Warr, Cordelia (1994) Female patronage and the rise of female spirituality in Italian art of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis deals with the two partially interlocking
aspects of female patronage and female spirituality in
Italian art during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
My aim has been to expand the knowledge of this subject not
through a detailed examination of one female patron, her
spirituality, and how it affected her commissions, but
through a number of representative examples in order to
show the breadth and diversity of women's influence over
art, both active and passive.
I have therefore surveyed previous assumptions on female
patronage and the opportunities that existed for it, taking
a number of smaller examples so as to lay a base for my
later arguments. One of the main problems that emerged was
a misunderstanding of the clothes depicted as being worn
both by the subjects of the paintings and by the donors,
and also the subjective use of clothes in order to put
across a message. This aspect also bears on the variety of
women's religious experience which underlies the whole of
this investigation. It forms a base for my chapters on
commissions by and for the Poor Clares and the female
Vallombrosan order. Finally, I have looked at two examples
of lay female patronage only one of which takes a woman as
its subject, and examined the reasons for the choice of
subject in relation to the spiritual influences of the
commissioner and also the ways in which the direct
influence of the patron can be assessed.
My research has indicated that both lay women and nuns were
not only capable of paying for ambitious projects but that
they could also positively affect their iconography.
Women's influence over art during this period, and the
impact of their spirituality on it, both actively and
passively, has only previously been investigated in a few
instances. The aim of this thesis is to provide an overview
of the female patronage and female spirituality in art and
to show that women's influence over art was present in many
spheres of society and was not an exception to the rule.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Women art patrons -- History -- 13th century, Women art patrons -- History -- 14th century, Spirituality in art -- History -- 13th century, Spirituality in art -- History -- 14th century, Women and spiritualism -- History -- 13th century, Women and spiritualism -- History -- 14th century, Art, Italian -- 13th century, Art, Italian -- 14th century
Official Date:	February 1994
Dates:	Date Event February 1994 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of History of Art
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Gardner, J. W. (Julian W.), 1958-
Sponsors:	University of Warwick ; British School at Rome ; Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation
Description:	This is an abridged version for electronic use, lacking Volume 2 due to copyright restrictions; please see the official URL for details on how to access the full version.
Extent:	xxiv, 442, 120 p.
Language:	eng

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