Afterlife of a Renaissance Sculpture: Reception History of Michelangelo\u27s Pietà

This project explores three significant moments in the history of reception of Michelangelo\u27s Pietà, demonstrating changes of the Pietà\u27s meaning according to that of its location, the era, and groups of spectators. The project first introduce reception of the Pietà around the time of its creation, focusing on the polemic opinions of Renaissance artists who have seen the sculpture in person. It then analyzes reception of the sculpture during the age of Grand Tour, when the audience group of British aristocrats shows notably limited interest in the sculpture. Finally, it talks about reception of the Pietà during the occation of the 1964 New York World\u27s Fair, during when the sculpture was exhibited in Queens, NY, and it shows that while the three involved group of viewers, the Vatican, the fair committee, and general visitors to the fair, had different interests in the sculpture, they commonly recognized it as an icon of Christianity, an international representative of the Vatican City, and a masterpiece of Classical art that deserved special attention

Michelangelo and Pope Paul III, 1534-49: Patronage, Collaboration and Construction of Identity in Renaissance Rome

For his greatest patron, Pope Paul III Farnese (1534-49), Michelangelo painted the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, two monumental frescoes in the Pauline Chapel, and managed the design and reconstruction of St. Peter\u27s Basilica. The pope and artist maintained a harmonious and remarkably productive association for the entirety of Paul\u27s fifteen-year pontificate. The artist\u27s projects at the Vatican defined the most important sacred spaces of Renaissance Rome and helped construct the identity of the papacy at the inception of the Counter-Reformation. At the same time, these are the finest examples of Michelangelo\u27s mature painting and architecture. Following Giorgio Vasari\u27s example though, art historians have paid remarkably little attention to Michelangelo\u27s interactions with his most significant patron. My dissertation examines the relationship between these two men, the significance of these works as an ensemble, and how the projects advanced the multi-faceted agendas of both the artist and his powerful patron

Time and the experience of narrative in Italian Renaissance art

For many centuries, painting and sculpture translated the written narratives into images for a host of audiences. Unlike the narratives expressed in literature, music, theater, and film, which develop over time, the static nature of painting and sculpture give them the appearance of being temporally frozen. As such, we tend to think of them as having the ability to evoke only a single moment of a given narrative. Such limitations were the product of scholarly debates of the eighteenth-century that argued that the pictorial arts should portray only a single and precise punctum temporis of any given story. Artists and art theorists of the Renaissance do not appear to have placed such stringent restrictions on visual narratives. Quite the contrary, among the art of the Italian Quattrocento and Cinquecento, one can find a variety of temporal expressions: from the split-second precision of a fixed instant, to the sequenced actions of continuous narratives, to the abridgement of collapsed narrative. Through close readings of both paintings and sculptures in relation to their source texts, this dissertation explores how narrative artwork suggested duration and the continuity of a storyline. It considers how some artists may have, wittingly or unwittingly, succeeded in lengthening the intrinsic timelines of their visual narratives through polynarrative approaches: for example, by juxtaposing multiple moments of a single narrative or by combining multiple narratives in a visually seamless manner that does not patently jeopardize the unities of space and time. This dissertation explores not only the polynarrative aspects of some works, it also investigates the importance of the role of the viewer and how the spectator’s process of reading and interaction with the image affects how the experience of narrative unfolds before them. The study presents a method of reading art that aims to serve as a critical model for future inquiries regarding the temporal natures of figurative narratives.French and Italia

Da criação à Musealização

UID/HIS/00749/2019 SFRH/BPD/108772/2015 UID/PAM/00417/2019A escultura tumular constitui uma fonte privilegiada para o perscrutar da Idade Média, amplamente reconhecida e consideravelmente explorada pela comunidade científica internacional. O túmulo medieval, simultaneamente fenómeno artístico, estético, espiritual, histórico, antropológico, sociológico e cultural, obriga a uma abordagem ampla e interdisciplinar. Desvendando personagens e processos, materializando pensamentos, combinando, de forma dinâmica e complexa, revelações do corpo e da alma de uma existência individual que assim se perpetua, o momento abre-nos uma janela sobre realidades por outro meio difíceis - ou impossíveis - de alcançar. Da criação à musealização: é neste ciclo de longa duração e multifacetado, nesta espécie de vida total dos monumentos funerários, que se pretende repensar, entender, questionar e perspectivar o túmulo medieval neste volume que reúne contributos de investigadores, museólogos e restauradores de diversas nacionalidades revelando a riqueza, a pertinência e o potencial da temática.publishersversionpublishe

Mythology and masculinity : a study of gender, sexuality and identity in the art of the Italian Renaissance

The concerns of this thesis are aligned with approaches to the historical study of sexuality, gender and identity in art, society and culture which are increasingly articulate and questioning at present. However, it is distinct from these recent studies because it redirects attention toward a stimulating encounter with the past through new theoretical proposals and interpretive perspectives on the manner in which mythology asserts itself as the vehicle for expressing male same-sex erotic behaviour, gender performance and masculine identity in the visual culture of the Italian Renaissance. By following a methodological, historiographical and interdisciplinary mode of enquiry, this thesis formulates and expresses new perspectives which engage with the representation of masculine concerns relating to these historically specific matters in the visual domain of the period. Conventional historical definitions of traditional art historical models of masculinity are also called into question through reassessment of how the function of the ideal male nude body in Renaissance art was shaped by particular social and historical contexts in different regions of Italy during the sixteenth century. These interrelated themes are approached in three stages. Firstly, there is interpretation of the complex and convoluted meanings within the narrative of the mythic sources, as well as decoding and contextualising of the symbolic messages of the images in question. Secondly, I assemble and examine the textual evidence that exists about erotic and social relationships between males in the Renaissance so that their historical significance can be tracked and placed in the context of the tension which existed between Renaissance Italian judicial and religious proscription and commonplace behaviour. And thirdly, I offer comprehensive analyses and interpretive frameworks which are informed by and based upon a wide range of written as well as visual sources together with evaluation of competing theoretical perceptions. The main arguments are presented in three chapters: The central theme of Chapter One is gender performance with specific focus upon the integral and didactic role of pederasty in visual representations of myths which conflate erotic desire between males and philosophical allegory. The historical phenomenon of pederastic relationships between males is addressed through interrogation of the pictorial vocabulary of Benvenuto Cellini’s marble Apollo and Hyacinth (1545), and Giulio Romano’s drawing of Apollo and Cyparissus (1524).The arguments and theories discussed and analysed in Chapter Two deal with Michelangelo’s depiction of Ovidian mythic narratives. Here, close attention is paid to the intricate nuances and sophisticated iconography used by Michelangelo for three highly finished presentation drawings - The Rape of Ganymede (1532), The Punishment of Tityus (1532) and The Fall of Phaeton (1533) - which Michelangelo presented to Tommaso De’ Cavalieri. The chapter aims to encourage a re-evaluation of these three drawings as a meaningful and connected narrative endowed with significant cultural and personal significance relating to their creator’s anguish about physical desire and its relationship to what modernity terms as ‘sexuality’. In Chapter Three, I consider how several works featuring the theme of Apollo flaying Marsyas can be read as articulations of the imaginative and ideological structures of the formation and preservation of masculine identities. The chapter addresses the iconographic visibility of the theme of flaying and explores the philosophical and literary metaphoric significance of this myth. Primacy is given to destabilising dominant conceptualizations of the heroic male nude as a subject in art throughout all these selected case studies. Centred as they are on sexual attraction or destruction rather than idealisation of the male figure, these chapters offer a revaluation of ways of seeing the archetypal heroic nude in a myriad of ways

DEFINING ARTISTIC IDENTITY IN THE FLORENTINE RENAISSANCE: VASARI, EMBEDDED SELF-PORTRAITS, AND THE PATRON'S ROLE

Readers of Vasari's Vite will be aware of the lively Renaissance tradition of the artist's embedded portrait within commissioned works. We are told of numerous embedded self-portraits, a notion that earlier authors including Alberti, Filippo Villani, and Ghiberti, corroborate. This dissertation argues that the Vite, our most extensive source on the subject, set up ideas and expectations that continue to pervade our understanding of their purposes and functions. A primary aim here is to move beyond Vasari's assumptions and examine self-images from the standpoint of their audience rather than their creators. Chapter One examines aspects of our current knowledge concerning Vasari's historical context and his motivations as an artist, courtier, and writer in order to understand how his views informed his interpretation of the genre. Chapter Two examines a manuscript self-portrait by Pietro da Pavia and a sculpted self-portrait of Andrea Orcagna. It investigates issues of artistic identity and authority and how these notions were displayed and commemorated to discern how self-portraits may have served the aims of the commissioner(s). The third and fourth chapters delve into the history of Quattrocento Florentine embedded self-portraits. First with Masaccio's self-portrait in the Brancacci Chapel, and then with self-images of Benozzo Gozzoli, Botticelli, Filippino Lippi and Domenico Ghirlandaio, these chapters examine aspects of the Renaissance culture of art commissioning to establish the patron's role with regard to embedded self-portraiture. Discussion here suggests ways in which a patron might have understood the artist's embedded self-portrait during the early Quattrocento. It further explores the notion that while professional, intellectual, and social-status driven concerns may have dominated the creation of embedded self-images, not all of these were the concerns of the artists. The final chapter investigates transitional images between the embedded and autonomous self-portrait traditions by examining two fictively autonomous self-images - one by Perugino in Perugia's Collegio del Cambio and the other by Pintoricchio in Santa Maria Maggiore, Spello. The case-studies presented here illuminate neglected aspects regarding Renaissance embedded self-images, and cast light on both sides of the transaction between artist and patron that resulted in the inclusion of the artist's embedded self-portrait in narrative paintings