Art History & Archaeology
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Item Paolo and Francesca: Unfulfilled Love in Nineteenth-Century French Art(1986) Hall, Pamela Rae; Hargrove, June E.; Art History & Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)During the nineteenth century, the Divine Comedy became an important source of inspiration for French artists. Chief among the episodes represented was Dante's account of Paolo and Francesca, illicit lovers condemned to the Inferno's Circle of the Lustful. This paper examines specific portrayals of the Francesca tragedy and seeks to explain why the theme became especially favored by the French. The method is three fold: First, to trace the history of Dante's popularity in France; second, to analyze the thematic changes which occurred in depictions of Paolo and Francesca between 1800 and 1880; and finally, to consider the ways in which these works were influenced by contemporary philosophies and events. An historical survey of the popularity of the Divine Comedy closely indicates that France's admiration for Dante was linked to the appearance of numerous French translations of his chef d'oeuvre. Artists responded to the public's growing appreciation of the epic by incorporating Dantesque themes into their subjects: at least 111 works inspired by the Divine Comedy were exhibited at the Salon during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century -- of these 43 were based on Francesca's tale. The Francesca episode enjoyed prominence throughout the century largely because it was relevant to the advancing political, social, religious and artistic mores of society. The motif could be adapted to address sentimentality or melancholy. It could provide a moralizing lesson on lascivious living or serve as a pretext for eroticism. The theme of unfulfilled love, popular throughout the century, was embodied in Paolo and Francesca as either chaste, lamentable, deplorable or impassioned.Item Venetian Organ Shutters in the Renaissance(1985) Wang, Teh-yu; Rearick, William R.; Art History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Organ shutters, used in large organs for acoustical and aesthetic reasons, offer a two-fold interest to the art historian: iconography and style. Iconographically, many organ shutters in all periods displayed the Annunciation when closed. Images of the saints might be on the exterior or interior of the organ shutters; and the iconography evolved from simple devotional images of patron saints in ca. 1450, through narrative, historical images of patron saints in ca. 1520, to complicated combinations of themes from the Old and the New Testament in the entire sixteenth century. Stylistically, organ-shutter painters tried, from the very beginning, to break down the barrier between the pictorial plane of the organ shutters and the real space of the spectator; accordingly, two kinds of perspectival devices were used: the dal-sotto-in-su was usually used for the exterior, the eyelevel for the interior. Therefore, organ-shutter paintings are more than mere reflections of the contemporary artistic trends; a separate tradition evolved for organ-shutter perspectives. However, two styles - Manerism and Classicism - coexisted and rivalled each other, not unlike what was happening concurrently in frescoes or in easel paintings. These two styles achieved their apogee simultaneously in organ-shutter painting between 1550 and 1570. In these years Mannerism was represented by Jacopo Tintoretto, and Classicism by Paolo Veronese.Item Albert Pinkham Ryder's Two Wagnerian Paintings: The Flying Dutchman and Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens(1988) Carman, Sharon Dale; Peters-Campbell, John; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847-1917) has traditionally been regarded as an anomalous figure in the history of art. A small, but growing, body of scholarship has recently been devoted to correcting this view of the artist and to establishing his relationship to the aesthetic currents of his time. This study explores the influence on his art of Ryder's environment, late nineteenth-century New York. Two of Ryder's paintings, each based on an incident in an opera by Richard Wagner, are examined: Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens, drawn from Gotterdammerung; and The Flying Dutchman, inspired by Der fliegende Hollander. The history of opera in nineteenthcentury New York helps to explain how an American painter came to be influenced by such distinctly German operatic themes. German immigration patterns are linked with changes in operatic taste, and the interest of native intellectuals in Wagner's music and ideas is discussed. Wagnerian staging tradition is posited as a source for the compositions of both Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens and The Flying Dutchman. It is demonstrated that the set designed by Josef Hoffmann for the original Bayreuth production of Gotterdammerung, Act III, Scene I, served as the specific compositional basis for Ryder's Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens.