Master Theses

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    Gifts of the True Cross: Politics, Women, and Legend in Early Medieval Rome
    (2024) Herber, Kelsey Jordan; Salvadori, Sharon; Yawn, Lila
    Empress Helena’s legendary discovery of the True Cross in the first half of the fourth century was well known by the late fourth century. Fragments of the Cross were purportedly in the city of Rome by then, raising the cult of the True Cross on to a global stage, affecting not only religious piety as such but an international political and social context. This thesis examines two sixth century reliquaries of the True Cross that were both, at one time, located in Constantinople and Rome: the Cross of Justin II and the Cross of Adaloald. Both provide important mindsets into patterns of patronage and the interplay of religious and secular politics in gift exchange. Both reliquaries are believed to have been produced in Constantinople within a relatively short amount of time. This allows for a comparative analysis of their visual construction given their significance in a relatively contained context. Their roles as gifts between powerful rulers fostered political alliances and conveyed distinct messages, reflecting the complexities of power dynamics in the early medieval era. This exploration will delve into the materiality, function, and gender relations that influenced these reliquaries’ significance within the context of power.
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    The Indian “Lakshmi” Figurine from Pompeii as an Emblem of East-West Trade in the Roman Early Imperial Era
    (2019) Weinstein, Laura Renee
    In 1938 Amedeo Maiuri, as Superintendent of Archaeology at Pompeii, made an unprecedented discovery that remains a unicum: a small ivory statuette of extraordinary craftsmanship, presumed to have been imported from India during the height of Roman and Indian trade in the first century AD. Scholars knew from the textual sources that trade had flourished for centuries between Rome and Arabia, India, and with India as a conduit, China. Roman objects excavated at Indian sites such as Arikamedu, Kolhapur, Pattanam, etc, highlighted that bustling commercial relationship. However, the droves of spices, cloth, wood and gems that the ancient writers and the Periplus Maris Erythraei reported as having been exported from India to Rome had long vanished or become impossible to provenance. Some luxurious ivory ornaments had been found, but none pinpointed Indian craftsmanship. Instead, Maiuri’s intricately carved 24-cm tall female figure, securely traceable to India prior to AD 79, is the best, if not only, ancient Indian object found on Roman soil, to date. In the 80 years since its discovery, research on this object has been sporadic. Many art historians still do not know of its existence. The Thesis attempts to reconstruct the path from creator to end user in a cosmopolitan world, imagining the 6000 km journey the statuette might have made from India to Pompeii, updating iconography and function debates, and putting the find spot debate to rest. Moreover, this paper highlights specific artifacts in the storerooms of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples as well as interesting footnotes in previously published papers that could benefit from fresh study. This paper attempts to rectify the misperception that lack of artifacts in the West signifies lack of activity, creating a fuller picture of this unusual object, a fascinating testament to the avid exchange among prosperous civilizations two thousand years ago.
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    Constructing Herself: Edita Broglio’s Self-Portrait of 1938
    (2022) Voros, Judith; Linford, Sarah; Gianni, Ilaria
    The journal Valori Plastici, published in Rome between 1918 and 1921, was a significant contributor to critical debates on the notion of tradition and modernity not only in Italy but also throughout Europe. Historiography overwhelmingly emphasized the magazine's advocates, such as de Chirico, Carrà, and Morandi, often ignoring further members considered less significant. This thesis seeks to identify this gap by focusing on the group's sole resident female artist, Edita Broglio (1886-1977). The co-founder was regarded as the custodian and storyteller of the magazine during her long life, a role that overshadowed her individuality as an artist. Although she was highly appreciated by her contemporaries, her husband's growing influence as a painter soon overshadowed her professional merits. At the Roman Quadriennale in 1939, she exhibited no longer as a prominent artist of Valori Plastici, but under the male pseudonym Rocco Canea. Considering that Edita Broglio's gender always defined her imagery and her career, her self-portrait of 1938 is the subject of present research. Through the careful analysis of the enigmatic Portrait of a Lady with Marquetry Background (1938), I will demonstrate her deliberate and self-conscious strategies of self-expression in a male-dominated and politically complex environment. Guided by feminist and post-feminist analysis and by adopting a critical perspective, I will attempt to correct the dead ends of the existing literature and contextualize Edita's experience as a practicing woman artist. The formal invention embedded in the painting, the circumstances of the exhibition at the III Roman Quadriennale and the use of the male pseudonym will further nuance the story of an artistic exploration of identity that purposefully critiques and subverts pervasive and traditional authorities and institutions in Interwar Italy.
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    Re-evaluating Late Pompeian Wall Painting in the House of the Ephebe
    (2021) Turnblom, Lynette; Corrado, Crispin; Fuhrmann-Schembri, Elisabeth
    The last decades of Pompeii were a time of great change and innovation in the art of Roman wall painting. Due to the earthquake of 62 CE it is possible to locate homes which were painted in these final years. The House of the Ephebe is one such house that was nearly fully redecorated in these pivotal years, and is therefore an excellent resource to study changes occurring in this time. Two aspects of late Pompeiian wall painting which have been largely ignored in scholarship can be seen in this house; they are a glimpse of what was a larger movement within painting at the time. These aspects are an increasing use of monochrome backgrounds, particularly white but also other colors, and the function and importance of subsidiary figures such as floating cupids. While monochrome design palettes and floating cupid figures can be observed in other houses at Pompeii and other spaces in the bay of Naples, there is no location in which these ideas are more clearly and vibrantly seen than in the House of the Ephebe. This thesis will explore the prevalence of white monochrome painted rooms throughout the bay of Naples to suggest that between 62 and 79 CE they became increasingly more common – in total, appearing in over 30 homes at Pompeii. It will also discuss the importance and function of the floating cupid figures. The high preservation level of Room twelve of the House of the Ephebe makes it an unparalleled opportunity to study these figures and their interconnectivity with the mythological scenes with which they are paired. The close study of the interior fresco paintings of this house, which have been neglected otherwise for nearly a century, will be the trigger for a watershed moment in the study of ancient Roman wall painting, opening up new avenues of thinking about painted domestic spaces, particularly the way with which they were conceived by the artists, and the way that the viewer might have interacted with the space.
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    Becoming Canova: The Clement Papal Monuments
    (2022) Thorpe, Elizabeth; Linford, Sarah; Foster, Laura
    Antonio Canova began his international career by fulfilling commissions for two papal monuments in Rome. These monuments, one located in the Franciscan Basilica of Santi Apostoli, the other in Saint Peter’s Basilica, are seldom the focus of scholarly research yet they provide a rich foundation to investigate Canova’s innovative style. Through careful visual analysis of the two monuments vis-à-vis other papal monuments both within Saint Peter’s and in other churches of Rome, a consideration of the iconographical, semantic and design solutions will focus on the research question: How and why do these monuments present such radically different modes of representation of the Supreme Pontiff, and how do they negotiate affect and power so divergently? To investigate these issues the thesis relies on primary sources in Possagno and Rome, the writings of Canova’s contemporaries and the current, if scant, scholarship in English, Italian, French, and German. Because both monuments were executed early in Canova’s career, and due to the nature of the research question, an analysis of their reception will contribute to their study, as it will to scholarship on the trajectory of Canova’s career. With the papal monuments, Antonio Canova broke with the existing Baroque tradition in favor of an innovative classicizing style, and coupled execution of the monuments with a vigilant eye to their placement within each basilica’s architecture and the experience they staged for the viewer. How Canova addressed existing conventions, relied on the interplay of allegory, symbol, motif, perspective, execution, narrative and theatricality, and how he negotiated patronage and space, provide avenues to structure this research and, ultimately, aims to contribute to refreshing the art-historical literature on the artist, currently quagmired in an uncritical identification of Canova with sculptural Neoclassicism.
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    The Devil in the Details: Edits and the Visual Demonization of Tancred in the Liber ad Honorem Augusti
    (2021) Sullivan-Silva, Meghan Valely; Armando, Silvia; Yawn, Lila
    In what could be termed a case of damnatio memoriae or perhaps an example of shifting iconographic standards, some of the miniatures in the richly illustrated Sicilian manuscript known as the Liber ad Honorem Augusti (1197 ca.) were subjected to brutal revisions which rendered them permanently scarred and fundamentally altered. The Liber marks the end of Norman kingship over Sicily and tells the story of Holy Roman Emperor and German King Henry VI’s ascent to the throne, ascribing to him a mythological origin and peppering the text with elements of predestination and divine greatness. While certainly a skewed account, the manuscript itself presents a number of mysteries concerning its own genesis. Of particular interest are its fantastic miniatures, which reveal a shift in stylistic and political motivations during the process of the manuscript’s creation; this is especially true of the treatment of Henry’s rival for the throne, Tancred, who was portrayed inconsistently throughout the manuscript and whose visage was subjected to alterations. The edits themselves suggest an interest in revising the artistic narrative to deliver a different message, one which emphasizes the nefarious nature of the king’s adversary. This study examines the miniatures with particular attention paid to Tancred’s representation and identifies new patterns to provide fresh insight into the production of this work.
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    Marco d’Agrate’s St. Bartholomew Flayed: Material History and Reception
    (2023) Sterns, Madeline Naomi; Smyth, Carolyn; Foster, Laura
    This research examines the under-studied sculpture of St. Bartholomew Flayed, by Marco d’Agrate (c.1500 - 1572), a focus on twenty-first century, interdisciplinary methodology to analyze this art object through a layered lens of materiality and forensics in the context of the era of artist-anatomists in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. Where past scholarship has been quick to employ this sculpture as an eye-catching case study to support larger ideas, a more in-depth understanding of the artwork is long overdue, in order for it to better serve in support in art historical discourse on a larger scale. As part of this process, this paper compiles a history of the known works of Marco d’Agrate, and of the working environment of sixteenth-century Milan. This St. Bartholomew is unlike most depictions that came both before and after d’Agrate’s. Other depictions of St. Bartholomew in Italian art are compared against d’Agrate’s, followed by an analysis of the similarities and differences between St. Bartholomew and Ovid’s Marsyas, who are often linked by the shared nature of their deaths. It has been said that this sculpture resembles the early anatomical models ( écorché ) made from the collaboration of artists and anatomists. In this paper, I include a direct “reading” of the body of Marco d’Agrate’s St. Bartholomew Flayed and its structures to discern that Marco d’Agrate must have practiced human anatomy through dissection in order to produce it. This paper concludes with a discussion on its infamous Latin inscription and the relocation of the sculpture from the exterior of the Cathedral of Milan to the south transept, where it can be found today as one of the most highly viewed works in one of the largest churches in all of Italy.
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    Ruinenlust and Monumental Wish Fulfillment: La Basilica di San Paolo rovinata e risorta
    (2019) Sloan, Nathaniel; Georgi, Karen; Linford, Sarah
    This paper will focus on printed images of the church of San Paolo fuori le Mura in Rome produced directly following a fire that caused significant damage to the church in July, 1823. These printed depictions of the ruined church, which fit within the canon of representation established by Piranesi, may be interpreted within the context of recent historical events, including the French occupation of Rome in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Various factors, including the recent trauma of French occupation and the sense of ruinenlust ubiquitous in the period, contributed to the immense popularity of these images in the popular imagination. Through careful analysis of the reception of these images within the context described above, this paper aims to account for the continued popularity of images of the ruined church, even after the church had been entirely reconstructed. In addition, the thesis posits a typology of viewers that illustrates how various sorts of people alive in the early nineteenth century would have likely seen and related to these images.
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    How We Fight Back: Sarkis’s Two Rainbows, a Case Study in Decolonizing the Italian Museum
    (2022) Shaon, Savannah; Linford, Sarah; Gianni, Ilaria
    This thesis focuses on Two Rainbows, a large neon work by conceptual artist Sarkis Zabunyan. It has been exhibited multiple times in different forms and in several international venues, most notably as part of Istanbul. Passion, Joy, Fury, a 2015 exhibition curated by Hou Hanru and Donatella Saroli at the MAXXI - National Museum of 21st-Century Art in Rome. My methodological approach is informed by the art-historical literature on identity and cultural politics, as this is a central debate in contemporary art and its histories. Sarkis’ identity as a Turkish-born man of Armenian descent provides him with a unique perspective to weigh in on these contemporary discussions. His background and biography are part and parcel of the idea of resistance present in many of his works. This in turn impacts the way his work is received in various cultural and political contexts. Much of Sarkis’ work addresses the idea of hope and new beginnings following political conflicts, like that of the 2013 Gezi Park uprisings in Taksim Square. Two Rainbows is no different. It stands as a bright symbol of resistance and civil disobedience against an oppressive government following the Gezi Park repression, and remains a beacon for opponents of Turkey’s far-right dictatorial regime. In the context of decolonizing Italian museums, and the concept of decolonization in the art historical field, the MAXXI took early steps in challenging the Italian museum, the concept of Italian art as exclusive, and the inherent Eurocentricity of the art historical canon. The process of decolonization necessarily takes different forms in different institutions and countries. In Italy, perhaps, this might imply situating Italy in a more extensive and inclusive definition of the Mediterranean, rather than as a pillar of Western civilization, or promoting non- Western artists in ways that do not propagate primitivism or exoticism. Indeed “decolonization” iii has, over the past twenty years, gone well beyond a narrow dictionary definition of holding colonies in other countries. It has become short-hand for challenging the Western canon in art history and in museum studies, for challenging the white (and frequently also patriarchal and heteronormative) bias inherent in a Eurocentric view of art and culture. Ultimately, this thesis focuses on Two Rainbows as a case study to enquire about the specific cultural, social, and political context that Italy, and Rome in particular, presents with regard to one of the most powerful, and necessary, endeavors of contemporary art history. While “decolonization" is a subject of crucial debate in art history and museum studies in England and the United States, in particular, the question seems somewhat peripheral still in Italy. Sarkis’ work, and the exhibition cycle that Istanbul. Passion, Joy, Fury contributed to is one the rare instances of an Italian institution broaching this topic. Might this be a decisive instance of taking steps towards decolonizing the Italian museum?
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    Mario Mafai's Demolizioni: On Fascist Cultural Policies and Anti-Fascist Art History
    (2024) Schembri, Elena; Linford, Sarah; Gianni, Ilaria
    This thesis proposes a reconsideration of Mario Mafai’s Demolizioni series, painted in Rome between 1936 and 1939. These 20 or so paintings depict buildings in the city center of Rome that were being demolished as a consequence of the enactment of the 1931 Master Plan. The works were widely appreciated by members of the Fascist regime before and during the war as works celebrating Mussolini’s initiative of rebuilding a new, Fascist Rome. However, after 1945, art critics interpreted Mafai’s Demolizioni as a first sign of the artist’s aversion towards the regime, and a warning against the atrocities yet to be witnessed during World War Two. However, proclaiming Demolizioni a series of anti- Fascist works is problematic, first because they do not express an outspoken condemnation of Fascism or of war as other works by Mafai clearly do; second, because Mario Mafai himself adopted a rather ambiguous and at times even opportunistic attitude towards politics. While the Roman artist doubtlessly became an anti-Fascist after 1938-1939, his earlier political positions remain unclear. This thesis therefore investigates Mafai’s attitude towards Fascism by considering the publication of articles written by or about him on Fascist newspapers and periodicals like L’Italia Letteraria or Quadrivio, as well as three paintings and one fresco celebrating Fascist themes, all painted by Mafai between 1931 and 1937. Returning to Demolizioni, this thesis argues that, like Mafai’s Fiori Secchi series, they stand out as an ode to what is about to perish and stands on the threshold separating existence from oblivion. Far from being artworks denunciating the regime, Demolizioni are here seen as emblematic of Mafai’s pictorial and artistic taste, a manifestation of his most intimate reflections on life and death. In support of this point, this thesis will address how art critics and the general public received Demolizioni at the time they were first exhibited at the Galleria della Cometa in 1937 through articles written and published in newspapers from both sides of the political divide.
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    An analysis of the 1546 Venetian edition of Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum Libellus
    (2021) Robohn, Melissa Ann; Smyth, Carolyn; Yawn, Lila
    The subject for this thesis is an analysis of the 1546 Venetian edition of Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum Libellus. The Emblematum Libellus is an early example of a popular genre of published materials known as emblem books. Andrea Alciato (1492-1550), an Italian jurist and humanist working in Northern Italy and France, is widely considered the father of this genre as it was his set of epigrams, printed with accompanying illustrations, that were first published in 1531. About forty editions of his emblem books were published during the author’s lifetime but this specific edition is interesting for several reasons. First, the emblems in this edition are new; the previous twenty-seven editions or printings were all based on a different set of epigrams, the now lost 1521 or 1522 set. Second, it is the only confirmed edition published in Italy during this Italian author’s lifetime. There are references to a possible Milan edition from 1521 or 1522, but no copy has ever been found nor evidence for its production. After this 1546 edition, Alciato’s emblem books were not printed in Italy again until a posthumous edition was published in Padua in 1621. The third reason is the collection of circumstances around its publication and source. The how and why behind this publication by Paolo Manuzio and how the publisher obtained the material is still quite mysterious. After this one Italian printing, Alciato resumed working almost exclusively with French printers until his death. By analyzing the evidence in extant copies of the 1546 edition of the Emblematum Libellus and other editions of Alciato’s emblems published shortly before and after the 1546 Venetian edition, this work will be placed in the context of the author’s biography, the publisher’s biography, and the development of the new set of illustrated emblems. Close analysis of the image portion of the emblems in this volume as well as a brief analysis of the epigrams themselves provide additional evidence about the development of this work.
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    Transforming the Italian Body Politic with Futurist Food
    (2023) Ramaswamy, Lea; Linford, Sarah; Georgi, Karen
    Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Manifesto della Cucina Futurista was first published in the Turin-based Gazzetta del Popolo on December 28, 1930. Despite the widespread public backlash against the manifesto’s desire to revolutionise the Italian diet with the aim of spiritually and materially transforming the Italian body politic, the Futurist culinary venture was materialised into a restaurant, a colonial pavilion, numerous culinary lectures, multiple banquets, and a book-length publication titled La Cucina Futurista (1932) by Marinetti and Futurist artist Luigi Colombo Fillìa. Previous studies of Futurist cuisine, limited as they are, tend to focus on either the avant-garde dimensions of Futurist cuisine — its edible food sculptures and theatrical dinner sets — or the political implications of the movement’s engagement with autarchic policies and its rampant espousal of violence, xenophobia, misogyny, and the cults of youth and sport in alignment with the Fascist regime. These differentiated studies conform to a historiographical phenomenon which splits Futurism into two phases, favouring ‘early’ Futurism (1909-1916) as more pure and aesthetically innovative than the Futurism that followed. This thesis finds it more pertinent to ask, instead: what continuities existed between Futurist cuisine and the early years of the movement? Through the analysis of the manifesto and its subsequent physical, visual, and textual expansions as well as the critical reading of its near and far reception, it emerges that Futurist cuisine was a polemic proclamation against middle class conformity whose reactionary right-wing politics did not compromise its uninterrupted use of avant-garde tactics, or vice versa. This thesis holds that the exclusion of Futurist cuisine from the art historical canon cannot be viewed any longer as a simple oversight, but a reflection of the field at large, its biases, and its deep infatuation and need to preserve a neutral account of Futurism, for the role the movement performs in the overwriting Fascist politics from the Italian contribution to modern art.
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    All That Glitters: Gemstones and Viewer Participation in Ancient Roman Wall Ornamentation
    (2024) Murphy, Mamie; Corrado, Crispin; Hansen, Inge
    In this study, I investigate how Roman patrons’ use of gemstones in domestic decoration encouraged guests to forgo their traditional role of observer and instead actively engage with the ornamentation adorning elite residences. I specifically analyze the gemstones depicted in the Second-Style wall paintings in Triclinium 14 in Villa A at Oplontis and Cubiculum M in the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale (50-40 BCE), as well as the mirror-like obsidian slabs embedded into the east peristyle wall of the House of the Golden Cupids, the east peristyle wall of the House of the Orchard in Pompeii, and the east atrium wall of the House of the Ephebe in Pompeii (mid-1st century CE). Though the conversation is nascent, accepted interpretations regard ornamental gemstones as mere markers of Rome’s expansive military conquests, taste for the exotic, and Hellenization. However, I seek to transcend gemstones’ traditional symbolization and argue that, in select homes, ornamental gemstones fostered an immersive environment that directly inserted guests into the decorative programs of their houses to entertain and impress the patrons’ guests. To achieve this, I adopt ancient literary interpretations of gemstones as paradoxical objects that embody nature and art simultaneously and thereby blur the boundary between natural and man-made. I suggest the inherent duality of gemstones then resonates with the slippage between the real and engineered experiences offered in elite Roman residences, and that this shared ambiguity is precisely where houses ornamented with gemstones derived their immersive capabilities. Ultimately, this study uses Roman patrons’ imaginative employment of decorative gemstones as a medium for deciphering the understudied but integral relationship between ornamentation, materiality, and the social politics of domestic spaces.
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    Dating Troubles: an Investigation into the Painted Decoration within the Tomb of the Blue Demons
    (2021) Metzgar, Melissa; Corrado, Crispin; Fuhrmann-Schembri, Elisabeth
    The Tomb of the Blue Demons is an Etruscan burial chamber from Tarquinia shrouded in a damaged archaeological record, traditionally dated to the mid-fifth century BC. With extraordinary frescoes of a hunt, a procession, a banquet, and the Underworld, the tomb has captivated archaeologists for its unusual blue beasts—creatures who do not arise in Etruscan visual trends until one hundred years after the tomb’s ascribed date. Scholars adhering to the traditional date of the tomb have explained these painted demons as a newfound Etruscan concern for the afterlife. However, similar funerary characters appear on sixth-century terracotta plaques from nearby Cerveteri. In these examples, however, these human characters have yet to transform into the monstrous creatures we see in the Tomb of the Blue Demons. Additionally, identical grotesque figures decorate many other Etruscan materials (ranging from pottery and mirrors to cinerary urns and sarcophagi), all dating from the mid-fourth to late third centuries BC. The demons in the Tomb of The Blue Demons, then, not only demonstrate a visual expansion of pre-existing afterlife thoughts in Etruria, but also realign the frescos’ date with the mid-fourth century BC. A closer look at these demons alongside the tomb’s other paintings reveals additional discrepancies in their drafting techniques and pigments. Here, painters unmistakably used a red sketch before painting and lightly outlining the demons—a technical feature noticeably absent from the other three walls. These iconographic and painterly differences throughout the Underworld more closely align the fresco with later artistic trends in Etruria. Considering all of this evidence together, it thus appears as if the Underworld scene in the Tomb of the Blue Demons was likely painted at a second historical moment, much after the tomb was originally adorned with the more traditional painted scenes. This allows a dating of the Underworld scene to the mid-fourth century BC, underscoring an intricate level of artistic adaptation and innovation previously unseen in funerary decoration.
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    Antonietta Raphaël: Mysticism and Memory
    (2023) Merli, Ciera; Linford, Sarah; Gianni, Ilaria
    This thesis investigates Lithuanian 20th-century artist Antonietta Raphaël’s painting Due Sorelle. By consulting with primary resources and the miniscule contemporary literature on her, this thesis explains her intersectional identity through the methodology of memory. This is done by identifying the date of the painting (1940) and the iconography of the women in the painting. Due Sorelle was created during the tumultuous interwar period in Italy and in Antonietta Raphaël’s life. Yet it is a significant example of Raphaël’s intentional iconographic memory and profound spiritual loss of a past life that could not be reclaimed after World War II. With Due Sorelle, she constructs an image of two Judaic characters, Lilith and Eve, the first women, mothers of demons and humanity, and the first two sinners of Judaism, who were ousted from Eden. She intuitively paints a resistance towards the regime by constructing a memory and identity that serves as a narration of her past and present life.
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    Diffuse and Divided Memory: Grassroots Commemoration of the Fosse Ardeatine
    (2022) Maldari, Lindsay; Linford, Sarah; Georgi, Karen
    On March 23, 1944, during Rome’s 9-month Nazifascist occupation, Italian Resistance fighters orchestrated a bombing attack on via Rasella which resulted in 33 German casualties. Less than 24 hours later, SS troops retaliatorily executed 335 Italians in a set of abandoned caves now infamously known as the Fosse Ardeatine. The monument inaugurated at the site in 1949 is widely considered to be Italy’s first modern monument as well as an exceedingly rare national Resistance memorial. Yet while the importance of the Mausoleo delle Fosse Ardeatine is indisputable, it is the goal of the present study to recognize the narratives that cannot fit within a univocal monument to a mass tragedy. To do so, this project will provide an analytic survey of various grassroots commemorative practices used to honor the victims of the Fosse Ardeatine across time. Through a mixed methodological approach that combines art history with memory and reception studies, grassroots commemoration is defined as memorials that have been spontaneously created by extrainstitutional actors rather than official, state-sponsored commission. To first contextualize the need for grassroots commemoration of the massacre, this project will reconstruct the strained dynamics and abundant criticism leveled by the victims’ families towards the monument. In so doing, the dissonance between private and public memory of the Resistance and the competing needs of familial mourning and institutional commemoration becomes clear. From there, two primary types of grassroots memorials created by familial and political groups in the years following the massacre will be analyzed; spontaneous shrines of portrait photographs placed by the victims’ families in the Fosse Ardeatine caves, and commemorative plaques erected throughout Rome’s urban fabric by the political parties affiliated with the victims. Despite their mutual function as individualized memorials for the massacre victims, the spontaneous shrines and memorial plaques served different audiences and functioned according to fundamentally distinct commemorative logics. The phenomenological experience and rhetorical impact of each memorial format illustrates the simultaneously personal and political functions of grassroots memorials. Lastly, attacks on Resistance memory from the ‘New Right’ in recent years have meant that Fosse Ardeatine memorials sites are now frequent stages for counter-memory as expressed through acts of revision, vandalism, and, ultimately, destruction. The contestedness of Resistance memory in recent years has, however, also prompted a resurgence of positive iterations of grassroots commemoration for the Fosse Ardeatine and has reframed the massacre’s ethical commemoration as a form of contemporary antifascist activism.
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    The Virgin Mary as an open door for the Wise and Foolish Virgins and viewers on the façade of Santa Maria in Trastevere
    (2024) Gaebe, Gavin Austin; Yawn, Lila; Salvadori, Sharon
    This thesis examines the thirteenth-century façade mosaic of Santa Maria in Trastevere through the lens of a thirteenth-century viewer standing in the piazza gazing upwards at the church’s exterior. The iconography on the church’s façade has long troubled scholars with the way it breaks many of the “rules” of its two iconographic groupings: the Virgo lactans and the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. The Virgo lactans in Santa Maria in Trastevere presents problems due to the image type’s relative rarity in Western Europe before the hypothesized date of this mosaic’s execution in the second or third decade of the thirteenth century. This thesis places the Virgo lactans within its Roman context, compares it to other popular images of the Virgin Mary in Rome to understand how the iconography may have been received by a thirteenth-century viewer. The second iconographic group presents different challenges. The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, unlike the Virgo lactans, is scriptural. And yet, on the façade of Santa Maria in Trastevere it diverges from the iconographic formulas and messaging that preceded this façade, even to the point where some art historians have argued that the parable is in fact not the subject. This thesis explores the prescriptive motivations behind Santa Maria in Trastevere’s unique adaptation of the parable in a post-Fourth Lateran Council context, and questions whether its novelty could have been read as such by a thirteenth-century viewer by incorporating a wide range of comparanda. By placing this façade mosaic in both its architectural context, and its Roman context, this thesis proposes a reading of the façade mosaic based on the idea of contrasts between biblical women with the Wise and Foolish Virgins as the obvious contrast and the Virgin Mary and Eve as the less-obvious contrast. These contrasts result in a mosaic that encourages movement into the church structure by using the metaphor of an open door through the Virgo lactans iconography, further deepened by the resonances and associations a thirteenth-century viewer may have made while viewing the figures on the façade of Santa Maria in Trastevere.
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    Giosetta Fioroni’s Ragazza TV
    (2023) Esen, Ayse Nazli; Linford, Sarah; Lauf, Cornelia
    Giosetta Fioroni, a prominent figure of Italian Pop Art, generated a storm in the 1960s as a woman artist when she exhibited silver-painted portraits of women appropriated from the mass media. Her choice of iconography, namely, her focus on female figures, distinguished her art from that of her male peers and engaged critical attention. One of these silver portraits was her anonymous idol figure, Ragazza TV. Ragazza TV is greatly understudied, yet it provides insight into the sixties’ perception of womanhood and women artists’ concern about the representation of women, in Italy in particular. While some research has been carried out on the female subjects of Fioroni’s silver paintings, no single study has focused on Ragazza TV from the dual perspective of Italian feminism in the ‘60s and ‘70s and consumer critique. This thesis asks: Is it possible to discuss Fioroni’s Ragazza TV from a feminist perspective through a critique of mass consumerism and mass media? Fioroni’s works with female figures have been commonly regarded as “feminine” or having a “feminine essence.” What is “feminine essence” in the context of the ‘60s and ‘70s Rome? How was it part of a larger, very public debate on feminism? Thus, this thesis aims to provide a better understanding of potential feminist readings of the artwork by focusing on the viewer’s and subject’s gazes and by investigating Fioroni’s view on consumerism that emerged in Italy in the post-war era. It develops a hypothesis about the female experience in the ‘60s in Italy that Fioroni sought to convey through a comprehensive analysis of the artwork
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    Pulling Back the Curtain: Exploring the Artistic Motif of Cloth as Depicted in Ancient Roman Wall Paintings
    (2020) Courtnay, Christ; Corrado, Crispin; Hansen, Inge
    Along the Bay of Naples, sit a few towns covered by the ash and rubble of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The wall paintings from these domestic residences form the body of imagery that this thesis examines, focused on one particular motif: depictions of woven cloth when draped or hanging from architectural elements. It purposefully excludes instances of painted cloth when used to depict clothing or household items, such as those transparent pieces of cloth draped over produce. Similarly, this paper only includes those images that can be found in the Roman domus and villa, ignoring those examples which might be found in distinctly public buildings, in order to create a sufficiently specific topic. Primarily working with and from this body of 49 images, this thesis also relies on ancient textual sources and more recent developments in art historical methodology to synthesize and explore the relationship between the domus and Roman society, and to understand how that relationship might affect the choice of decoration. This thesis attempts to ascertain the function of the painted fictive woven cloth attached to architectural elements in wall paintings from the 1st century BC and 1st century AD in the Bay of Naples. It proposes three reasons to answer why this particular motif was chosen, how it functioned within the decoration of the wall, and how this motif would have interacted with the room as a whole.
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    A Land for Chickpeas: Gianfranco Baruchello’s Agricola Cornelia and Post-Humanism
    (2022) Calvagno, Viviana; Linford, Sarah; Gianni, Ilaria
    In 1973 the Italian artist Gianfranco Baruchello established a limited agrarian company called Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. in the northern Roman countryside. The production of food was intended as an artistic gesture meant to criticize the alienating rhythms and politics of our capitalist society. Until 1981, Baruchello farmed land, bred animals, and made art there. In these eight years, Baruchello’s initial political premise organically grew into a personal connection with the natural world. As this thesis attempts to show, the evolution of this engagement was the result of a profound and authentic interaction with the land, characterized by symbolic visions, emotional involvement, and daily practical efforts. By relying mainly on primary sources, this thesis argues that Agricola Cornelia precociously manifested an ecological sensibility absent instead in other contemporary art practices. Baruchello’s personal connection to nature is, further, examined through the lens of 21st -century post-humanist studies that argue for an ecology of enmeshed, interconnected, multispecies existence. Agricola Cornelia appears, in this light, precocious in its progressive ecological thinking that, while not post-human per se, speaks to the urgent need to cure the damaged relationship between humans and nature.