Inaug.-diss. - Leipzig. / Lebenslauf.

Thesis--Tübingen. / Vita. Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-195).

Inaug.-diss. - Leipzig. / Lebenslauf.

Thesis--Tübingen. / Vita. Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-195).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, 1977. / Cataloging based on CIP information. Includes bibliographical references (p).

The Virgin of Mercy is a Marian devotional image type recognizable by its portrayal of Mary protecting the faithful with her cloak. This thesis situates the iconography of painted panels within their historical and cultural context in Spain from the late medieval period to the Age of Exploration. I explain the image's origins and introduce its various versions, focusing on three major frequently commissioned subtypes: the Sponsorship of the Virgin, plague commissions, and the Mercedarian's Virgin of Mercy. I present a case study of one famous version of the type, the Virgin of the Navigators, and focus on the Spaniards and Amerindians beneath the cloak, situating them in relation to the historic debate that called into question the very humanity of the peoples of the Americas. The thesis explores the painting's possible statement the patrons may have been making through the artistic treatment of both groups.

Le Liber diversarum artium, seconde copie d'un traité de technologie artistique vraisemblablement écrit dans les années 1350, est conservé à la Bibliothèque inter-universitaire de Médecine de Montpellier, dans un manuscrit du XVe siècle, le Ms H277 (vers 1470). Ce texte, par sa structure novatrice, les sources connues antérieures aux années 1300 qui l'alimentent, et leur diffusion, nous a autorisé à le mettre en regard d'œuvres peintes sur bois et sur mur des XIIe et XIIIe siècles conservées en Catalogne, comme nous aurions pu le faire avec n'importe quel autre corpus cohérent. Par le territoire « historique » qu'elle recouvre au Moyen Âge, par le nombre d'œuvres conservées et par leur grande variété esthétique et technique, la Catalogne répondait à cette cohérence. Les peintures retenues ont été envisagées du point de vue leur matérialité. La méthodologie développée pour l'aborder s'est articulée dans une dialectique constante entre le savoir écrit, théorique, du Liber ou d'autres traités, et le savoir pratique mis en œuvre par les peintres en Catalogne aux âges romans. L'observation macroscopique des œuvres, ainsi que la collecte de données physico-chimiques concernant certaines d'entre elles, ou encore notre propre expérience, nous a donné une matière propice à la compréhension du métier de peintre. De cette confrontation est née une lecture singulière, mettant au cœur de notre réflexion le peintre dans l'apprentissage et l'exercice de son métier. / The Liber diversarum artium, second copy of a treatise on artistic technology probably written in the 1350s, is held at the Inter-university Library of Medicine of Montpellier, in a fifteenth century manuscript, Ms H277 (1470). The innovative structure of this text, the pre-1300s sources it draws on, and their dissemination, enabled us to compare it with works painted on wood and walls in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries preserved in Catalonia, as with any other coherent corpus. By virtue of the "historical" territory it covers in the Middle Ages, the number of works conserved and their wide aesthetic and technical variety, Catalonia provided this coherence. The selected paintings were considered from the perspective of materiality. The methodology developed for the task was structured as a constant dialectic between written and theoretical knowledge contained in the Liber or other treatises, and the practical knowledge applied by painters in Catalonia in the Romanesque period. Macroscopic observation of the works, the collection of physicochemical data concerning some of them, and our own experience, provided us with material that was conducive to understanding the painter's craft. This comparison produced a singular reading, in which thinking is focused on the painter in the learning and the exercise of his craft.