citys cultural tradition but left ample freedom of action to local officials and the urban bourgeoisie in their urban renewal efforts. Ultimately, this project contributes to a deeper understanding of Fascisms relationship with the past and provides insight into the culturally constructed nature of urban spaces and identities.