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Cardinal Pietro Bembo's accomplishments as a poet, linguist, philologist, and historian are well known, but his activities as an art collector have been comparatively little studied. In his writing, he directed his attention to the past via texts--Ciceronean Latin and Petrarchan Italian--for their potential to transform present and future ideas. His assembly of antiquities and contemporary art served an intermediary function parallel to his study of texts. In this dissertation I investigate Bembo as an agent of cultural exchange by offering a reconstruction of his art collection and, in so doing, access his thinking in a way not yet accomplished in previous work on this writer. Chapter One offers a historiographic overview of my topic and collecting as a subject of art historical study. Chapter Two maps the competition and overlapping interests of collectors who bought from Bembo's heirs. Chapter Three calls upon anthropological methodology for treating the study of material culture and applies it to Bembo's mission as a collector. Chapter Four concludes with a statistical analysis of subjects and object types to which Bembo was drawn. In the extensive Object Catalog individual works are examined in conjunction with one another and considered for what they reveal about Bembo's theoretical strategy. Appendix A is a timeline outlining Bembo's life. Appendix B is a chronologically ordered selection of accounts describing Bembo as a collector and descriptions of his collection and his properties. Appendix C is a Bembo family tree. Appendix D presents by location known repositories for traced objects that can be connected to Bembo's collection. The recovery of Pietro Bembo as a collector illustrates that his wide-ranging ambitions were intertwined. His museum was not a place fixed in geography but, rather, a dynamic mechanism for transmitting the analytic power and poetic potential he located in the visual. / Art History

Focusing on satirical prints from illustrated newspapers, this thesis examines nineteenth-century French notions of masculinity in a culture that linked its reputation for success to the productivity of its male citizens. I will focus on man’s connection to marriage and family life, as these institutions were so closely connected to perceptions of masculinity. Specifically, I look at portrayals of the cuckold and the bachelor—tropes of male identity that deviated from the ideal notions of the French man—and how printed images reflected, commented on, and shaped the ways in which conventional French masculinity was imagined. Examining these lithographs in light of specific social and political shifts, including changing marriage and divorce laws, the rising feminist movement, and the loss of the Franco-Prussian war, will ground my project historically. Popular lithographic prints, from the 1840s to the early 1900s, remarked not only on masculinity itself—the ways in which men should act and look—but also on the ways in which any departures from the norm threatened the French family and nation. Although medical journals and etiquette manuals expounded on the ‘natural’ qualities of men, satirical cartoons that were most often published weekly, were immediately pertinent in their commentary. Using prints to decode these ever-prevalent issues of masculinity, my project makes clear why representations and notions of certain types of masculinity were so alarming to French audiences. Although much of the scholarship around nineteenth-century French lithography deals with the censorship issues and political implications of the illustrated newspapers, I focus instead on the social ramifications of such images. I emphasize the distinctive nature of such prints—the audience, the circulation, and the cultural impact of printed images themselves. Looking to both art and social historical texts, I concentrate on the everyday realm of printed images, and what it meant for Parisian men and women to be surrounded by such tropes. My thesis connects the growing concerns over family and marriage to issues of failed masculinity and the ways in which they were addressed in the print culture across the century. It explores how these satirical cartoons provided a humorous, yet urgent, visual attempt to illuminate the tricky and conflicting expectations of French men in the nineteenth century. / Art History

The numerous figurated corbels of Chartres Cathedral were inscribed with semiotic content. Works in this genre were formerly disregarded by researchers because of their perceived lack of meaning. Trends in modern scholarship have challenged this misconception, and recent technological innovations have facilitated the study of these objects. The category would be more appropriately termed "secondary" rather than" marginal," as the former offers a semantically unencumbered assessment of the role of these sculptures. Originally designed for the cathedral's twelfth-century western complex, the corbels were likely members of a series that encircled the entire perimeter of the building. The use of human and animal head motifs for their decoration exemplifies a pervasive historical practice in architectural sculpture. The preservation of the corbels in the Gothic reconstruction of the cathedral substantiates their significance to medieval viewers. Study of the surviving pieces is complicated by the loss of the contextual framework provided by the remainder of the series. The examination of material evidence indicates a record of artistic engagement with these works. Iconographic analysis of individual corbel images reveals both correspondences with the thematic context of the primary sculptural program and independent signification. This project is intended as a useful starting point for additional inquiry, as investigations of secondary sculpture at other sites may bring new insight to its manifestations at Chartres. / Art History

In this paper, I analyze the life and collection of Christina, Queen of Sweden (1626-1689), as a complex and shifting performance of gender, authority, and other aspects of identity. I argue that Christina’s education and life experiences actively informed her collecting preferences for certain types of mythological figures, which became an effective tool of her self-fashioning as a ruler who broke away from what she viewed as the confines and expectations of her gender. I will demonstrate how her strategies as an astute patron and collector of the arts were central to her subversive presentation as an almost androgynous self-exiled ruler in Rome, who could emulate both male and female virtues equally in order to transfer her former political power to new social and cultural capital. Christina’s collection, newly assembled in the Palazzo Riario in Rome, served this purpose by creating a controlled environment that enforced particular relationships between collector and spectator, spectator and collected objects, as well as among the objects themselves. This thesis weds the various theories of Queen Christina and her collection into a comprehensive theory of her larger project of self-fashioning, arguing that her collecting practices regarding both ancient and contemporary works followed a cohesive philosophy in her politics of collection and display, even while largely challenging the decorum of female patronage. Christina’s self-promoted identity as Minerva of the North forces the viewer to contemplate the items in the collection both on their own and in conversation with one another as part of a larger display. In the nudes of the Stanza dei Quadri on her second floor, as well as the antiquities featured on the ground floor, Christina used the relationship between images and sculptures to create an allegorical pantheon focused on her own self-control and authority. In understanding objects’ interactivity, it is possible to interpret Christina’s renovations to the Palazzo Riario and the display of her collection as a modern day Parnassus or Arcadia, which she used to establish her Roman home as a primary location of scholarship and creation. The contents and display of her collection extended her desired persona as a leader of wisdom and user of knowledge not easily bound by the constraints of either gender. The metaphorical space of Arcadia that she created strengthened her alignment with Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and warfare, and implicitly also with Apollo, who presided over Parnassus. In the case of Queen Christina, we have found that in addition to the personal prestige associated with obtaining valued items, the display of these items in a kind of curated space added value and meaning to the viewing experience. / Art History

Little attention has been given to studying the important nuances and contributions of individual works by the artist Maurizio Cattelan. Since beginning his career as an "art world outsider," the artist has consistently resisted categorization of his work, be it stylistic, nationalistic or ideological. This has made an approach based on examining his social and political context in relation to individual works rather difficult. Instead, the scholarship surrounding his art has most frequently been in the form of a survey, using his earlier conceptual pieces to contextualize later installations and sculptures, an approach that limits a fuller understanding of Cattelan's art. Rather than reading specific works in the context of their individual exhibition history, critics place them in the trajectory of Cattelan's overall practice. Furthermore, much of the existing scholarship has relied on the artist's own discussions of his oeuvre, providing a superficial understanding of both his work and words. Thus, Cattelan has been generally understood and labeled the art-world "joker," and his artwork is seen as a series of "one-liners," limiting the reading of his work. I propose, instead, an in-depth study of specific sculptures, which will lead to a richer understanding of the artist's overall practice within a historical and contextual period. In my opinion, Cattelan's work has been overlooked in relation to notions of site specificity. Through a close reading of Cattelan's most pivotal work, La Nona Ora, I will argue that this artistic paradigm will prove a much more effective lens through which to view his practice. / Art History

No / This paper reviews the contributions of analytical Raman spectroscopy to the non-destructive characterisation of biological materials of relevance to forensic science investigations, including the sourcing of resins and the identification of the biodegradation of art and archaeological artefacts. The advantages of Raman spectroscopy for non-destructive analysis are well-appreciated; however, the ability to record molecular information about organic and inorganic species present in a heterogeneous specimen at the same time, the insensitivity of the Raman scattering process to water and hydroxyl groups, which removes the necessity for sample desiccation, and the ease of illumination for samples of very small and very large sizes and unusual shapes are also apparent. Several examples are used to illustrate the application of Raman spectroscopic techniques to the characterisation of forensic biomaterials and for the preservation of cultural heritage through case studies in the following areas: wall-paintings and rock art, human and animal tissues and skeletal remains, fabrics, resins and ivories.

With the impact of feminism and other liberationist movements of the 1960s and beyond, academic disciplines have faced intensive scrutiny, and re-examination of many of their basic premises and methodologies. Art history is one such discipline. By the 1970s, feminist critique of art history and practices in the art world had brought about the feminist art movement. This movement continues today and has developed and grown in many directions. Artwriting by feminists has proliferated and the literature includes research on female artists, studies on representation of women in art, critiques of texts and other previous artwriting, and discussion on biases, omissions, inadequacies, and the nature of the discipline itself. Attempts at an overview of the movement have focused on discrete issues, events, or histories of developments. Review articles and anthologies have not adequately studied the underlying philosophical and ethical motivations of the movement as a whole. This study considers the over-arching philosophical elements implicit in feminist artwriting. Through a review of the literature, and aspects of general feminist studies and feminist philosophy, particularly ethics, I examine how they contribute to the feminist art movement, and how the movement has changed thinking, teaching and learning about the history of art.