This thesis examines the reconstructed altarpiece formed by the Madonna del Voto, the Coronation of the Virgin, and the twelve narrative panels dated circa 1267 and attributed to Guido da Siena, currently dispersed in museums in Europe and America. The reconstructed altarpiece is vital to the study of early Sienese art because of its association with the Madonna del Voto in Siena cathedral, the most venerated icon believed to be once on the high altar. If proven, it represents a significant rediscovery of an altarpiece commissioned to commemorate the miraculous intercession of the Virgin who granted Sienese victory over Florence in 1260 at the Battle of Montaperti, giving birth to Siena’s identity as ‘the City of the Virgin’. Moreover, it reveals a more comprehensive view of the precedent of the complex altarpiece, the Maestà by Duccio di Buoninsegna dated 1308-11. However, the unconventional format and the iconographical programme of Guido’s reconstructed altarpiece has been criticised, and its original location on the cathedral high altar is questioned. The four chapters of this thesis reassessed the validity of the reconstruction of Guido’s altarpiece and its original location on the high altar by combining the methodological tools of altarpiece studies and pictorial narrative studies. Chapter 1 clarified that the reconstruction is highly probable from a technical viewpoint. Chapter 2 proposed an alternative interpretation of the historical documents suggesting its original location on the high altar. Chapters 3 and 4 examined the two extra-biblical episodes (the Ascent of the Cross and the Coronation of the Virgin), which are often associated with Franciscan commissions, and argued that they were selected to emphasise the Virgin’s intercession. The reconstructed altarpiece of exceptional format and iconographical selection was thus probably an invention for the important commission for Siena cathedral where art embodied the Marian civic identity.

The approach to this thesis uses political history to interpret art history. The following chapters are dedicated to uncovering how artists defined Germany’s various lands. The analysis of identities in the paintings in this thesis are considered to be intangible, for at times artists are clearly constructing regional identities, particularly in the Worpswede colony. Others, such as the Eifel landscapes, are conscious markers of a national identity and attempts to combine it with the local. The Dachau paintings expand the issue further since, as it is argued here, Bavaria aspired to be a nation-state in its own right so artists represented a regional (Dachau) identity and federal and national (Bavarian) identity both of which fed into an overarching national (German) identity. The identities studied in this thesis are not binary; one does not exclusively dominate the other, but are constructed in a constant negotiation between the local, regional and national. As such this study participates in a wider dialogue that has exploded since the 1960s in sociology and beyond about the formation of identity.

Although it was an era of extraordinary scientific progress and fertile methodological debate, the seventeenth century was characterized by a profound vein of scepticism that can be traced throughout its literary, scientific and philosophical works. Upon his arrival in Italy, the Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652), one of the most innovative interpreters of Caravaggio’s painting in Europe, wittily thematized, through his series of the Senses (c.1612-1616), the aspirations, achievements and doubts of his age with regard to man’s sensorial experiences and the possibility of investigating and comprehending the functioning of the senses. Scholars have singled out both the allusions within Ribera’s paintings to scientific experimentalism and their affinity with the themes which characterised contemporary Spanish picaresque literature. However, neither the ‘picaresque vein’ nor the scientific factors in question have been analysed per se, or indeed been examined comparatively. In this regard, my main contention is that, by juxtaposing the tools of the new science with low-genre props, the Senses series clearly alludes to contemporary discussions about the function and reliability of sensory perception, a theme which was then of the utmost importance. By staging the equivalent of the pícaro, the shabby protagonist of numerous novels who has to constantly struggle for his existence and who is both assisted and misled by his senses, Ribera’s series parodies not only the experimental method which had been established by the Roman and Neapolitan members of the Accademia dei Lincei, but also Galileo’s contributions to the debate. By the same token, his connection with picaresque literature is often reduced to Ribera’s predilection for plebeian models and his propensity to represent high subject matters with ordinary figures and accessories. The main goal of this thesis is to offer a new interpretation of Ribera’s naturalism and its interconnections with the picaresque novel, as developed not only in Spain but also in Spanish Naples. My contention is, in fact, that these two aspects of Ribera’s art are not only inextricably connected, but are also specifically rooted in early seventeenth-century Roman and Neapolitan culture and society.

This inter-disciplinary thesis addresses the authenticity and social context of surviving portraits of Scottish monarchs between 1530 and c.1590, bringing the study of the Scottish portraits closer to the standard undertaken upon surviving English works. This research focuses upon key questions to begin to reveal the nature of commission and execution of sixteenth-century portraits in Scotland, focusing upon a pair of double portraits from Blair Castle, Pitlochery, Perthshire. The two paintings will form the key case-studies for this research, and the central question to the thesis is whether they are authentic, sixteenth-century Scottish-made images. The thesis will address questions such as: How do they fit into the contemporaneous culture of court portraiture production in Northern Europe and across the border in England? Does the physical evidence support the notion of Netherlandish influence? Surviving documentary evidence of the painterly aspects of the courts of King James V and his grandson King James VI is presented, and the results of interdisciplinary technical analysis used to explore whether the materials and techniques of the Blair portraits and their surviving counterparts demonstrate enough Netherlandish influence to present the existence of a Scoto-Netherlandish school of painting. The National Portrait Gallery’s research project Making Art in Tudor Britain (2007-2014) 2010 conference Tudor and Jacobean Painting: Production, Influences and Patronage raised the issue of the need for a parallel project for Scotland, tracing the highly-developed use of portraiture by the later Stewart dynasty to its fifteenth-century Scottish beginnings. This thesis argues that far from being culturally backwards in terms of portraiture, the Scottish court employed fashionable Netherlandish techniques from an early date, with a strong understanding of the impact of the arts dating from the earliest Stewarts. Most importantly, this research is the first to undertake a full technical examination of the Blair Castle portraits, placing these works within a comprehensive material context. Such examination of the visual arts commissioned at this time can only further our understanding of the wider context of production in Scotland at this time. Additionally, understanding the nature of the commission of royal portraits by those in noble families makes clearer the use of the visual arts to enhance careers and reputation, as well as social identity. In focusing the discussion purely upon Scottish portraits in native collections, this research unites works which have not been comprehensively studied as a whole. The study of the sixteenth-century Scottish court has advanced considerably in recent years, but without an in-depth examination of the artworks produced as visual representation of these courts, a complete understanding cannot be achieved. This thesis demonstrates that much of the production of royal portraits was based upon the copying of copies. It is thus not the aesthetic quality which should be the focus, but the circumstances of their existence and material composition which is most revealing about the place Scotland holds within the study of early modern European art.

This thesis examines the hitherto largely-overlooked multifarious response by British artists to early Italian art which pre-dated the activity of the Pre-Raphaelites and their greatest champion, John Ruskin. The title of this thesis does not endeavour to claim that the artists under examination consciously formed or naturally constituted a group with clearly defined common interests and aims, as was the case with their aforementioned successors. Rather, the collective ‘pre’ Pre-Raphaelites is intended to demonstrate that, contrary to the impression given by the standard scholarship on this area, there were British artists prior to the dawn of the Pre-Raphaelites who found worth in periods of art beyond what was conventionally considered both generally tasteful and also useful for an artist to imitate, and who indeed made many of the important steps which facilitated the Pre-Raphaelites’ rediscovery of early Italian art in the late 1840s. The temporal span of the main investigative thrust of this thesis is, approximately, 1770 - 1845. Its structure is intended to reflect the multiplicity of both the catalysts and then the subsequent responses of British artists to the Italian primitives. The first part of the thesis comprises a number of chapters which offer a broad contextual framework - encompassing analyses of taste, artistic education and historiography - within which the varied activities of the artists explored in the subsequent chapters are set. Parts two and three reveal the very different approaches taken by a series of artists in the decades either side of the turn of the century in their attempts to study, learn from and sometimes emulate the visual lessons of the past. Thus this thesis rescues the often marginalised contributions of a selection of British artists to the resurgence of interest in early Italian art, and demonstrates how fundamental their interpretive filter was for the nature of the quasi-revolution in taste in the last half of the nineteenth century.

This thesis presents and contextualises a distinct cluster of fresco cycles depicting the life of Mary Magdalen in the central-eastern Alpine regions of Trentino, Tyrol and the Swiss Grisons from the late middle ages to the early Renaissance. Located for the most part in the marginal rural parish ambit and reflecting the agenda of the local patron, these cycles offer an alternate manifestation of the popularity and relevence of a major saint at this time. As such my thesis is a corrective to the precedence placed on the role of the mendicant orders in the development and transmission of the Magdalen cult and its visual canon. Through a series of interrelated case study chapters, I examine the narrative mural paintings found in the churches of Dusch, Rencio, Vadena, Seefeld, Cusiano and Pontresina, with three further appendices presenting relevant comparative works and restoration details. Each chapter sheds light on a neglected but crucial area of late medieval painting, drawing to the fore their individual interpretations of the Magdalen cult but also their affinities to one another. In particular, my thesis establishes the possibility of diverse patronage sources, modes of image reception and access. Moreover, it documents the sophisticated handling of issues such as gender, religious drama and the relevance of the life cycle liturgies, all of which contribute to the many iconographical innovations. In the absence of mendicant association, I suggest that the transmission of the visual cult of Mary Magdalen was made possible by itinerant artists and workshops, as well as a generational network of influence radiating from regional centres. As a result, my thesis contributes to a growing interest in the organisation, life and relevance of rural parish churches and communes and particularly those in remote areas.

This study explores El Greco's language of gestures. The first part will explain the preconditions for the general development towards rhetorical gestures and draw parallels with El Greco's artistic development in the sphere of gestures. In addition, handbooks on gestures are introduced. The second part will analyse how El Greco applied gestures, using examples of his paintings. It will reveal how El Greco developed some gestures over more than thirty years, and how he creates with their help an intense concentrated mood in his paintings. It will also demonstrate how he worked by means of hyperbole to evoke an inspiring atmosphere, how he created space with the help of gestures and gaze, and how he transformed the meaning of some 'model' gestures he took over from famous Italian painters. Finally, this work seeks to renew and intensify the analysis of gestures in painting as a way of approaching the paintings and revealing layers of meaning that can not be found by an analysis solely focused on iconographic topics. In this study the body is taken as a mediator of signs, difficult to read, but decipherable. This study is intended to be a step forward in approaching a deeper understanding of the codified language of gesture. It should open the way to an intensified concern with the language of gestures, with the reading of bodily signs in paintings.

The dissertation is divided into two sections, dealing with the positive and negative faces of travel and the sea in visual art, each further subdivided by chapter. Following the introduction, Chapter 2 deals with cartography, providing a broad context for the cultural reception of travel imagery. Chapter 3 discusses Thames imagery. It is argued that the increased interest in the river as a pictorial subject was part of a growing view of London as the metropolis of a grand commercial empire, whereby the Thames was aligned to the construction of the imperial nation. Chapter 4 examines metropolitan contexts for travel and maritime imagery. Conflicts are noticed between the image of navigation as a sign for commerce, and the marginalization of marine artists from polite artistic society. Patterns of patronage also indicate an ideological and actual distancing of the maritime nation from maritime communities. The second section turns to the image of the sea as a negative force in British culture. After an introduction, Chapter 5 examines the problematic depiction of the lower deck sailor, as a contradictory figure in national culture. Chapter 6 looks at how smugglers and wreckers were visualized, as wreckers both of individual ships, and of the larger ship of the commercial state, which assumed markedly political connotations in the 1790s. Chapter 7 considers the slave trade, especially the implications of the absence of imagery dealing positively with such an important component of the maritime nation's prosperity. It is argued that the force of abolitionist images relies upon inversions of pictorial conventions. Chapter 8 examines the wider significance of shipwreck imagery, in relation to shipwreck literature. Discussion of illustrations to Falconer's poem, The Shipwreck, is extended to the wider field of the shipwreck narrative. By providing a vehicle for the expression of native virtues, shipwreck reinforced British identity's being located with the sea, at the same time as it was shown stricken by disaster. The Conclusion considers further how national concerns and values were mediated by the image of maritime disaster. Through a consideration of Loutherbourg's work of the 1790s, it is argued that the aesthetic of the maritime, by being increasingly interleaved with the sublime, permeated a wide variety of imagery. But the naturalization of the nation in the sublimity of the sea represented it continually on the verge of disintegration. For a maritime nation enduring the crises of naval mutiny and continual threat of invasion by sea, this was peculiarly apposite.

This thesis investigates the panel paintings produced in the Riminese context in the first half of the Trecento. These altarpieces, crosses and devotional panels have been widely dispersed, fragmented and decontextualised over the centuries, and this study reunites the panels and investigates the unusual iconographical traits and distinctive formats employed. The introduction looks at previous discussions of the panels and at the available documentary evidence. It also discusses the historical context in which the panels were produced. The first chapter re-examines the relationship of Giotto to Rimini and to the Riminese painters by investigating the nature of Giotto's work in Rimini, at the beginning of the Trecento, and how this work influenced local panel painting in the following decades. The second chapter investigates the surviving visual evidence and analyses the forms of iconography, and the types of visual language, utilised by the Riminese painters. The chapter also investigates, in detail, specific images employed by the painters. It reveals that the narrative image was predominant, whereas iconic imagery tended to be subordinated, and highlights the dual impact of Byzantine and modern Italian iconography. The third chapter investigates the group of extant painted crosses from the area around Rimini and proposes that the Franciscan Order was instrumental in the popularity of the painted cross in the region. The fourth chapter discusses the extant altarpieces and attempts to contextualise these fragmented works. It investigates the development of the Riminese altarpiece, from dossal to polyptych, with particular reference to the unusual formats employed in the structures. The final chapter investigates the Riminese devotional panels and links the iconographies with the female mystics of the early Trecento, as well as the Franciscan Spirituals of the Marches. The impact of Adriatic trade on the devotional panels is discussed in terms of the powerful influence of imports from Byzantium, such as mosaic and ivory icons.

This thesis seeks to broaden existing knowledge of the great Sicilian Renaissance artist Antonello da Messina whose work has in recent years been the subject of a growing corpus of research. The main objective is a reassessment of the available evidence of his legacy, in Sicily and Venice, perpetuated by the artistic activity of his immediate family circle, including his son Jacobello, his nephews Salvo d’Antonio, and Antonio and Pietro de Saliba and other close relatives. In this way, it provides precious insights into the workings of the family bottega which, there is reason to believe, Antonello and later his followers operated in both Messina and Venice. Special consideration is given to Antonio de Saliba whose works have survived better than those of the other artists. Moreover, he is the subject of many of the known documentary evidence. His artistic profile has, as a result, become better defined, but this study has also helped to clarify our understanding on the other antonelliani, and, to an extent, of Antonello himself. The thesis bases its arguments and conclusions on the functioning of artistic workshops, networks of patronage and the techniques used in structures and execution of altarpieces. The main argument is that Antonello revolutionised artistic production in eastern Sicily, and his legacy continued to be propagated without much change by his immediate circle for up to five decades from his demise. Furthermore, the thesis confirms how thanks to Antonello’s Venetian sojourn, his son and De Saliba nephews ventured to Venice, broadening their artistic horizons. Circumstantial evidence confirms that they came into contact with one of the greatest artists of the Venetian Renaissance, Giovanni Bellini, with whose bottega they were, it is here proposed, attached.