Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item The Altarpieces of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494): Between Heaven and Earth, Faith and Art(2017) Cadagin, Sarah Mellott; Gill, Meredith J; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the altarpiece paintings of the late fifteenth-century Italian artist Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-94). While Ghirlandaio’s frescoes have often been studied as paradigms of portraiture and visual narrative, the artist’s 12 surviving altarpiece paintings have received little attention, despite Ghirlandaio’s status as one of the major figures in the history of Renaissance painting. This study is the first comprehensive and contextual investigation of Ghirlandaio’s altarpieces, and one of the first to consider his works on panel outside questions of attribution. My analysis utilizes archival discoveries, alongside focused examinations into the identities of patrons, the commission histories of these works, the original locations of the altarpieces, and the paintings’ diverse sacred iconography. Organized around a range of case studies that include altarpieces for religious orders, cathedrals, civic hospitals, and private patrons, this dissertation also demonstrates the purposes and uses of altarpieces, revealing how this persistent type functioned as a form of visual and sacred power. Altarpieces visualize and index the divine presence contained and invoked at the altar, while also drawing the beholder fully into that presence. As a vehicle between the visible and the invisible, the altarpiece was the perfect means by which artists could explore the challenges of naturalism and mimesis, illusion and the imagination. Rather than seeing artists and their altarpieces as simply reflecting cultural and religious mores, this study argues for the active role that altarpieces played – and the artists who created them – in articulating the ontologies of the altar and its liturgies. Through an examination of Ghirlandaio’s altarpieces, this study proposes a new definition of the fifteenth-century altarpiece as a dynamic object that mediated between the realm of art, as an aesthetic artifact, and the realm of the sacred, as an image that participated in the liturgies of the altar. As the first study to explore Ghirlandaio’s altarpieces, this dissertation produces a new body of knowledge about the artist, his workshop, and his painting practices. More broadly, it reassesses the materiality, functions, and ontologies of altarpieces, leading not only to a greater understanding of Renaissance religious art, but also of sacred art more generally.Item Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) and the Art of Reform(2015) Cody, Steven Joseph; Gill, Meredith J; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)During the second and third decades of the sixteenth century, Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) distinguished himself within the city of Florence as a painter of considerable talent. He worked within a variety of religious institutions, creating altarpieces rich in theological complexity, elegant in formal execution, and dazzlingly brilliant in chromatic impact. This dissertation analyzes six of those altarpieces, offering a cross-section of Andrea's working life and stylistic development. Approaching the artist's career from this perspective provides modern audiences with a valuable glimpse into his strategies for marrying his own social ambitions to the spiritual teachings that informed ecclesiastical art. These strategies evolved as Andrea learned from each artistic commission he undertook, each altarpiece that he produced in dialogue with educated patrons and learned religious advisors. Over the course of his career, he himself privileged with increasing sophistication theological texts concerned with the idea of reform. I argue that Andrea's stylistic development as a painter describes this process of spiritual education. This argument reconsiders the established conventions of the art-historical monograph, as it adds significantly to the broader scholarly discussion of Renaissance religious art, shedding fresh light on early modern theories of subjectivity and sensation.Item Decorating the House of Wisdom: Four Altarpieces from the Church of Santo Spirito in Florence (1485-1500)(2011) Fondaras, Antonia; Gill, Meredith J.; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: DECORATING THE HOUSE OF WISDOM: FOUR ALTARPIECES FROM THE CHURCH OF SANTO SPIRITO IN FLORENCE (1485-1500) Antonia Fondaras, Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Dissertation directed by: Professor Meredith J. Gill Department of Art History and Archaeology This dissertation examines four altarpieces by different artists painted between 1485 and 1500 for Santo Spirito, the church of the Augustinian Hermits in Florence, in light of the Hermits' influence on the paintings' iconography. I argue that each of the altarpieces expresses a distinct set of Augustinian values and suggests appropriate modes of devotion and praxis. Together, the paintings represent an attempt on the part of the Florentine Hermits to convey their institutional and religious identity as heirs to Augustine's spirituality. The first chapter reviews the history and thought of the Augustinian Hermits, the history of the convent of Santo Spirito and the building and decoration of its church. The second concerns Sandro Botticelli's 1485 Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, which displays a nursing Virgin in a garden of scriptural quotations. The altarpiece portrays Holy Wisdom as the garden of Ecclesiasticus 24, as the Virgin immaculate created before all things, and, most importantly, as the Christ Child whose engorged breasts feed mankind. The third chapter addresses Piero di Cosimo's 1490-1498 Visitation with Saints Nicholas of Bari and Anthony Abbot. Mary and Elizabeth's junctio dextrarum seals, under the impression of the Holy Spirit, the union of the Testaments and the unity and authority of Ecclesia and accomplishes the "kiss of Justice and Peace" of Psalm 84. The third chapter discusses Filippino Lippi's 1494 Madonna and Child with Saints Martin of Tours, Catherine of Alexandria, the Young Saint John the Baptist and Donors: Within a multilayered composition based on Augustine's City of God, the donors apply to familial relationships the model of Saint Martin's charity displayed in the chapel window. Finally, Agnolo del Mazziere's 1495-1500 Trinity with Saints Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria, discusses ways of seeing and imaging the Trinity in light of Augustine's De Trinitate. My close reading of these altarpieces and my focus on religious context breaks ground in revealing how, in Renaissance Florence, an order could fashion, through independent altarpieces, a program that promoted its institutional values and stimulated modes of viewing that served its devotional and educational needs.