During the twilight of his life, in the early nineteenth century, Benjamin West painted on a small piece of slate. He began to produce a set of works intended to raise money for the Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania. Just a few years before his own passing in London, West decided to paint a concept portrait of Benjamin Franklin entitled Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky. However, West had not been to America since it had become the new country of the United States. Choosing to leave for the career opportunities and political stability of England in 1773, West had only sporadically painted the occasional American subject. Like he had done before with his Penn’s Treaty with the Indians (1773), West harkened back to an earlier period of Colonial American stability within the British Empire. Franklin is depicted as an older man amid the environment of his younger scientific breakthroughs in the 1750s. By establishing the concept of electricity as synonymous with power, Franklin becomes a versatile figure, flying his kite symbolically in both Britain and America, the latter of which filled with West’s admirers, some of whom longed for him to return to “his native country,” a charged term that meant an amalgamation of the United States and colonial America existing as one, a place that only a couple of generations, including West’s, had the chance to experience. West literally drew Franklin in the act of “drawing” electricity, creating a parallel signifying the importance of the artist in disseminating new United States symbols via global art. More personally for West as an individual, through works like Franklin Drawing Electricity, he was able to subtly reconcile a part of his identity, his colonial American past, his British Regency present, and all the sociopolitical turmoil and uncertainty in between.

The Victoria and Albert Museum houses an English gown from 1790 made in the French style of the Robe à la Turque. The dress was modelled after the fashions of the Ottoman Empire and would have been worn for everyday use. This paper will examine the Robe à la Turque to consider the ways in which cross-cultural encounters informed fashion and daily presentation of the Self. Utilizing drawings from fashion periodicals in eighteenth-century France, the accounts of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, accessed through the Bodleian library, and the archival information on the dress held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as secondary scholarship on Orientalism and dress, this paper will examine the French and English perceptions of the Ottoman Empire in the late eighteenth century in terms of diplomatic relations, trade, philosophy, and morality as exemplified within dress.

Fashions inspired by Turkish garments carried associations with the exotic and erotic, while also displaying worldliness. They held connections to the Enlightenment as it was seen as a more natural and freer mode of dress. While the gown claimed Turkish origin, it was still deeply assimilated into European cultural and moral codes in clothing through its shape. This dress was made and worn at the cusp of the Age of Empire in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the modern age. Encoded within the fabric is the colonization of India, and in its style, the French revolution and the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Edward Said’s seminal work Orientalism critiques Western representations of the Orient as rooted in power, imagination, and suppression but largely excludes German Orientalism, distinguishing it from French and British colonial frameworks. However, German Orientalism, particularly in art and philosophy, operates within the same structures of “othering” that Said outlines. My research explores the overlooked yet harmful significance of German Orientalist art by taking an interdisciplinary approach, analyzing the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the ideological foundations of nineteenth-century German Orientalist painting. Hegel’s philosophy, which situates the Orient as an early and limited stage in the development of art and consciousness, reinforces Eurocentric narratives that portray the East as stagnant, exotic, and ultimately subordinate to the West. His categorization of artistic progress—the symbolic, classical, and romantic—mirrors the hierarchical binaries Said critiques, positioning Oriental art as incapable of achieving self-awareness or true artistic freedom. I will examine how Hegel’s Orientalist framework manifests in German paintings, including Carl Haag’s Shipwreck by the Desert (1886) and Gustav Bauernfeind’s The Gate of the Great Umayyad Mosque (1890), which exoticize the Orient while echoing Hegelian themes of nature-bound limitation, unfulfillment through Islam, and the feminization of the East. Unlike French and British Orientalist works, which often emphasize eroticism and political dominance, German Orientalist art tends to convey a sense of intellectual superiority and spiritual deficiency. Recognizing German contributions to Orientalist discourse is crucial for understanding the broader Eurocentric framework that shaped perceptions of the East. By critically engaging with German Orientalist thought and its artistic expressions, we gain a more comprehensive view of how Orientalism functioned beyond direct colonial enterprises and recognize its pervasive influence in European intellectual history. This reassessment of visual depictions and philosophical thought is a necessary step in reclaiming and challenging harmful depictions of the East.

Generations of scholars have studied the history of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood since its conception in 1848 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt. Rarely, however, is the youth and burgeoning adulthood of England’s first avant-garde discussed as an essential component of their artistic identities, and the work they produced. Drawing upon the Old Masters for techniques, style and sometimes subject matter, the artists advocated a religious revival in art and culture, an unusually backward-facing movement for young artists embedded in a relatively progressive artistic society in London. Why were religious values so crucial for a group founded on anti-institutionalism, and why did many of these convictions fizzle with age? By applying a modern conception of the developmental stages of adolescence and young adulthood, it is possible to complicate the mission of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as an overwrought ambition to transform art, much as they themselves transformed in their few years as a coterie. Ultimately, what remains is a radical image of their cultural moment as they saw it, brought into relief by the art historical tradition they both admired and opposed, and dramatically magnified by the lens of impassioned youth.

The Victorian era in which the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood worked was a time of restriction and control for women. Today, the abundant female figures in the Brotherhood’s paintings are beloved and respected for their beauty, but in their own time, they were often reviled by critics as ugly and vulgar. Although it may go unnoticed by modern eyes, Pre-Raphaelite female figures often broke Victorian gender roles through their appearances and demeanors. Elements like hair, facial structure and expression, posture, and clothing dared to be unattractive and improper by Victorian standards. Medieval and fantastical settings were used as further opportunities to depict worlds for women that broke from the reality of what existed at the time. These disruptive presentations served to create more fully realized characters with emotional depth, which was one of the main goals of the Brotherhood. Rather than acting as paragons of unattainable Madonna-like propriety, Pre-Raphaelite women were more grounded and human. Whether intentional or incidental, the Pre-Raphaelites were unlikely feminist players in the Victorian art scene. Through their paintings, they were willing time and time again to shine light on the different forms that women could take. These women could have flawed skin and faces. Their bodies did not have to be bundled up in corsetry or standing stiffly upright to impress watchful eyes. Their value was not inherently hinged upon how well they appeased men. They could be worthy and imperfect.

Vincent Van Gogh was known for many different reasons, whether it be the renowned works he made like Starry Night, or his mysterious death, which went labeled as a suicide. Still, arguably, his most well-known characteristic is his unique and vibrant painting technique. Many of his works utilized the iconic palette of bright blues, yellows, and greens. However, there are ideas and stories which the paintings themselves tell us that the pigments do not. Frequently, Vincent was left with no choice but to ask his younger brother, Theo, for money to supply his painting career. Working with a budget, it is no surprise that Vincent worked with lake pigments. The only problem is the lake pigments he chose to work with. Eosin, a red fluorescent dye that is a bromine derivative of fluorescein that produces a pink color, causes a reaction when there is an excessive amount of water or diluted alcohol which changes the color and continues to lighten until it is no longer present. Conservationists have found traces of this pigment in his work Roses from 1890, which depicts a vase of (now) white roses on a blue-green background. Traces of the Eosin dye within the rose buds tells us that the now white flowers were once a beautiful pink color. In a letter to his brother, we know that Vincent knew the effects of this fading pigment writing, “[p]aintings fade like flowers,” adding “[a]ll the more reason to boldly use them too raw, time will only soften them too much.” There is much more to learn from Van Gogh’s use of pigments alone, such as the influence they had on his artistic career and mental state. Within the rapidly evolving community of art conservation and research, only time will tell what more there is to be uncovered.

I argue that Émile Zola’s portrayal of nineteenth-century modernity and its relationship to Impressionism is a product of fin-de-siècle transnational exchange. I use three novels in his Rougon-Macquart series to convey Zola’s relationship to Impressionist artworks concerning the same social and environmental themes as the novels. The goal was to represent Impressionist artists outside of France and compare to their French counterparts, as they share much of the same inspiration, like Zola’s writing and European societal issues. I begin with Zola’s inspiration for L’Oeuvre, about an Impressionist painter, including his boyhood friendship with Cézanne, his reception of foreign artists like Medardo Rosso, and his fascination with Japanese prints, demonstrated by Manet’s portrait of him. I also examine Zola’s Nana, which exposes nineteenth century theatre in a similar manner as Manet, Degas, and Seurat, contrasting more sophisticated depictions like Cassatt’s, who came from a different perspective, influenced by her nationality, gender, and class. The final section compares depictions of the international coal industry and miners’ movement in Zola’s Germinal to that in the work of Meunier, Monet, Prellwitz, and Kollwitz.

As a political tool, the medium of photography can be activated to document and share current events, marketing campaigns, and propaganda. However, since images are easily manipulated through editing —and more recently, artificial intelligence— the truth value of photography can come into question. In the nineteenth century, the Department of Indian Affairs utilized photography to legitimize its assimilation systems by displaying the physical changes of students attending residential and industrial schools. These schools functioned to educate, convert, and assimilate Indigenous youth into Canadian society. This is visualized in the Before and After (1897) portraits of twelve-year-old Thomas Moore Keesick (Muscowpetung Saulteaux First Nation), which were published by Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs in their 1896 Annual Report. The years that separate these two images exemplify the assimilation and erasure practices endured by Keesick during his time at the Regina Indian Industrial School. In these images, the photographer harnesses elements of portraiture to objectify the sitter through a scientific gaze and strip him of his agency. Despite his bodily presence, there is an inherent absence of Keesick’s sense of self. Keesick died of tuberculosis between 1893 and 1895, which indicates that he passed before the Department of Indian Affairs first utilized his portrait as propaganda in 1897. For Keesick and many other students who attended residential/industrial schools, photography is revealed as a means of erasure that stripped the sitters of their agency and reduced the complexities of their identity to mere objects for external narratives, thus denying self-determination and reinforcing harmful stereotypes. By applying critical thinking to historical photographs, this research aims to illuminate photography’s position as a tool for propaganda and put an end to harmful stereotypes.

Photography is of a considerably anfractuous definition, its materiality presenting something so real and memorable, whilst its theoretical presence as the snapshot of an irrecoverable instant remains completely inexplicable. One attempts to pin down events in matter to evade the uncomfortable complexities of socio-temporal investigation, and the demands of emotional discrimination as well as mere corporeal experience. The final line in Part One of Camera Lucida refers to the “palinode” that Roland Barthes determines to seek as he progresses, for he believes that he has likewise failed to capture the universal definition, and concomitant experience, of photography, by relying too completely upon his personal understanding of the medium and all it emotionally entails. A palinode is a poetic retraction that simultaneously refers to the effect of another poem, thus one could argue that the essence of Barthes’ study is poetic in style and substance; a personal determination to distil the superlative elegiac of the image. 

Poetry itself is a votary of forms and perspectives. Laden with sublimated instances of emotional and experiential vagaries it utilizes a metrical composition to appositely capture the human condition. Likewise, the photograph contains layers of devices, both chemical and artistic, that work to depict a singular image of a chosen reality. In the following essay, I intend to use these two modes of image-making to discuss their inextricability from an overarching, expressive desire to represent and interrogate humanity. By combined analysis of Barthes’ theories of studium and punctum with the anthropocentric poetry of Jorge Luis Borges, I aim to articulate this socio-cultural connection and, consequently, clarify the inscrutable definition of the photograph.  

“Il Magnifico” Agostino Chigi (1465 – 1520). One of Rome’s many prominent figures hailing from the influential Chigi banking family, and whose Vila Suburbana encapsulates and expresses his place as a humanist and scholar. In perhaps its most famous room, the Sala di Galatea, is Raphael’s masterful Triumph of Galatea fresco. But more importantly is the ceiling above which is decorated with an astrological puzzle encoding Chigi’s birth date within its iconography. A generation after Chigi would come Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520 – 1589), whose Palazzo Farnese contains a similarly mystifying astrological puzzle painted on the ceiling of one of its principal rooms, the Sala del Mappamondo. Both frescoed vaults have much in common–one having possibly even inspired the other–but what they tell us more importantly is the place of astrology in Italian Renaissance society and the use of horoscopes to predict the success of their patrons. Both ceilings’ meanings have been decoded and considered individually for their artistic merit but have not been considered for their wider societal implications and what they tell us of the relationship between a belief in astrology and belief in Catholicism. Astrology has had a long and distinguished history from antiquity until now, yet its place in Renaissance society has been studied minimally despite horoscopic predictions shaping the lives of these two powerful men. A study of these frescoes as more than iconographical riddles to be solved, which most scholarship has focused on, but as the outcome of a specific climate around astrological belief and study, can reveal how astrology influenced the highest peaks of Renaissance society.

Renaissance Venice was a hub of trade and entertainment, including a flourishing sex work scene. The liberal sex work laws allowed for an affluent community of sophisticated prostitutes with unique access to power and luxury, known as courtesans. Courtesans mimicked high-class society through intellect, entertainment, and financial independence. Venetian courtesans are documented as having enough income to support impressive amounts of clothing, artwork, properties, and families. Unfortunately, the physical goods do not survive, but scholars have used inventories, wills, and written testaments to formulate the seemingly glamorous world of Venetian courtesans. The present paper focuses on three of the most famous examples: Julia Lombardo (died 1542), Elisabetta Condulmer (died 1538), and Veronica Franco. Each woman presents a different aspect of courtesan life and collecting practices. Lombardo’s will details her wealth through her multiple properties and how she decorated her portego, an entertainment space common in high-class Venetian homes. Condulmer’s inventory describes the religious, secular, and sexual artwork she hung in her portego, which exemplifies the unique independence courtesans had compared to ordinary women. Finally, Franco exposes the fallacies in the luxurious images created by Lombardo and Condulmer. The courtesan life of luxury was not long-lasting and was more damaging than the impressive inventories lead one to believe. Through a historical and gendered analysis of Renaissance Venice, a study of courtesan material culture, and biographical analyses, one can understand the nuanced reality of Venetian courtesans.

The Roman goddess Venus has always represented an alluring, feminine beauty that is meant to draw in any man that should see her. In the 1530s, Baldassare Peruzzi, better known as an architect, sought to depict the goddess in a painting now known as Venus. He intended to convey the erotic, feminine qualities of Venus by carefully crafting what he believed to be a desirable female body. While the eroticized figure shown in the work is recognizably feminine, the body used to craft her was unmistakably that of a man. Because Venus’ target audience was male, Peruzzi’s use of a male model portrayed in a sexualized manner suggests that her onlookers are participating in a kind of homoerotic viewing. Using a psychoanalytic framework which include Laura Mulvey’s gaze in combination with queer theory, this essay seeks to explain how male viewership of male bodies masked by feminized features can create a homoerotic relationship. By bringing in more popular works by artists like Donatello and Michelangelo, whom Peruzzi was known to work closely with in Rome, I wish to explore how men of the Renaissance viewed altered and androgynous bodies to inform my investigation of Peruzzi’s Venus.

This research explores the transformation of the depiction of feminine divinity in Western art, focusing on the shift from powerful mythological goddesses to passive, objectified female figures under the male gaze during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Through the analysis of works by male artists, the research examines how the motif of the sleeping goddess reflects the growing influence of patriarchy in early modern Europe. The analysis then shifts to Artemisia Gentileschi’s Venus and Cupid, which challenges these conventional representations by presenting Venus as a serene, empowered figure, free from the constraints of male spectatorship. Comparing Gentileschi’s work to that of her male counterparts highlights the differences in how male and female artists presented their subjects, down to the smallest details. Gentileschi’s interpretation of a sleeping Venus reclaims the image of the divine feminine, providing a more empowering understanding of women and their roles in both art and spirituality. Through a feminist lens, this research argues that Gentileschi’s work offers a critical reimagining of feminine power, presenting a divine femininity that is not bound by objectification or the male gaze.

Existing scholarship has demonstrated that Rembrandt van Rijn’s style and compositions influenced his students. However, literature on the students’ adaptation and alteration of their master’s compositions has not been explored extensively. In Bathsheba with King David’s Letter (1654), Willem Drost takes after his master Rembrandt’s Bathsheba at Her Bath (1654) but references other visual precedents to assert his own interpretation of the biblical story. In these compositions, Rembrandt provides a nuanced interpretation of Bathsheba’s story when compared to his other, primarily male, contemporaries whereas Drost reinforces a more traditional view. This paper argues that Drost adapts his teacher’s composition by incorporating visual precedents of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century depictions of Venetian courtesans to cast Bathsheba as complicit in the seduction. Unlike his teacher’s multivocal depiction, Drost’s message is unmistakable: beware the woman.

In September of 2023, the provincial museum of Zeeland opened an exhibition titled The Inverted World of Adriaen van de Venne. Never before had the work of Adriaen van de Venne, a forgotten master of the Dutch seventeenth century, been collected and displayed at this scale With the exhibition, which took place in van de Venne’s hometown of Middelburg, the Zeeuws Museum aimed to narrative of Van de Venne’s “Golden Age” through the various media and subject matter that he employed. As part of an internship done at the museum, a question was posed: “What is missing in this narrative?”

Inspired by Dorothee Sturkenboom’s De Ballen van de Koopman, which explores the identity of seventeenth-century Netherlands through the gender roles of the time, and building upon the physical manifestations found in Alain de Botton’s Art as Therapy, this work aims to uncover previously hidden layers of gender and the general role of women in the work of Adriaen van de Venne. The work, manifested in supplementary exhibition texts that were placed in the museum space for visitors who were seeking information, focuses on the detail of van de Venne’s paintings and prints, details three categories of depictions of women as well as the portrayal of interconnection between gender. It also aims to answer the question of agency, looking at depictions of women in power and allegorical figures and concluding that van de Venne portrays women in a very specific brand of educational art, specifically surrounding the desired behavior of women. While the awareness of these dimensions of gender makes for a richer and more nuanced narrative of Dutch seventeenth-century society, the presence and discussion of gender is hardly mentioned directly in the exhibit. I hoped to build upon an already splendid exhibition by detailing these hidden gender roles.

Medusa has been emblematic of both divine retribution and monstrous transformation throughout antiquity. Frequently depicted on the shields of soldiers, her image serves to symbolize Athena’s power and triumph over adversaries, instilling fear in those who beheld her. The duality of Medusa’s representation – as both victim and fearsome weapon – persisted in the seventeenth century. Artists sought to show terror through their portrayals of Medusa to explore their subconscious fears or to portray patrons’ military triumphs. Among these depictions, the collaboration of Peter Paul Rubens’ and Frans Snyder’s The Head of Medusa (1618) diverges from traditional representations. In most instances, artists depicted her at the moment of her death to show her anger and ferocity. In this moment of death, as it happens in the myth, viewers are met with Medusa’s gaze, and it feels as though her piercing eyes could turn them to stone. Instead, Rubens presents a haunting aftermath, where the imagery of fresh blood and flesh invites devilish insects to encircle her while her snakes engage in the act of self-consumption. Although her gaze remains impressive, it is directed away from the viewer, further complicating her role as a victim or monster.  In light of contemporary feminist discourse, one must consider whether our reception of Rubens’ Medusa is informed by a sense of compassion for her plight or if it is merely a reflection of the evolving cultural lens through which we interpret historical art. This essay explores these questions through an analysis of iconography, semiotics, and feminist theory, positing that Rubens’ portrayal of Medusa invites a revaluation of her narrative as a victim. Furthermore, an examination through the framework of reception theory will elucidate how contemporary perspectives may alter our understanding of this iconic figure, ultimately revealing the complexities inherent in her representation across time.

This essay examines Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656) and Annibale Carracci’s Self-Portrait at the Easel (1603–1604), exploring their shared engagement with reflection and representation in the Baroque period. While traditional scholarship often positions these works as oppositional—Velázquez’s as a declaration of personal and artistic power and Carracci’s as a humble reflection on mortality—this analysis argues for a more nuanced understanding of their parallels. Both artists employ mirrors, shadows, and spatial dynamics to transcend boundaries between viewer and image, inviting participation in the act of meaning-making.

Velázquez’s Las Meninas situates its viewer within a royal scene, reflecting the dynamics of courtly power and shifting attention toward the labor of creation. The painting’s compositional elements—including its debated use of perspective and the central role of the royal couple’s reflection—subvert traditional hierarchies, positioning both artist and viewer as essential contributors to its narrative.

Conversely, Carracci’s Self-Portrait at the Easel presents a more intimate meditation on artistic legacy. The void-like background and detailed self-representation blur the distinction between subject and audience, suggesting that the act of reception completes the work. Carracci’s depiction of his final portrait becomes an invitation for viewers to engage with his art as active participants, bridging the gap between life and artistic immortality.

Both works respond to the Baroque era’s larger cultural tensions, shaped by the Counter-Reformation and regional debates on art’s role in mediating power, religion, and labor. Through their innovative manipulation of reflection and representation, Velázquez and Carracci challenge traditional power dynamics, emphasizing the collaborative relationship between artist, artwork, and audience. This essay argues that these works, rather than being oppositional, collectively embody the Baroque’s central preoccupation with the creation and reception of images, transforming reflection into an act of connection and dialogue.