This dissertation reconstructs the original form and sixteenth-century decoration of the lost Venetian church of Santa Maria Assunta dei Crociferi, destroyed after the suppression of the Crociferi in 1656 to make way for the present church of the Gesuiti. The destruction of the church, the scattering of its contents, and the almost total lack of documentation of the religious order for which the space was built, has obscured our understanding of the many works of art it once contained, produced by some of the most important Venetian artists of the sixteenth century. This project seeks to correct scholarly neglect of this important church, and to restore context and meaning to these objects by reconstructing their original placement in the interest of a collective interpretation. Various types, patterns and phases of patronage at the church—monastic, private and corporate—are discussed to reveal interconnections between these groups, and to highlight to role of the Crociferi as architects of a sophisticated decorative programme that was designed to respond to the latest artistic trends, and to visually demonstrate their adherence to orthodoxy at a moment of religious upheaval and reform.

Marguerite “Peggy” Guggenheim is best known for her legacy of collecting modern art in both Europe and the United States, but scholars have overlooked her importance as a patron of modern architecture, specifically the exhibition spaces that showcased her art collection. This thesis fills the gap of literature by tracing the architectural history of the collection. Guggenheim represented a catalyst for bridging the role of art and architecture by promoting modern art through three different spatial approaches: creating collaborative and didactic gallery workspaces at Galerie Guggenheim Jeune in London (1938-1939), establishing architectural spaces that employed unique display techniques at Art of This Century in New York (1942-1948), and instituting a final home-museum at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in Venice (1949-present). Through the use of primary sources, such as Guggenheim’s autobiography, archival sources including familial correspondences, original black and white photographs, newspaper articles, and architectural drawings, I resituate Guggenheim as not only an art patron and collector, but also a benefactor of modern architectural spaces. / text

Gemlike objects are a nearly ubiquitous phenomenon in the medium of glass, although culturally specific studies remain scarce. This dissertation considers the production of such works in the early medieval period, primarily in association with Abbasid rule. The first half attends to several accessory issues, including glass-related terminology, glass-coloring treatises, the lives of glassworkers, gemstone connoisseurship, and the legal status of such products. These demonstrate a range of coexisting attitudes, including the desirability of such works for their own sake rather than as surreptitious substitutes for “true” gemstones. The second half focuses on an exemplary object, an opaque turquoise glass bowl from the Treasury of San Marco in Venice, which I propose was produced in Baghdad for the caliph al-Mutawakkil just after the year 850. I then consider this work’s changing reception from late medieval Venice to modern scholarship, including ways in which “correct” interpretations of its material and/or origin have been repeatedly supplanted by false leads. The fundamental argument is that gemlike vessels like the San Marco turquoise were not deceptive stand-ins but rather intended to exercise complex discursive practices, both political and connoisseurial in nature, a function that ultimately remains in effect today.

Between the years 1960 and 1970, New York gallerist Leo Castelli was closely involved with Milanese editor and publisher Bruno Alfieri's Metro magazine--an international review of contemporary art. By placing his artists in Metro, Castelli inserted them into the world of Italian art criticism and theory. This recontextualization familiarized the American artists of Castelli's gallery to a European audience and positioned them at the end of a succession of modern European styles. Specifically, Castelli's artists, each of whom engaged in a form of pictorial figuration, were seen as ending the dominance of the "pure" abstraction of the French informel style. This thesis uses the archive of correspondence between Bruno Alfieri and Leo Castelli to examine Castelli's contribution to Metro during the 1960s. Departing from this chronology, it also seeks to understand the unique brand of figuration that each of Castelli's artists brought to Metro, given cues from contemporary Italian theory and criticism--particularly that of Gillo Dorfles, who wrote on several of Castelli's artists. / text

The present work examines the literary criticism expressed by Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi in several of her unpublished letters. / The first part outlines the cultural and historical tradition of Venice during the Eighteenth Century. Particular attention is subsequently given to the intellectual role of women, their contribution to the literary salons of the time, and the neoclassical tradition. This first part is essential in that it supplies a valuable context to Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi's writings. / In the second part, I examine Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi's literary criticism of major European authors and works. Through these criticisms she exposes her misvision of the literary world to which she aspired, and reveals that although she was influenced by the subtle preromantic tendencies, she remained faithful to the neoclassical school.

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This study is an art history of Santa Maria dei Carmini, Venice, from its foundation in c. 1286 to the present day, with a special focus on the late Renaissance period (c. 1500-1560). It explores a relatively overlooked corner of Renaissance Venice and provides an opportunity to study the Carmelite Order's relationship to art. It seeks to answer outstanding questions of attribution, dating, patronage, architectural arrangements and locations of works of art in the church. Additionally it has attempted to have a diverse approach to problems of interpretation and has examined the visual imagery's relationship to the Carmelite liturgy, religious function and later interpretations of art works. Santa Maria dei Carmini was amongst the largest basilicas in Venice when it was completed and the Carmelites were a major international order with a strong literary tradition. Their church in Venice contained a wealth of art works produced by one of the most restlessly inventive generations in the Western European tradition. Chapter 1 outlines a history of the Carmelites, their hagiography and devotions, which inform much of the discussion in later chapters. The second Chapter discusses the early history of the Carmelite church in Venice, establishing when it was founded, and examining the decorative aspects before 1500. It demonstrates how the tramezzo and choir-stalls compartmentalised the nave and how these different spaces within the church were used. Chapter 3 studies two commissions for the decoration of the tramezzo, that span the central period of this thesis, c. 1500-1560. There it is shown that subjects relevant to the Carmelite Order, and the expected public on different sides of the tramezzo were chosen and reinterpreted over time as devotions changed. Cima da Conegliano's Adoration of the Shepherds (c. 1511) is discussed in Chapter 4, where the dedication of the altar is definitively proven and the respective liturgy is expanded upon. The tradition of votive images is shown to have influenced Cima's representation of the donor. In Chapter 5 Cima's altarpiece for the Scuola di Sant'Alberto's altar is shown to have been replaced because of the increasing ambiguity over the identification of the titulus after the introduction of new Carmelite saints at the beginning of the century. Its compositional relationship to the vesperbild tradition is also examined and shown to assist the faithful in important aspects of religious faith. The sixth chapter examines the composition of Lorenzo Lotto's St Nicholas in Glory (1527-29) and how it dramatises the relationship between the devoted, the interceding saints and heaven. It further hypothesises that the inclusion of St Lucy is a corroboration of the roles performed by St Nicholas and related to the confraternity's annual celebrations in December. The authorship, date and iconography of Tintoretto's Presentation of Christ (c. 1545) is analysed in Chapter 7, which also demonstrates how the altarpiece responds to the particular liturgical circumstances on the feast of Candlemas. The final chapter discusses the church as a whole, providing the first narrative of the movement of altars and development of the decorative schemes. The Conclusion highlights the important themes that have developed from this study and provides a verdict on the role of ‘Carmelite art' in the Venice Carmini.

During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Venetian society and politics could be considered as a "polychoral culture." The imagination of the republic rested upon a shared set of social attitudes and beliefs. The political structure included several social groups that functioned as identifiable entities; republican ideologies construed them together as parts of a single harmonious whole. Venice furthermore employed notions of the republic to bolster political and religious independence, in particular from Rome. As is well known, music often contributes to the production and transmission of ideology, and polychoral music in Venice was no exception. Multi-choir music often accompanied religious and civic celebrations in the basilica of San Marco and elsewhere that emphasized the so-called "myth of Venice," the city's complex of religious beliefs and historical heritage. These myths were shared among Venetians and transformed through annual rituals into communal knowledge of the republic. Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli and other Venetian composers wrote polychoral pieces that were structurally homologous with the imagination of the republic. Through its internal structures, polychoral music projected the local ideology of group harmony. Pieces used interaction among hierarchical choirs - their alternation in dialogue and repetition - as rhetorical means, first to create the impression of collaboration or competition, and then to bring them together at the end, as if resolving discord into concord. Furthermore, Giovanni Gabrieli experimented with the integration of instrumental choirs and recitative within predominantly vocal multi-choir textures, elevating music to the category of a theatrical religious spectacle. He also adopted and developed richer tonal procedures belonging to the so-called "hexachordal tonality" to underscore rhetorical text delivery. If multi-choir music remained the central religious repertory of the city, contemporary single-choir pieces favored typical polychoral procedures that involve dialogue and repetition among vocal subgroups. Both repertories adopted clear rhetorical means of emphasizing religious notions of particular political significance at the surface level. Venetian music performed in religious and civic rituals worked in conjunction with the myth of the city to project and reinforce the imagination of the republic, promoting a glorious image of greatness for La Serenissima.