Browsing by Author "Manca, Joseph"

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    Cor ad cor loquitur: Burning Hearts and the Iconography of Divine Charity
    (2018-04-20) Palermo, Melisa Jeanette; Manca, Joseph
    This dissertation examines the iconography of divine charity (caritas) through the image of the burning heart and heart-bearing saints known as cardiofori between the early sixteenth century and late eighteenth century to illuminate a crucial period of spiritual development in the Catholic Church. I focus primarily on Italian, Spanish, and French works because a majority of the representations of cardiofori come from those heavily Catholic countries, even in the depiction of saints who were not native to those lands. I also cover a small sampling from the Spanish Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru because they were the most prolific art centers in the New World and were heavily influenced by the art and literature of Catholic Europe. These works are viewed in the context of the post-Tridentine Church, Catholic Reformation, and Counter-Reformation. While these three designations have different definitions, and characterize a particular movement within the Church, the spirituality that emerges at this time calls for a deepening personal responsibility for one’s spiritual life. This shift in spirituality called people to holiness, regardless of their station in life. The consensus among contemporary Catholic spiritual writers, following St. Paul’s lead, was that the best way to achieve Divine Union with God was through the virtue of charity. The hearts of those who cultivated charity burned, as seen in the allegorical representations addressed here. This burning heart mirrored the Heart of Jesus, that burns with love for humanity. The journey of the soul to God passed through the wounded side of Jesus; it meditated on the Passion of his corpus, to reach his cor. Reception and adoration of the Eucharist, the “Sacrament of Charity,” was central to understanding the love of God. In art, we see the transformation of the depiction of charity. In the earliest representations, charity is an allegorical personification; then the attribute is given to various saints whose lives and spirituality reference the heart and divine love. The saints, as models of Christian perfection, then make way for the viewer to be the direct recipient of God’s burning love. The culmination is the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, specifically when he is shown offering his heart (presumably in exchange) to the viewer. Anyone standing or kneeling before the image of Jesus and his Sacred Heart is offered and can access Christian perfection; this is the visualization of the universal call to holiness promoted by Catholic Reformation spiritual writers. One of the earliest saints depicted as a cardiophori is St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430), whose writing on charity is notably influential in the lives of other heart-bearing saints. During the sixteenth century, when representations of these saints proliferated, St. Augustine’s iconography more frequently incorporated the burning heart. Perhaps as an indicator of St. Augustine’s continuous influence in Catholicism, several saints, particularly female ones, recorded mystical visions or interactions with him. Eventually, through the emphasis of personal holiness, images of hearts aflame and making their way to God (often symbolized by the Sacred Heart of Jesus) came to embody the spiritual character of the period and the concern of the Church. This study of the iconography of the cardiofori in the post-Tridentine period reveals how art was used not only to educate the illiterate but to promote and encourage a shifting spirituality, a personal, almost tangible mysticism.
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    Images of Artistic Agency by Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Women Artists
    (1998) Vernon, Kelley J.; Manca, Joseph; Widrig, Walter; Hyde, Melissa
    Sometime around the year 1630, Artemisia Gentileschi, a famed Baroque woman artist, painted one of her most intriguing masterpieces, the stunning Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting. As a personal statement, the image has been unrivaled to this day, its daring symbolic formula unmatched by any other artist past or present. The focus of this thesis is to define the interactions between Artemisia's Self-Portrait and self-portraits of sixteenth century women artists, most notably Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana. In this manner, the extraordinary implications of Artemisia's Self-Portrait become even more pronounced. Likewise, the thesis also explores instances of "countering culture" in the works of sixteenth century women artists, highlighting moments when their own self­images progressed beyond the normal bounds of social definitions. Finally, the essay explores the possible symbolic meanings of Artemisia's Self-Portrait within the realm of the court of Charles I of England, its initial owner.
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    Porches of Galveston-Houston
    (Rice Design Alliance, 2007) Manca, Joseph
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    The First-Movement Cadenzas for Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466
    (2013-07-24) Lee, Jeewon; Al-Zand, Karim; Parker, Jon Kimura; Manca, Joseph; Bailey, Walter B.
    This thesis is an analytical study of various cadenzas written for the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor, K.466. As one of the six of his own concertos for which Mozart did not provide an original cadenza, the D minor concerto poses an important challenge to the performer: should she compose or improvise her own cadenza, or should she select one written by someone else? Many composer/pianists active during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries penned cadenzas to this concerto for their own use, and this thesis explores those by August Eberhard Müller, Emanuel Aloys Förster, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Ferruccio Busoni, Bedrich Smetana and Paul Badura-Skoda. In addition to these written-out cadenzas, it also discusses improvised cadenzas in the recordings by Robert Levin and Chick Corea. Each composer/pianist’s unique compositional style is illuminated through the study of each cadenza, and consideration of these styles allows multiple views on a single concerto. A discussion of the meaning and history of cadenzas precedes the analytical study, and in conclusion, the author contributes her own cadenza.
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    The Moment in Rembrandt’s Night Watch
    (GISI - UniTO, 2022) Manca, Joseph
    Rembrandt van Rijn’s famous Night Watch is a complex painting and operates on many different levels. This article stresses both the narrative and the moral qualities of the painting, and looks at the interplay between art and philosophy, with a focus on the moment represented and how an incident plays out in a broadly ethical sense across the picture. The painting achieves a kind of unity through the representation of the musket blast, which disturbs or affects a good number of the figures in the scene. In addition, the lack of reaction to the shot on the part of the captain and lieutenant offers us a vivid image of military bravery and firm leadership: they remain focused on their duties, and carry out their tasks with stoical calm. The moment of the firing of the gun thus helps to explain both some of the figural action as well as offering an essential moral meaning of Rembrandt’s masterpiece.
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    William Kent in Italy: The Early Work of a "Raphael Secundus"
    (2024-04-19) Spadafora, Claire Elizabeth; Manca, Joseph
    This dissertation considers the formative years of William Kent (c. 1685-1748), taking as its chief concerns his training in Rome and travels throughout Italy, as well as his work as both agent and artist, with the ultimate aim of situating the success of Kent’s mature years within the context of his youthful labors. It considers the development of Kent’s career within the framework of early modern self-fashioning, exploring how Kent utilized to his advantage the opportunities offered to him by travel, training, and social networks in Italy and, in so doing, established a reputation for himself as a master of the Italian manner. Ever enterprising, over the course of the decade the English artist spent abroad, Kent studied in Italian studios, became the first English artist commissioned to decorate the ceiling of a Roman church, viewed countless masterworks while traveling, and built a social network that would aid him in securing the patronage that propelled his career upon his return home. Having built his reputation upon the expertise he developed abroad, Kent fashioned himself into an authority on the Italianate. Anchored by a journal kept by the artist during his years abroad, this project uses Kent’s own words and drawings as a guide through this murky period in his personal history. Ultimately, this dissertation examines the relationship between knowledge of Italian art and social status in the polite society of eighteenth-century England, considering as a case study Kent’s travel, social networks, collecting, and artistic production – with special attention paid to drawings, which have been largely neglected in Kent scholarship. Indeed, it is the aim of this project to present a more complete picture of Kent’s formative years, in an effort to bring light to the artist’s varied efforts to construct his career – and, ultimately, himself – and, in so doing, examine the social value of travel and expert knowledge at the dawn of the era of the Grand Tour.