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Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) was the king of Macedon and one of the greatest military commanders in the ancient world. Before his death at the age of thirty-three, Alexander had conquered Greece, the Persian Empire, and northern India. Alexander provided a model of a secular ruler for leaders in medieval and Renaissance Europe. Furthermore, with the revival of antique culture during the Renaissance, the life of Alexander became a favourite classical subject in art and literature. My thesis seeks to examine the artistic interest in the life of Alexander during the Italian Renaissance. During the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, artists portrayed episodes from the life of Alexander for elite patrons, who commissioned monumental frescoes and panel-paintings, along with pieces of maiolica pottery, tapestry and sculpture for use in the rituals of court life. While Alexander represented a model of secular authority for the patron, he was also intrinsically linked with art. Alexander's court artists, particularly Apelles, had a legacy that was eagerly emulated by modern artists. This thesis begins by tracing the long literary tradition of Alexander. Accounts by ancient authors, medieval romances, and new humanist texts all informed the production of images of the ancient king. I will explore the earliest representations of Alexander influenced by the humanist themes of uomini famosi and Petrarch's I Trionfi, followed by the reception and the appeal of portraits of Alexander created by Andrea del Verrocchio, Valerio Belli, and Giulio Romano. I will argue that, based on evidence in the form of drawings, Raphael had life-long artistic interest in Alexander, and many of his designs were adapted by other artists, including a fresco by Sodoma at the Villa Farnesina, and finely decorated maiolica pottery. Finally, I will consider the monumental cycles of frescoes executed by artists for patrons, who had a profound personal connection to the ancient monarch. While the artistic interest in the life of Alexander seems to derive from the fact that he was an all'antica subject, as I will demonstrate throughout this thesis, this interest took many forms for patrons, artists, and viewers. / Thesis (Ph.D, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2013-04-17 11:47:31.549

Abstract This thesis attempts to describe the emergence of a realistic writing style in nineteenth- century Italian opera of which Giuseppe Verdi was the primary architect. Frequently reinforced by a realistic musico-linguistic device that Verdi would call parola scenica, the object of this realism is a musical syntax in which neither the dramatic intent of the text nor the purely musical intent overwhelms the other. For Verdi the dramatically effective depiction of a ‘slice of a particular life’—a realist theatrical notion—is more important than the mere mimetic description of the words in musical terms—a romantic theatrical notion in line with opera seria. Besides studying the device of parola scenica in Verdi’s work, I also attempt to cast light on its impact on the output of his peers and successors. Likewise, this study investigates how the device, by definition texted, impacts on the orchestra as a means of realist narrative. My work is directed at explaining how these changes in mood of thought were instrumental in effecting the gradual replacement of the bel canto singing style typical of the opera seria of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, by the school of thought of verismo, as exemplified by Verdi’s experiments. Besides the work of Verdi and the early nineteenth-century Italian operatic Romanticists, I touch also briefly on the oeuvres of Puccini, Giordano and the other veristi.

This thesis offers an explanation for why urban settlement in Somaliland's capital city of Hargeisa is segregated along clan lines. The topic of urban segregation has been neglected in both classic Somali studies, and recent studies of post-war state-building and governance in Somaliland. Such negligence of urban governance in debates over state-making stems from a predominant focus on national and regional levels, which overlooks the institutions governing cities. Yet urban governance can provide key insights into the nature and quality of interaction between people and the local state, and the processes of making and unmaking of Somali urban spaces. Given the rapid urban growth in the Somali populated territories, I propose a shift in focus to explore city spaces, as a means of deepening understanding of Somali social, political and spatial organisation. In advancing this proposed shift, the thesis scrutinises the nexus between governance and segregation in Hargeisa, drawing on urban ethnographic methods, interview and archival sources. I argue that segregation in the city can be understood as the spatial manifestation of governance practices across colonial and postcolonial periods, in intersection with bottom up processes, particularly the quest for security and peacebuilding in what is largely characterised as a hybrid order. The concept of hybrid governance – while capturing important aspects of control over city space - is often insufficiently historicised and politicised to convey the complex intersection of state institutions, clan and sub-clan allegiance and traditional authorities. My analysis thus situates recent urban governance and conflicts over land in a longer history of municipal governance, urban land administration and conflict adjudication. This historical perspective is important for the understanding of how segregation has been reproduced over time, and adds a new dimension to the understandings of the drivers and dynamics of Hargeisa's spatial character.

This dissertation focuses on the artistic and architectural patronage of the Pucci family, Medici stalwarts whose carefully constructed political and cultural alignment with the ruling family of Florence was the impetus for their rising fortunes over the course of the 15th and 16th centuries. Their homes, chapels, and palaces in Tuscany and Rome were designed and furnished with paintings, sculpture, and intarsiated woodwork attributable to Michelozzo; the Pollaiuolo brothers; Botticelli; Giuliano da Sangallo and the heirs to his workshop: Francesco da Sangallo and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger; Baccio d'Agnolo; Pontormo; Bronzino; Baccio and Raffaello da Montelupo; Pietro and Domenico Rosselli; Michelangelo; Bartolommeo Ammannati; Giovanni Battista Naldini; Alessandro Allori; and Giovanni Battista Caccini.