Undergraduate Theses

ABSTRACT: The Roms, an ethnic group known by numerous names and titles, become highly visible in Baroque painting, especially conspicuous because of their exotic appearance and their association with “magical” activity. 17th-century European viewers were both attracted to and terrified by this ethnic group, creating an ambiguous attitude towards its image. Painting in this century was also characterized by emphasis on naturalism through direct observation, lending ideas of verism to the representation of the Roms. This thesis focuses on the evolution of representing the Roms between the 16th and 17th centuries. Interest in the representation of the Roms has only emerged in the past few decades and no systematic studies in the sphere of art history have been undertaken. The first chapter presents an in-depth analysis of near Eastern figures in Renaissance painting and the appearance of the Roms. With a contextual and formal methodology of finding connections between different paintings, this thesis will discuss distinguishing contrast in rendering secular and religious subjects, and the influence of Renaissance masters on Baroque artists in representing “turbaned” characters. The second chapter deals with the issue of losing established iconographic elements of Roms by switching cultural codes and presenting a theatrical approach to rendering the Roms on canvases. The conclusion reviews every stated issue concerning the ambiguity towards Roma and how it changed throughout the centuries.

ABSTRACT: The French painter Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) provides a perfect case study to examine the negotiation between the artistic ambitions and the personal identity of a female Impressionist. Although many feminist art historians have argued the ways in which women artists opted for a compromise between artistic practice and social demands, examining this experience, and its impact on personal identity has been overlooked. Hence understanding private and deep inner realities in relation to both context and to one’s own stylistic evolution have rarely been taken into consideration. This is the reason why this thesis attempts, first, to look at Morisot’s The Wet Nurse and Julie (1879) with regards to Impressionism, and in the relation between her claims to inner emotional instability and her dissolution of forms. This internal turmoil is not examined in psychoanalytic terms, but in social ones: it seems to stem in part from the anxiety provoked by social factors such as the wet industry, the anonymity of modern workers and the “cult of true womanhood”. The internal struggle that Morisot expresses, in her writings and painted works, and the way in which Morisot tried to find a compromise between professional identity and personal life — which culminates, she states, in becoming an affectionate mother — is analyzed in depth from the point of view of the tensions and negotiations apparent in The Wet Nurse and Julie. Indeed, by observing how Morisot emerged professionally in the artistic circles of the late 19th century and how this generated feelings of uncertainty and loneliness allows us to understand Morisot’s claim to have found self-fulfillment in marriage and motherhood. For Morisot, public and private identities found their angle of repose in a careful negotiation of self, art and family.

ABSTRACT: The reception of Sonia Delaunay’s work has been distorted and undervalued due to her social position as the wife of a famous artist, her ethnicity, her gender, and her choice of media. The primary literature documenting her life and practice presents a male perspective on her art: first, that of her husband, then of the male representatives of the Parisian bohème, and then of male art critics and scholars. As a result, Sonia Delaunay was not the author of her own history. Instead, her history was written for her by her male colleagues in the art world, resulting in numerous misinterpretations and depreciative stereotypes. Thus, the historiography that established our current perception of Sonia Delaunay’s work is overloaded with biases both in the academic literature and in the curatorial practices of exhibiting her work. This thesis aims to analyze the origins of these recurring patterns and to provide solutions to overcome the dead-ends in historiography and museum practices. Using a post-modernist and post-feminist methodology, this research attempts to revise the existing literature from the 1910s to the 2020s to provide a new reading of Sonia Delaunay’s work, free of biases, stereotypes, and distortions. The main goal was to secure Sonia Delaunay’s proper place in art history. The research resulted in rethinking her complex artistic cooperation with her husband, the use of her ethnicity as a way of integrating French society and concealing her Jewish origins, and her prescient reservations about being relegated to the essentialist category of ‘female artist.’

ABSTRACT: The concept of ‘originality’ in art has been largely addressed by the literature over centuries in terms of its controversial nature. However, in the Renaissance period, the term needed to be reframed in light of the advancement of technology. Indeed, the creation and success of printmaking at that time represented a challenge to the previously undefined creative role of the artist. This wave of innovation affected the art market in multiple ways, posing questions that still remain unresolved. The possibility of reproducing in minute details the artworks of accomplished masters at an affordable price and in portable format, favored a fluid market of images and an exchange of models among artist and collectors. Nevertheless, the introduction of this revolutionary technique destabilized the role of the artist, who started to require recognition for his laboris et ingenii. The legal case between Albrecht Dürer vs. Marcantonio Raimondi presents an account of the divergent forces in action – on one side the desire to defend the creative role of the artist and his artistic production, and on the other hand the unregulated use of a new reproductive technology. In this scenario, in which the misattribution of artworks (either intentional or by unintentional) was very common, signatures started to be used to link the artworks to their creators. These countertendencies in the Renaissance period stimulated a further investigation on the definition of ‘fake’/ ‘forgery’ and ‘authenticity’, and their ethical as well as art historical implications. Elaborations on these terms are now more than ever relevant. Indeed, the law case of Albrecht Dürer vs. Marcantonio Raimondi stands as a precedent to understand the impact of modern technologies and media on copyright.

ABSTRACT: The thesis is an overview of contextual implications in Cleopatra’s portraiture created from 51 BC to 35 BC. The objective of this paper is to identify three different types of portraits based on the pictorial heritage in which they are grounded – Egyptian, Hellenistic, and Roman - and to demonstrate how the principle of code-switching applies to these images in the framework of a universal Mediterranean visual koine. It is an attempt to outline the stylistic and semantic approaches of Cleopatra’s portraits: from the earliest Egyptian representations inherited from pharaonic tradition, to the Hellenistic iconography with royal connotations legible across the Mediterranean world. It analyses connections between status and its appropriate iconographic markers within the multicultural medium in which Cleopatra’s images operated. In doing so this thesis seeks to establish the place of the portraits within a temporal and visual narrative. It discusses the ancestral Ptolemaic characteristics that dictated the iconography of the royal portraits and how they in turn influenced elite female imagery of the Hellenistic world. The scope thus is to establish the manner in which these portraits engaged efficiently with a vast audience of culturally diverse backgrounds, serving as linkage to legitimized royal discourses on diverse semantic levels simultaneously. A close study of Antonian-Cleopatrian coinage and Caesar-coded images of the queen in Rome provides evidence of the inevitable acculturation that impedes one from dividing royal images into singular national narratives. It proves that Cleopatra’s portraiture had undergone a process of connotational expansion, consciously and skillfully code-switching between strategies that were assessed by multiple strata of audience.

ABSTRACT: The research carried in this thesis highlights the spatial, architectural, decorative, and conceptional links between the three Imperial Forums of Caesar, Augustus and Trajan. The structures examined in this analysis were built in different centuries yet were constructed with a shared vision of the ways euergetic venues could be considered focal and central spaces within the city of Rome. The discussion of this concept is developed by investigating and analyzing the most recent archaeological findings. These help the argument focus on both the spatial links created by the formal layout of the three venues and the visual/physical engagement that the viewer would have experienced while walking through them. The first part of the thesis is dedicated to the relevant role that Roman urban topography plays in the overall understanding of the birth and growth of the area of the Imperial Forums. By focusing on the recently discovered fragments of the Forma Urbis Romae, and more generally on ancient ground plans, it is argued that this map’s function and accuracy can incentivize our contemporary understanding about the conceptual and architectural importance that monumental structures had within Rome. The research relies heavily on formal analysis generated from the study of the newest archaeological findings. This brings the discussion to investigate the structural patterns of interrelated axiality that these complexes create. The cohesive architectural connection between the Forums of Caesar, Augustus and Trajan is also analyzed by considering their permeability as spaces. These venues were meant to be engaged with both physically through movement and visually by becoming involved in their ornamental texture and decorative narrative. The Imperial Forums are not only considered as paramount central and focal spaces within the city, but also as venues that are imbued with conceptual meanings of spatiality, architectural cross references and unitary decorative programs.