The Sanctuary of Demeter at Pergamon, capital of the Attalid kingdom in Asia Minor (283-133 BCE), is among the city's oldest, largest, and best-preserved monuments, and it affords a unique view into its development. The cult-site was established in the fourth century BCE and renovated twice in the Hellenistic period - by Philetairos (283-263 BCE), founder of the Attalid dynasty, and by Queen Apollonis, wife of Attalos I (241-197 BCE) - and again in Roman times. Despite its well-documented history, the sanctuary still awaits analysis as an architectural, ritual, and dynastic space, along with integration into the scholarship on Pergamon. This dissertation reexamines the precincts of Philetairos and Apollonis with the aim of reconstructing a context for the sanctuary in the Attalid capital. The investigation proceeds from a reassessment of the archaeological remains, formal and comparative analysis of the monuments, and consideration of cultic requirements. It offers a revised picture of the precinct's development by proposing new reconstructions for the pre-Attalid temenos and the building phases of Philetairos and Apollonis. It presents new evidence for narrowing the time-frame of Apollonis' dedication, making it one of the most precisely dated monuments at Pergamon. Although the lack of precise information on the cult prevents ritual identification of all structures on the site, an attempt is made to explain the precinct's ceremonial use. A focal point of the dissertation is the contextualization of the sanctuary's architectural detail. My analysis shows that the monuments of the Demeter Sanctuary were rooted in an Anatolian building tradition and that the style(s) of Apollonis' buildings elaborated on the architectural language of Philetairos' designs, conveying both unity and continuity. My reevaluation of the Demeter Sanctuary as an architectural and ritual space lays the groundwork for my future, broader investigations into the role of this cult-site in the Attalid capital - studies that address the intersection of gender, cult, dynasty, and building style in this space.

This dissertation provides an examination of the lives and works of two Russian artists: Elena Dmitrievna Polenova (1850-1898) and Mariia Vasilevna Iakunchikova (1870-1902). It takes a biographical approach to elucidate how Polenova and Iakunchikova negotiated the constraints imposed by their gender and the rapid changes occurring in Russias social structure in their search for a modern Russian art. The dissertation begins with an investigation of Polenovas activities in the spheres of social activism and art in the 1870s and concludes with both womens contributions to the Russian handicrafts (kustar) pavilion at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. While Polenovas contributions to the Russian kustar revival have been the subject of scholarly research, her activities in the broader art world have not. This dissertation seeks to remedy the skewed vision of Polenovas artistic output that has been a result. In addition, her close friendship and artistic synergy with Iakunchikova has been neglected. Iakunchikova is virtually unknown outside a small group of Russian-art specialists. Thus, an investigation of both womens work together provides a more rounded history of their contribution to Russian artists search for a modern, yet uniquely Russian, art at the end of the nineteenth century.

This dissertation uses selected works of Grant Woods art as a touchtone to investigate a broader visual culture surrounding agriculture in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By doing so I argue that Wood engaged with pressing social questions, including the phenomenon now referred to as agribusiness. Although agribusiness is often associated with the Green Revolution of the 1940s and 1950s, its beginning dates to the nineteenth century. Indeed, Woods lifetime was an era when land was consolidated, production and distribution were vertically integrated, and breeding became scientifically informed. To access the power dynamics of this transition, I begin each chapter with work by Wood, and then analyze it in conjunction with imagery produced by or for individuals with diverse cultural agendas. This wide range of voices includes government officials, members of socialist farm organizations, newspaper publishers, plant breeders, owners of large and small farms, auction house managers, and university educators. To show precedents for and the legacy of Woods work I begin my analysis of visual culture before his birth and end after his death. The dissertation thus begins in 1862the year that land in the Midwest began to be parceled out for grain farming as small 160-acre homesteads and gargantuan bonanza farms thousands of acres in size. The dissertation ends in 1957the year that the term agribusiness was coined by the Harvard-based economists John Davis and Ray Goldberg. I take an interdisciplinary approach anchored most fully within the norms of art history, but also engage with strategies from visual, cultural, and agricultural studies. My argument, ultimately, is that agribusiness is a cornerstone of modern thinking, and that Grant Wood was not only aware of the experiences, debates, institutions, and theories of agribusiness emerging in his midst but engaged with them in his fine art. More broadly, by using a wide range of imagery, including photography, advertising, penmanship, film stills, crops, cartoons, architecture, and diagrams I show that the way Americans came to understand and accept agribusiness as the basis of their food system was negotiated, in part, through visual materials.

This dissertation is an exploration of the cultural biography of toiletry case sets in early China. It traces the multiple significances that toiletry items accrued as they move from contexts of everyday life to those of ritualized death, and focuses on the Late Warring States Period (5th c. BCE) through the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE), when they first appeared in burials. Toiletry case sets are painted or inlaid lacquered boxes that were filled with a variety of tools for beautification, including combs, mirrors, cosmetic substances, tweezers, hairpins and a selection of personal items. Often overlooked as ordinary, non-ritual items placed in burials to comfort the deceased, these sets have received little scholarly attention beyond what they reveal about innovations in lacquer technologies. This dissertation presents a contextualized and nuanced understanding of toiletry case sets as enmeshed within rituals, both mundane and sacred. Chapter Two begins with their uses in life, as essential to fulfilling fluctuating social ideals of beauty and, as sets found in association with both females and males, tools through which gender identity was enacted rather than simply reflected. Chapters Three and Four focus on the layers of meaning that toiletries accrued when placed on display during the funerary rituals, arranged within organized tomb layouts, or kept above ground for use in post-burial contexts. These chapters employ approaches to the material culture of death developed by Howard Williams, ideas that are themselves based on the classic sociological model for studying death rituals established by Robert Hertz. Such theories provide a framework for understanding how toiletry items may have affected the corpse, the soul, and the mourners differently. As items used in daily rituals of grooming and adornment, these sets became entangled within the biographies of individuals, ensured the order and beauty of the body into death, and may have acted as potent objects of memory throughout rituals surrounding death. This open inquiry of the toiletry case set demonstrates the potential for objects in early China to be understood as active within social, political and ritual contexts, and contributes to a growing discourse about the multiple meanings of objects.

During the first and second centuries CE colonists living along the Northern Frontier of the Han Empire built tombs with stone doorways that depicted scenes of the hunt. These reliefs depict a fabulous world inhabited by mounted archers, hybrid xian (immortals) and frolicking/fleeing animals. Within these reliefs there is also a limited tendency to draw on the alternate lifestyles of the Xiongnu, a confederation of northern nomadic tribes who served as both neighbor and foe to the Han Chinese who lived in this area. Previous scholarship has seen hunting imagery in these reliefs as passive reflections of the mixed culture and economy of the region. I instead maintain that it was part of an iconographical program that depicted and facilitated the passage of the deceased to paradise across the dangerous borderlands between Heaven and Earth. My dissertation argues that imagery in Shaanxi and Shanxi was actually a refinement of earlier Eastern Zhou (771-221 BCE) and Western Han (206BC- 8CE) depictions of the hunt and immortals, but that in this region, the positioning of the hunt at doorways created a liminal space representing the "Great Boundary" between this world and the next. This world is described in an inscription from a tomb excavated in Suide, Shaanxi that warns the deceased of the dangers that confront him if he does not return to the world of the living. On the basis of this inscription and similar "soul-summoning" passages from the Chu ci (Songs of the South) and Eastern Han dynasty tomb-quelling texts (zhenmu wen), I argue that hunting imagery in Shaanxi and Shanxi belongs to the desolate spaces that were believed to exist between this world and the next. Furthermore, I conclude that these images were a local response adopted by the patrons because they lived in a militarized, colonized setting in which fears of foreign neighbors fused with their apprehensions of the 'beyond'.

Scholars traditionally understand neo-Romanesque architecture as a stylistic manifestation of the homogenizing and nationalizing impulse of the Kaiserreich. Images of fortress-like office buildings and public halls with imposing facades of rusticated stone dominate our view of neo-Romanesque architecture from the Kaiserreich (1871-1918). The three religious buildings at the core of this study - Edwin Opplers New Synagogue in Breslau (1866-1872), Christoph Hehls Catholic Rosary Church in Berlin-Steglitz (1899-1900), and Friedrich Adlers Protestant Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem (1893-1898) offer compelling counter-examples of the ways in which religious groups, especially those that were local minorities, adapted the dominant neo-Romanesque style to their own particular quest towards distinctive assimilation in an increasingly complex, national, modern society. This synagogue and these churches belong to an important sub-section of German neo-Romanesque architecture that calls into question our standard narrative of the Wilhelmine neo-Romanesque style as a universalizing and secularizing aesthetic. This synagogue, Catholic parish church, and Protestant church forged a new alliance of religion and politics in the service of two often conflicting masters: the religious community and the nation-state. By reinventing neo-Romanesque forms for a modern, yet still religious context, Edwin Oppler, Christoph Hehl, and Friedrich Adler provide the crucial link necessary to incorporate medievalist architecture into the larger narrative of Germanys modernization. While these sacred structures are prime exemplars of many social and architectural themes, my aim is to present them neither as isolated case studies nor as highlights in a comprehensive survey of Wilhelmine religious architecture. I treat these three sacred structures as central case studies while considering their architecture, decorative programs, and mediated presentation in photography and print publications. The core themes of this work the struggle between religion and national secular society, a longing for an imagine past as inspiration to create new styles for a new configuration of community are not only the essential components of our definition of modernity but also what continues to frame our experiences today. Ultimately, these buildings serve as models to understand the challenges of diversity and multicultural society that continue to define our world.

Scholars often describe Caravaggios paintings as inspired by scenes from quotidian life. A few see his work as influenced by popular dramas such as the commedia dellarte. While one might think these are conflicting explanations, close examination shows that a wide variety of popular dramatic forms was as much part of daily life as daily life was part of popular drama. Caravaggios theatricality is the careful depiction of quotidian life, expressed through the familiar language of popular dramatic forms, a sort of visual vernacular known to all classes. Caravaggio appropriated specific elements both found in a wide variety of popular theatrical media and recommended in treatises on oration, preaching, Jesuit spiritual exercises, and memory models, because they were proven to engage the emotions and make imagery memorable. Caravaggio went against painterly tradition and filled his shallow pictorial spaces with sharp side-lighting, deep shadow, and personages based on everyday life to make his paintings distinctive and to bolster his reputation among the general public, who was fascinated with dramatic entertainment. In Spanish Lombardy, Caravaggio saw public spectacles hosted by Spanish officials; the Entierro, a torch-lit procession with live actors and painted statuary; stage-like Sacro Monte chapels filled with polychrome statuary; and action packed and often violent illustrations from epics such as the vastly popular Orlando Furioso, which was frequently represented in street theater. In Rome, he frequently saw secular and religious street dramas and associated with elites, such as Cardinal del Monte and the Colonna family, who used various forms of popular theater to enhance their reputations. In southern Italy, Caravaggio looked to Italian/Spanish hybrids of local drama, travelling commedia dellarte troupes, local and Iberian drama and literature, and the Neapolitan presepe for inspiration. In the south, he transformed his polished Roman painting style into one with rough, brushwork, dark palette, somber mood, and deep psychological complexity, reflecting the current writings of the Spanish mystics, local dramatists and memory scholars. Thus, the artists work serves as a lens that focuses, with illuminating intensity, on the wide range of dramatic forms found in Spanish Italy that were common sights in daily life.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate some of the ways in which diagrammatic structures may have informed the layout and experience of architectural space in the middle ages. The Cathedral of Chartres is a unique case because the post-1194 building and its decorative program survive relatively complete and because the preceding century saw at Chartres the emergence of a sophisticated school of thought, many of whose precepts may be shown to bear upon the design of the monument. The writings of William of Conches and John of Salisbury in particular I consider central to an intellectual debate between Chartrain Masters and their intellectual rivals the Cornificians. The library at Chartres still preserves several manuscript copies of medieval texts and commentaries pertinent to this debate. In turn, I suggest this is fundamental to reading the decorative program of the cathedral and to experiencing its spaces. Thus the monument represents a fusion of disciplines which in turn may serve as an enlightening means of understanding the middle ages in general, its art, its architecture, and its viewer. Using the Cathedral of Chartres as an object of study, an environmental experience, and as a multi-vantage point visual dialogue, this dissertation examines the idea of medieval diagrams as templates for medieval architectural construction and conceptualization. By examining the layout of the medieval stained glass that retains its original position, I claim that the themes of the windows serve as placemarkers for diagramming. The windows are also examined individually as separate entities with their own diagrammatic orderings that suggest that the small scale, as well as the large scale, is organized in a diagrammatic way. Ultimately, I suggest that a diagrammatic structure underlies the layout and design of the windows, based on the ideas of Chartrain master William of Conches. I suggest that this diagrammatic structure forms the basis of a discourse between the Chartrains and their intellectual rivals, the Cornificians. Central to the argument is the disposition of the Signs of the Zodiac in the cathedral and a calendrical layout for the hagiographic windows.

The period of Six Dynasties (221-581CE) has traditionally been thought of as a time when the Five Barbarians brought disorder to China. During this period, present-day Northern China was ruled by non-Han leaders, including the Xianbei, a pastoral people from Chinas northern frontier who founded the Northern Zhou Dynasty. In addition, Chinese historical texts from the Six Dynasties refer to merchant barbarians generally assumed to be Sogdians, who lived in oasis states in Central Asia in present-day Uzbekistan and came to China across the Silk Road. Most scholarship has assumed that the period of Northern Zhou ruled by non-Chinese leaders was sinicized, and the adoption of Chinese features in burial and artifacts in foreigners tombs is evidence of that acculturation process. This dissertation, however, uses newly excavated materials from tombs dated to the Northern Zhou period, including the tombs of Xianbei leaders, Xianbei and Chinese generals, and Sogdian merchants, and proposes that visual arts and mortuary ritual played a role in creating and/or maintaining multiple sociopolitical and cultural identities for these residents of Northern Zhou. The theorization of power, agency, and cultural identity in recent publications has helped me analyze the processes involved in the construction of individual identity, group boundaries, and the interrelationships between socio-cultural groups. Theories of agency have helped me focus on choices made by different social and occupational groups. This dissertation has explored how the patterns of use of mortuary objects documented multiple identities for these three classes listed above with specific ethnic backgrounds: the sovereigns who were Xianbei; the military class of Xianbei and Han-Chinese; and the merchant class of Sogdians. I have discussed how aspects of political, military, and merchant life in the Northern Zhou period created a setting that contributed to multiple roles and identities in each group. My study has demonstrated the construction of multiple identities among elites and how they consistently distinguished themselves from other members of society. This dissertation will be the first contextual analysis focused on the visualization of class, social roles and cultural affiliation by examining mortuary art in the Northern Zhou.

The canonic Chinese theme Pictures of Agriculture and Sericulture 耕織圖 (Chinese: gengzhitu, Japanese: kōshokuzu) was transmitted to Japanese painting circles from the fifteenth- through the nineteenth- centuries. Paintings with agrarian motifs decorated the palaces of the Ashikaga shoguns and the abbots quarters in the Daisenin temple, and were reproduced many times by masters and disciples of the Kano school throughout the Edo period (1603-1868). From the eighteenth century on, agrarian vignettes also appeared in woodblock prints of various types: from the encyclopedic guidebook to the erotic color print. My dissertation focuses on this theme as a case study of painterly transmission. The first chapter compares the wall-paintings in the Daisenin with earlier Chinese paintings, and demonstrates that Japanese painters consciously altered the original figures in order to change their Confucian messages. Thus, I propose that the transmission of k!shokuzu exemplifies that painters and patrons consciously appropriated this theme to convey varied messages in changing ideological discourses. In the second chapter I argue that the Japanization of Chinese farming figures and motifs reveals that Kano painters used printed painting manuals imported from China to a much greater extent than has hitherto been suggested. Additionally, I link the rise of proto-nationalistic schools of thought to the Japanization of the portrayed landscape. In the third chapter, I concentrate on the print artist Tachibana Morikuni (1679-1749) and argue that his popular painting manuals cannot be the source through which Kano secret models were leaked to ukiyo-e artists. Rather, his work was part of a growing trend in the Japanese market of using printed books as painting manuals. Later print artists, such as Harunobu (fl. 1765-1770), acknowledged their transmission of Morikunis models by parodying his books. The fourth chapter surveys the history of Pictures of Sericulture. I link the lack of sericultural images and the inattention to their study to their association with a female audience. I also detail how weaving women in ukiyo-e served as parodies of Neo-Confucianism and in later Meiji-period prints as propaganda for imperial technology.