The Italian iconography of the doctor saints Cosmas and Damian reflects fluctuations in the fortunes of the cult of those saints with significant variations in appearance and meaning being tied to changes in the position of the saints with respect to function, as miraculous healers, as representatives of professional doctors and as patrons of a powerful family. This study considers the development of the iconography of the doctor saints Cosmas and Damian in Italy, beginning with the emergence of images in the late antique period. These early representations are explored within the context of the historic and liturgical origins of the cult of SS. Cosmas and Damian with particular attention paid to the hagiography and more specfically the miracle stories which provide a significant amount of information about the role of images in a Christian healing cult. Evidence that sheds light on the early development of the iconography of the saints reflecting their position within the broader context of the establishment of Christian healers in direct opposition to their popular pagan counterparts. In the fourteenth century the appearance of SS. Cosmas and Damian was transformed mirroring the appearance of contemporary doctors, which in turn reflected the professionalisation of medicine and the role of the saints as patrons to members of that profession. This iconographic development is considered in the context of sources such as university statutes and civic sumptuary regulations that helped to shape the environment of increasing specialization that resulted in the necessity of a distinctive costume for qualified professionals. At the same time there remained continuity in the position SS. Cosmas and Damian inhabited in the popular imagination with images of the saints continuing to be associated with their traditional role as miraculous healers. Finally the large number of images commissioned by Cosimo de’ Medici in Florence in the first half of the fifteenth century are examined. At this time the position of the saints, as intercessors for and protectors of the Medici family allowed them to appear in unfamiliar locations granting them a civic and political relevance not achieved before in the history of the cult. The clear identification of the saints with the family allowed them to act as a reminder of the family’s position in Florence and for a time the doctors were known as family patrons rather than solely as doctors and healers.

This thesis analyses eighteenth-century portraiture within the context of 'norms' propagated in contemporary prescriptive and fictional literature, 'norms' which overlay a heterogeneous reality. The aspirant portraitist had to accord with the desire of sitters to be depicted in a manner that would receive approbation. Thus, disparate relationships were pictorially subsumed within affectionate ideals that burgeoned in the mid eighteenth century, stimulated by the cult of sensibility and disseminated through an expanding body of literature to an expanding readership. However, these did not displace more 'traditional' concerns, but appeared alongside continuing pictorial emphases on patriarchy, hierarchy and dynastic continuity. The introduction outlines the historiography and methodology and provides a detailed summary of each chapter. Chapter one examines the emergence of the companionate marital portrait, together with pictorial condemnations of arranged and romantic unions. Chapter two argues that this new emphasis on affection did not displace patriarchy. Pendants continued to demarcate masculine and feminine domains whilst double portraits emphasised those domains as complementary, but unequal. Chapter three discusses the pictorial and literary sentimentalisation of motherhood and argues that condemnations of female display were acknowledged in portraits of engrossed and self-effacing mothers. Chapter four counters that the sentimentalisation of the patriarch was limited by a continuing preoccupation with his pre-eminence and that later images of playful children maintained earlier concerns with age and gender hierarchies and 'futurity'. Chapter five argues that both an emphasis on heirs and anxiety over the implications of high infant mortality for dynastic succession remained constant. The contextualisation of portraits within the home also reveals an emphasis on unbroken lineage. Chapter six examines satires of transgressions of ideal familial relations by members of a supposedly debauched aristocracy. However, these aristocrats sometimes countered such attacks with portraits emphasising status and domestic virtue. The conclusion summarises the arguments and discusses their implications for debates over class.

In my doctorate, I have sought to question the establishment of the Academy in France along two particular lines of enquiry. I considered why the government established a state institution for the arts and how and why it sought to influence artistic production. Under Richelieu, artistic initiatives were subordinated to the requirements of factional court politics. But after the upheavals of the Fronde (1648-53), the monarchy created the Absolutist court in which aesthetics were politics. In the phrase used by the logicians of Port-Royal: Le portrait du Cesar, c'est Cesar". The increased political importance of the image coincided with a radical re-evaluation of sight and its representation in the visual image, following the work of Descartes. I therefore set out to analyse the debates in and around the Academy concerning theories of vision and their implication for the artist. I found the Academy resisted Cartesian and perspectival theory and expelled its first Professor of Perspective, Abraham Bosse, in a dispute which sheds much light on its institutional and theoretical base. Far from being an easy Academic victory, the dispute required the intervention of Colbert himself. Insteadof the Desarguian perspective championed by Bosse, the Academy's theorist, Gregoire Huret sought to control the pictorial sign through gender difference. But his theory contained too many prohibitions to be of practical use to artists. It was not until the Academy was pushed by the government into accepting the Modern theories of Roger de Piles that a gap opened between nature and its representation in which artists could operate. These two histories were closely linked, for it was not until the Academy found a means of representing its theory in the work of Watteau and the fête galante artists, that it achieved institutional security. The final chapter of my thesis analyses Watteau's work as a resolution of the long-standing theoretical uncertainty in the Academy over the status of the visual image. In an epilogue, the rapid death of the fete galante as a genre is shown to mark the end of this chapter of Academic history. In elucidating the often complex artistic theories in early modern France, I have made use of the methodology and theory of contemporary French thinkers such as Louis Mann, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Their insights have helped me appreciate the complexity and vitality of Academic thought which has so often been readily dismissed as sterile scholasticism. The painters of the Academy were also theorists. In that sense, we have much to learn from them.

Religious life in the later middle ages was increasingly dominated by the mendicant Orders, notably the Franciscans. Their dominance also extended to the artistic life of the day. The initial artistic campaigns of the Franciscans centred on the native province of the founder, most notably in the Upper and Lower churches of S. Francesco in Assisi. With the expansion of the Order and the death and canonization of the second Franciscan saint, Anthony of Padua, his adopted province, the Veneto, became an important centre for theological and artistic activity. The Basilica del Santo, built to enshrine the new saint's relics, rivalled the mother church at Assisi in both scale and lavishness of decoration. The fourteenth century in particular was marked by a succession of decorative programmes, a large part of which has survived. Soon the other Franciscan churches in the Veneto were similarly patronized. Unlike Umbria and Tuscany, areas where Franciscan churches are ridden with problems of dating and attribution, the Order' churches in the Veneto are probably the best documented of Italy. They provided a unique opportunity to set up a control of Franciscan patronage of the arts during the later middle ages. This thesis touches on all types of Franciscan patronage: conventual, and lay, communal and ecclesiastical. This research relied on a newly published Franciscan archive of over 27,000 documents, and is the first extensive survey of its kind for the Franciscan Order. It is hoped that this contribution has filled some gaps in our knowledge of artistic patronage. Firstly it has thrown light on the role played by the Order of friars minor in artistic projects, from the initial planning stages to the commissioning, execution and supervision of works. It has been shown that Franciscans were not always involved in artistic projects; at times they cooperated with individuals, or families, and at other times they played no part at all. Whether actively involved or more inactive, the friars were open to all sorts of artistic experiments, which means that the Franciscan church was an ideal environment for creativity.

This thesis concerns drawing as a form of enquiry, figuration and knowledge, specifically relating to perceptions of the body and embodied experience. The primary method and object of research is the practice of direct mark-making in response to perceptual experience, here termed observational drawing. The skills and habits of this learnt practice have been destabilised: by attempting a phenomenological approach; by drawing faces and bodies in conditions of movement and change; by progressively subtracting elements of manual and visual control. Following from observational drawing, the creative research methodology incorporates other modes of drawing, re-working of scanned drawings, note-making, reading and writing. The thesis includes a written overview (Part I), and a digital archive of drawings (Part II), jointly comprising a narrative of the research process. The study starts by considering drawing as a cognitive process; as a means of understanding corporeality; and as constitutive of embodied knowledge. Through drawing, issues are raised regarding the contingencies and contexts of my own observational practice, and the histories that inhabit it. A retrospective investigation through reading and writing has produced twelve texts, interconnected to become one website/diagram (Part III). This research contributes to the growing recognition of art practice as enquiry. Part III of the thesis locates the manual/visual operations of drawing, and the rhetoric of the hand, eye and mind used to describe them, within an epistemological and historical context. This is done from the specific perspective of the creative practitioner. Reference is made to philosophical, art historical and feminist texts; to delineations of the animal and critiques of anthropocentric accounts of knowledge. The conclusion identifies paradoxes within my practice, and oscillations in modes of looking, that characterise its knowledge-making operations. It is suggested such provisionality enables a multiplicity of figurative outcomes that can contribute to understandings of corporeal experience.

The focus of this study is a community arts programme, Art in Mind, which is based in an inner-city area of an East Midlands city in the UK and was funded by the government's New Deal for the Communities. The aim of the qualitative research study was to gain understanding of the human processes involved in setting up such a project and to ascertain the subsequent benefits to participants. The research was conducted in two stages: stage one involved semi-structured interviews with seven of the original Art in Mind Steering Group members and stage two comprised interviews with eleven participants who were interviewed up to three times over a one-year period. Sixteen people were interviewed in total. The findings from participants are presented as a case-series. Interviewees included those who subsequently became members of the 'Lost Artists Club', one of the community-based activities that originated within the project and those who engaged with an 'Arts on Prescription' programme. In both stages, a total of 35 qualitative interviews were conducted. The concept of mental health promotion through the arts is examined in the context of national developments to promote social inclusion. The methodological framework for the research is a narrative inquiry and emphasis is given to the stories that are individually and collectively constructed and recounted by the participants. All the data were subject to a narrative analysis, incorporating thematic, event and relational analysis. Individual and collective narratives are presented. Findings from stage one of the research identify the personal motivations of Steering Group members to develop the programme. Findings from stage two of the research reveal that the project facilitated new personal, social and occupational opportunities for participants. Identity claims are strong, as people have re-constructed themselves as artists. Participants enjoy a sense of belonging and social identity with like-minded people.

This thesis explores urban smoke and its nuisances in Georgian England, especially focusing on the period, 1800-1830. During this period, a number of English towns experienced accelerated industrialisation and many of them first experienced air pollution. In 1821, Michael Angelo Taylor, MP, passed a parliamentary bill on smoke abatement, Taylor’s Act. Although it has generally been believed that the Act did not have much of a social impact, this thesis argues that the Act diffused the usage of smoke abatement technology and triggered dozens of legal cases. The geographical focus of this thesis is Leeds and London. The Leeds case study examines the Leeds smoke abatement campaign and the smoke nuisance court case against Benjamin Gott, a leading merchant/ manufacturer in Leeds. It shows that the confusion over the effectiveness of smoke abatement technology represented the main difficulty in the smoke abatement campaign. The court case between the Duke of Northumberland and Clowes represents an example of the London nuisance cases in the 1820s. After the introduction of the steam press, the printing business became a polluting business. Because the plaintiff was the aristocrat, the case was interpreted as a class issue between aristocrat and middle-class printer. However, it was the Duke’s servants who suffered most from the nuisance and the case shows more complex class politics. This thesis also explores smoke nuisance caused by conventional smoke-producing industries in London, waterworks and brickmaking. Some water companies adopted smoke abatement technology but the confusion over the effectiveness of the technology can be observed in London, too. Taylor’s Act did not directly influence brickmaking business but it could cause nuisance to its neighbours, especially nurseries and gardens.

This thesis explores the intersection of age, gender and sexuality in representations of older lesbian characters in contemporary narrative film. Taking the 1990s as a benchmark of lesbian visibility, I explore the turn of the century representability by focusing on British and American film (1995 to 2009). I identify a hypervisibility paradox during this period of cinematic production where the presence of a multitude of young lesbian and bisexual characters can be seen to be in complete contrast with the invisibility of the older lesbian. Mainstream postfeminist culture censors the ageing female body, except in its ‘successfully aged’, youthful, heterosexualised form. Older lesbian characters are excluded from this frame of visibility and, instead, are represented through paradigms associated with the concept of ‘ageing as decline.’ There is little in existing age studies or lesbian film studies to articulate an understanding of the intersection of age, gender and sexuality in cinematic representation. I adopt an interdisciplinary cultural studies approach to make my contribution in what is an under-researched area and present a multifaceted approach to a complex cultural image. I investigate the continuity of the concept of the lesbian as ghostly (Castle, 1993) through narratives of illness, death and mourning. I argue that the narrative of ‘ageing as decline’ stands in for the process of ‘killing off’ lesbian characters (identified in 1960s and 1970s cinema). The intersection of the identity old with lesbian thus results in a double ghosting and ‘disappearance’ of the older lesbian character. Regarding Notes on a Scandal (Eyre, 2006), I pursue two particular readings. One emphasises the return of the lesbian as monstrous based on the construction of ageing and lesbian desire as abject (Kristeva, 1982). A second reading moves beyond the monstrous lesbian as a ‘negative’ stereotype and identifies the protagonist as a queer character who subverts heteronormativity. Finally, I turn to oppositional reading practices in order to optimise the possibilities of identifications across mainstream film texts. Based on Judi Dench’s various transgressive film roles, her role as M in the Bond franchise in particular, I explore this actress’ subversive potential to represent the older lesbian. I conclude that despite mainstream cinema’s hypervisibility paradox, characters who transgress age, gender and sexuality norms can provide opportunities for lesbian identification.

This thesis takes a qualitative, auto-ethnographic approach to interrogating heterosexuality via a series of in-depth interviews with young women about their experiences of watching films. I have adopted a feminist approach to the research, locating myself within the project via a series of extracts from research diaries I have kept during the project, reflecting my own position as 'researched' as well as 'researcher'. This auto-ethnographic approach draws on the work of previous theorists researching women's lives from a feminist perspective (e.g. Skeggs: 1995, 1997; Stanley and Wise: 1990, 1993; Maynard and Purvis: 1994).

Kurt Schwitters decisively established that Dada was indeed more a state of mind than a collection of creeds. Spurned by Berlin Dada, he was compelled to construct for himself an alternative Dada existence, and this he accomplished in the one-man movement he christened "Merz". Hundreds of Merz artworks were produced by the tireless Schwitters, but the summa summarum of his oeuvre was the Hanover Merzbau (circa 1923-1943). As it transcends architecture, sculpture, and assemblage, I have taken the distinctive approach of analyzing it first and foremost in terms of a theory of self-reflexivity. The first and second chapters of this thesis are dedicated to the writings of Georg Simmel and Henri Bergson. The former contributes an understanding of the psyche of the modernist metropolitan and how it is that the subjective spirit that resides in this enlightened individual substantiates its existence by producing forms and objects with which it continuously comes into conflict. As witnessed in Schwitters' Merzbau, the self-conscious "I" constitutes a centripetal force that organizes and directs the objects it encounters and thus exerts a unifying influence over its environment. In the Bergson chapter, I pursue an in-depth investigation into how self-reflexivity is predicated upon the search for true duration and the manifestation of the elan vital. I also include an in-depth analysis of Bergson's treatise on laughter, for the theories contained within go a long way towards explicating Schwitters' brand of humour and how the comic artist is a self-reflexive figure non-pareil. The third chapter, devoted to Schwitters and his place in Dada, takes into account the vitalist philosophical underpinnings of the Merzbau and asserts that self-reflexive art operates under an enantiodromic law; the presence of the artist must be effaced as thoroughly as possible before the creative self achieves materialization in the artwork it has engendered.