Title: Message
Dear friends and
colleagues,
I tried to send my
abstract as an attachment to the list, but it did not go through. I am
including it as the text of this message. I completed my degree at Rutgers
University with Prof. Sarah Blake McHam, and Prof. John van Sickle was one of my
readers. Any comments are welcomed!
Best,
Emma
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
The Illustration of Virgil’s Bucolics and its Influence in Italian
Renaissance Art
By EMMA T.K. GUEST
Dissertation Director:
Sarah Blake McHam
The
Illustration of Virgil’s Bucolics and its Influence in Italian
Renaissance Art
demonstrates that a specific Virgilian iconography developed in the Late
Classical period and the Middle Ages for Virgil’s Bucolics. This iconography continued in manuscript
and printed book illumination in the Renaissance, and played a major role in the
development of pastoral subjects in independent paintings. While scholars of pastoral themes in art
have often cited Virgil as a literary influence, the role of the illustration of
Virgil’s bucolic poetry as a visual resource has not been examined. I first examine Virgil’s literary role
in the Italian Renaissance, starting with his biography and his status in the
Middle Ages, to then turn to his influence as literary model on Trecento Italian
writers, followed by a survey of his place in the studia humanitatis and Renaissance
education. The body of my
dissertation is an examination of a representative selection of major
illustrated Virgilian texts (approximately sixty manuscripts and printed books),
dating from the Late Classical period, through the Middle Ages and into the
Renaissance, to follow trends and developments in the iconography of specific
Virgilian themes. I then address
the rise of pastoral motifs in Venetian drawings, prints and paintings in the
late Quattrocento and the early Cinquecento to demonstrate close visual ties
between traditional motifs for the illustration of Virgil and new pastoral
themes in the visual arts. My
dissertation analyses in detail Virgil’s impact on visual culture in the
Renaissance, and I demonstrate a new source for the rise of pastoral themes in
Renaissance poetry and monumental painting.
