This thesis explores Baglione's contributions to art and to the history of art by examining the nature of his artistic and critical originality and the significant influences thereon. In the work for which he is best known, Le Vite ... (1642), Baglione was an interesting and generous critic who was unusually receptive to pictorial effects, even when in architecture and sculpture. He assesses Caravaggio's accomplishments with well chosen observations thereby breaking his restriction to discuss only accessible works of art. A broad view of his paintings and drawings shows Baglione's complex, original and thoughtful voyage of discovery assisted by the intelligence with which he absorbed artistic influences, particularly from Raphael and the Cavalier d'Arpino. His refined style of drawing distances him from Caravaggio. In paintings from the first decade, light and shadow give form to graceful figures enveloped in voluminous garments. After 1610 the compositions become more inventive and increasingly Baroque. Baglione's attempt to make a synthesis out of ideal generalization and naturalistic description and to explore new subject matter constituted a search for a "maniera propria" that combined stylistic originality with a penchant for unusual iconography. The most important trends in Baglione's draughtsmanship are the tendency towards a broader, freer handling and the versatility with which he handles the technical means at his disposal. Though he often crosses over the line into the Baroque, the idealism of his Tusco-Roman formation and fondness for angular lines constrain him from fully yielding to a dynamic disposition. His very personal style can be seen in a number of drawings from the 1620s and 1630s that attain a remarkable pictorial aspect and a Baroque quality of sensual presence. His sophisticated use of the three chalk technique prefigures the form dissolving effects to be popularized by Watteau. At the same time, the defining contour line that emphasizes integrity is not abandoned.

No description available.

The pictorial elements of the first six books of the Aeneid can be evidenced through an examination of its structural components. With commentaries on such literary devices as parallels and antipodes, interwoven themes, cyclic patterns, and strategic placement of words in the text, three genres of painting are treated individually in Chapter 1 to illustrate the poet's consistency of design and to prove him a craftsman of the visual arts. In the first division, "Cinematic progression," attention is directed to the language which conveys movement and frequentative action, with special emphasis placed on specific passages whose verbal components possess sculptural or third-dimensional traits and contribute to the "spiral" and "circle" motifs, the appropriate visual agents for animation. Depiction of mythological subjects comprises the second division entitled "Cameos and snapshots." Three selections, dubbed monstra, are explicated with such cross references as to illustrate the poet's use of epithets which he distributes passim to elicit verbal echoes of other passages. The final division, "The Vergilian landscape," addresses two major themes, antithetical in nature, the martial and the pastoral. Their sequential juxtaposition in the text renders a marked contrast in mood which is manifested pictorially in the transition from darkness to light. A panoramic chiaroscuro emerges which is the tapestry against which Aeneas makes his sojourn through the Underworld. It is the perfect backdrop to accompany the overriding theme of "things hidden," res latentes, which encompasses a greater part of the epic and becomes the culminant motif of the paintings which comprise the visual presentation. Chapter 2 functions as a catalogue raisonne for art inspired by the Aeneid from early antiquity up to the present day. Such examples of artistic expression provide a continuum with which to appropriate Horace's maxim, ut pictura poesis, in their evaluation. The verbal exegeses in Chapter 1 have been programmed to comport with the thematic content of the visual presentation in Chapter 3, a critique exemplifying the transposition of the verbal to the pictorial. With these canvases I have attempted to render a new perspective of Vergil's epic in the genre of abstract expressionism. / Art / D. Litt. et Phil.

The pictorial elements of the first six books of the Aeneid can be evidenced through an examination of its structural components. With commentaries on such literary devices as parallels and antipodes, interwoven themes, cyclic patterns, and strategic placement of words in the text, three genres of painting are treated individually in Chapter 1 to illustrate the poet's consistency of design and to prove him a craftsman of the visual arts. In the first division, "Cinematic progression," attention is directed to the language which conveys movement and frequentative action, with special emphasis placed on specific passages whose verbal components possess sculptural or third-dimensional traits and contribute to the "spiral" and "circle" motifs, the appropriate visual agents for animation. Depiction of mythological subjects comprises the second division entitled "Cameos and snapshots." Three selections, dubbed monstra, are explicated with such cross references as to illustrate the poet's use of epithets which he distributes passim to elicit verbal echoes of other passages. The final division, "The Vergilian landscape," addresses two major themes, antithetical in nature, the martial and the pastoral. Their sequential juxtaposition in the text renders a marked contrast in mood which is manifested pictorially in the transition from darkness to light. A panoramic chiaroscuro emerges which is the tapestry against which Aeneas makes his sojourn through the Underworld. It is the perfect backdrop to accompany the overriding theme of "things hidden," res latentes, which encompasses a greater part of the epic and becomes the culminant motif of the paintings which comprise the visual presentation. Chapter 2 functions as a catalogue raisonne for art inspired by the Aeneid from early antiquity up to the present day. Such examples of artistic expression provide a continuum with which to appropriate Horace's maxim, ut pictura poesis, in their evaluation. The verbal exegeses in Chapter 1 have been programmed to comport with the thematic content of the visual presentation in Chapter 3, a critique exemplifying the transposition of the verbal to the pictorial. With these canvases I have attempted to render a new perspective of Vergil's epic in the genre of abstract expressionism. / Art / D. Litt. et Phil.