Although the donor portrait was extremely popular throughout Europe and mainland Italy during the late Middle Ages, the few art historians who have addressed the subject have concluded that the motif was not popular in fourteenth-century Venice. The political structures of Venice and its citizens’ supposedly innate abhorrence of public expressions of individuality in the Republic are often cited as reasons for the absence of individual donor portraits; the examples that have survived are commonly interpreted as direct reflections of state or communal values. This dissertation challenges these previous conclusions and poses the following questions: Was donor portraiture popular in Venice, and in what forms? And how did the appearance and function of donor portraits in Venice compare with those from Europe and Byzantium? The evidence examined here includes a catalogue of 83 examples dated approximately between 1280 and 1413. I have attempted to reconstruct the social, political, and physical environments for these examples, and for those images that have been lost through centuries of changing trends and political upheaval. Through case studies of donor portrait subjects from a cross-section of Venetian society, including doges, nobles, cittadini, confraternity groups, and patrician women, it becomes clear that such images were, in fact, popular in late medieval Venice and that they were mostly intended for public viewing. Furthermore, the fact that donor portraits are rarely mentioned in the extant documents suggests that such imagery was considered conventional and that it posed no significant threat to the ideology of the Venetian state. Further examination of these visual documents, and analyses of socio-historical developments in the period indicate that donor portraits in Venice, like similar portraits in Byzantium and mainland Italy, mainly reflect personal concerns about family, status, wealth, and salvation. Their physical appearance likewise suggests that these images were intended for display within the confines of city parishes and that ultimately, in this context, donor portraiture in late medieval Venice was no more likely to reflect state ideologies than donor portraiture in other parts of Europe. / Thesis (Ph.D, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2007-08-28 08:55:06.214

The medieval wall paintings of the church of S. Maria in Pallara, situated on the Palatine Hill, Rome, provide insight into the intellectual use of images in the Middle Ages. The fragmentary apse programme survives, supplemented by antiquarian drawings that include copies of lost nave cycles and a lost donor portrait of their patron, Petrus Medicus. The patron, along with his monastic foundation, is documented in tenth-century charters, on which documents the paintings’ dating currently depends. Questions about this dating have surfaced in the art-historical literature, as have concerns about gender and historical veracity, matters of historiography which are introduced in Chapter 1. Thus, the goals of this study were to verify the paintings’ dating, to examine their use of text and image and to illuminate the context in which they were created. Chapter 2 describes and analyses the S. Maria in Pallara paintings within Roman artistic traditions of the Romanesque period. Since no contemporary parallel can be found for the iconography of the Apostles on the shoulders of Prophets decorating the church’s apse arch, a composition more common to Gothic art, Chapter 3 examines the iconography’s diffusion and sources. Textual evidence suggests that a church dedicated to Saint Sebastian preceded the tenth-century foundation of S. Maria in Pallara, which was then rededicated to the Virgin Mary, Saints Sebastian and Zoticus. Thus, Chapter 4 examines the visual profile of the cult of Saint Sebastian and its dependence on the Acta Sebastiani to provide a context for the church’s depictions of that saint, including portraits and a lost narrative cycle. Messages about chastity encoded in these images are also examined. Chapter 5 examines the lost narrative cycle depicting the life of the little-known Saint Zoticus, to whom the church was also dedicated and who was envisioned in the guise of another saint, Getulius, who was martyred with his wife, Saint Symphorosa, and their seven sons. Messages about chastity were also communicated through that cycle’s manipulation of S. Maria in Pallara’s topographic history. Thus, far from being simple reflections of text, the S. Maria in Pallara paintings engage Roman history, reforming that history to project a moral image of the future. / Thesis (Ph.D, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2007-11-12 13:38:42.99

This work is an edifying text in which the interlocutors are experts in evil deeds--they are none other than Sathan and Lucifer. Sathan, at the request of his master, reveals numerous details on the way in which people lived at the end of the Middle Ages: their work and their leisure activities, their sins and their good deeds. With its humour and richness of language, the dialogue between the devils is in the best tradition of the "Rhetoriqueurs" and Francois Villon. Furthermore, as an historical document, it bears witness to the medieval conception of Hell and the representatives of Good and Evil. / We are proposing a new edition of Eloy d'Amerval's Le Livre de la Deablerie, an edition fully justified by the richness of both text and language. Our reconstruction of the twenty thousand eight hundred and four verses of the incunabulum of 1508 (no manuscript of this book has appeared to date) is based on the principles of Bedier's method of text editing. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The Livre de vieillesse pertains to the field of study concerning late medieval Humanism, where the first royal patronage of translations from ancient Latin texts proved to be of enormous consequence for the French language, and especially for the formation of its vocabulary. / Our critical edition of the Livre de vieillesse presents the text of the first French translation of Cicero's De senectute , completed in 1405 by Laurent de Premierfait and dedicated to the Duke Louis de Bourbon. This text is unpublished. / We possess the bilingual copy of the translation, which constitutes a privileged component of authentication of variants. / The choice of the manuscript to edit was simple, for, of the twenty-six copies of the translation, two only bear the Latin original: Paris, B.N., lat 7789 (P) and Milan, Trivulz., 693 (T), where T presents itself as a copy of P. We thus follow the text of P, collated to T, and we adopt Bedier's method of text editing.

For much of the history of saga scholarship, questions of origins, the role of feud, kinship, and the structure of the society, and its institutions, have been fertile grounds for research. As such, the female characters – who were certainly less overtly prominent in the settlement of the country as outlined in the texts, as well as in the public and institutional structures – have often been overlooked as subjects of in depth scholarly enquiry. Turning a sharp gaze upon three particular characters, from three different sagas: Auðr from Gísla saga, Guðrún from Laxdæla saga, and Hallgerður from Njáls saga, and entering upon a comparative analysis of the introductions, marriages, and divorces – if applicable – of the characters, this study refutes the archetypical models under which these characters are sometimes studied, and examines the idea of marriage, contrary to its commonly perceived function, as largely a destabilizing force.

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This thesis compares and contrasts the experiences of the three daughters of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Matilda, Leonor and Joanna all undertook exogamous marriages which cemented dynastic alliances and furthered the political and diplomatic ambitions of their parents. Their later choices with regards religious patronage, as well as the way they and their immediate families were buried, seem to have been influenced by their natal family, suggesting a coherent sense of family consciousness. To discern why this might be the case, an examination of the childhoods of these women has been undertaken, to establish what emotional ties to their natal family may have been formed at this time. The political motivations for their marriages have been analysed, demonstrating the importance of these dynastic alliances, as well as highlighting cultural differences and similarities between the courts of Saxony, Castile, Sicily and the Angevin realm. Dowry and dower portions are important indicators of the power and strength of both their natal and marital families, and give an idea of their access to economic resources which could provide financial means for patronage. The thesis then examines the patronage and dynastic commemorations of Matilda, Leonor and Joanna, in order to discern patterns or parallels. Their possible involvement in the burgeoning cult of Thomas Becket, their patronage of Fontevrault Abbey, the names they gave to their children, and finally where and how they and their immediate families were buried, suggests that all three women were, to varying degrees, able to transplant Angevin family customs to their marital lands. The resulting study, the first of its kind to consider these women in an intergenerational context, advances the hypothesis that there may have been stronger emotional ties within the Angevin family than has previously been allowed for.

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