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

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, March 2009.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johns Hopkins University, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 713-771).

Thesis--Münster. / Vita. At head of title: Kunstgeschichte. "Katalog in Westfalen erhaltener oder aus Westfalen stammender gotischer Goldschmiedearbeiten nach heutigen Aufbewahrungsorten (mit Nachträgen)": p. 419-495. Includes bibliographical references (p. 496-515).

Inaug.-diss.--Basel. / Vita. "Literatur-Abkürzungen": p. [v]-xi.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 7, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 378-402).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Art History, August 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Boston University, 1983. / Vita, leaves 1133-1134. Includes bibliographical references ; leaves 672-1132 (including illustrations) not photocopied at request of author.

Since the nineteenth century, the provenances, functions, and defining characteristics of a group of Insular portable containers, commonly called house-, tomb-, or church-shaped shrines, have been of interest to a number of disciplines such as History of Art, Archaeology, and Museology. As nearly all Insular house-shaped shrines were found empty or in fragmentary states, their original contents are a continued point of scholarly debate. In response to these examinations and based in part on the seventh-century riddle on the Chrismal found in the Ænigmata of Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne, this thesis proposes questions such as: what type of container is best categorised as an Insular house-shaped shrine, what were their original contents and functions, and do their forms and materials communicate any specific cultural message(s)? By engaging with the two core concepts of functionality and materiality, which are further informed through direct object handlings of select Insular portable shrines, this thesis examines the forms and materials used in their construction. Taking these questions and the historical conversation into account, this thesis draws on the terminology employed to denote sacral containers in Old Irish and Latin works, which include hagiography and penitentials, discussions on the Temple of Jerusalem within early medieval exegesis, depictions of Insular house-shaped shrines and analogous forms in stonework and other mediums, and antiquarian, archaeological, and anthropological accounts of the discovery of Insular house-shaped shrines to more fully examine the functions of these enigmatic boxes. In doing so, the place of Insular house-shaped shrines within early medieval art, both Continental and Insular, will be more fully outlined. Additionally, a working definition of what can constitute an Insular house-shaped shrine is developed by examining their materiality, form, and prescribed functional terms, such as ‘reliquary’ and ‘chrismal’. Finally, this thesis shows that the functions of Insular house-shaped shrines are best understood in an overlapping and pluralistic sense, namely, that they were containers for a variety of forms of sacral matter and likely were understood as relics themselves only in later periods, which modern antiquarians later used as meaning-making devices in their writings on the spread of the early medieval ‘Celtic’ Church.

This dissertation examines images of single combat in Romanesque art. Between the mid-eleventh century and the first decades of the thirteenth century, representations of head-to-head battle between two human opponents were abundant, especially in architectural sculpture. The appearance of these combats is concentrated in northern Spain and southwestern France, although this imagery is found throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. Only a small number of these images are identified by labels or accompanied by an explanatory text. However, those few examples show that the motif of single combat served different purposes and conveyed a variety of meanings, ranging from representations of historical figures to encounters drawn from epic literature to allegorical renderings of spiritual battle. Despite the prevalence of this iconography, this dissertation is the first study to address the entire corpus of Romanesque single combats. Beginning with the few examples to include a contemporary text, it addresses the variety of identities and meanings attached to the single combat motif in eleventh- and twelfth-century works. Analysis of those examples sheds light on the interpretive problems that arise for the larger body of unlabeled images comprising the corpus, whose significance is assessed by considering both formal attributes, and the spatial, functional and visual contexts in which the motif appears. Finally, the dissertation brings new focus to the motif’s temporal and geographic characteristics by addressing the high concentration of combat images in parts of Spain and France. Examination of the discourses concerning the early crusades and the Iberian ‘reconquest’ suggests that these images acted not just as representations of those locally prevalent events, but as visual components aimed at promoting the Iberian cause and aligning peninsular warfare with endeavors in the Holy Land. This dissertation shows that the single combat motif coincides with and reflects a crucial shift in the ways violence and conflict were conceived and addressed in Christian society. Considered within the context of the contradictory discourses on fighting circulating at this time, this multivalent motif is shown to reflect the many meanings battle held for medieval viewers. / 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z