My dissertation examines how in the fourteenth century, the rival republics of Pisa, Venice, and Genoa each commissioned major civic monuments that featured Old Testament and cartographic references as well as local saints, traditions, and themes. I argue that their complex programs were intended to assert their respective republics’ supremacy in the Mediterranean world and to legitimize their claims to global empire by establishing unsurpassable pedigrees. Chapter one and two examine the extensive fresco cycles adorning the Pisan Camposanto, the miraculous cemetery composed of soil stolen from Jerusalem. As the frescoes charted two thousand years of Pisan impact on Asia, Africa, and Europe, they testified that, in fact, Pisa was the center of the world. Chapter three analyzes the grand epigraph encircling the nave of San Lorenzo Cathedral in Genoa with an encomium to the republic’s prestigious descent from Abraham, Noah, and Janus. Working in conjunction with the other Old Testament references and the very material of the church, the inscription touted the cathedral’s position as the heart of Genoa’s empire through which its international resources were funneled. Chapter four explores how the Trecento façade of the Venetian Palazzo Ducale combined Old Testament imagery, cartography, an international style, and allusions to diplomatic exchanges with the peoples of the world—including the Mongols and the Turks—to visualize the vast pursuits and ancient heritage of the Venetian empire. My analyses crystalize how, as their mariners navigated the Mediterranean Sea, these three ports became filters that synthesized and reconciled pagan and Judeo-Christian knowledge. The monuments facilitated this syncretic process using the Old Testament—with its unparalleled early history, its cross-cultural relevance, its rare topographic descriptions of the East, and its connection to medieval cartography—as a familiar framework upon which to graft changing notions of space and time. Like contemporary texts, the artistic programs of each monument employed the Old Testament to compose more nuanced and cross-cultural (though still hierarchical) geographical world histories that supported their global designs. The monuments thereby fostered a new model of geographically and historically conscious communal identity that transformed how Europeans saw the world and ushered in the Renaissance.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Art History
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_6147
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online resource (viii, 348 p. : ill.)
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
San Lorenzo (Cathedral : Genoa, Italy)
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Palazzo Gallio (Alvito, Italy)
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Christian art and symbolism
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
by Hilary Haakenson
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Graduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore19991600001
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
Rutgers University. Graduate School - New Brunswick
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Type
License
Name
Author Agreement License
Detail
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.