Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 71-07, Section: A, page: 2258.

Adviser: Anne Dunlop.

This dissertation interprets a small group of early fifteenth-century paintings by the Sienese artist Taddeo di Bartolo, selected for their distinctly retrospective character. Late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century art is often interpreted as dependent on the art of the Sienese "Golden Age", or early fourteenth century. This dissertation, however, seeks to expand the field through its focus on a group of works that do not fit comfortably within this interpretation of later Sienese art. Although the works have been selected for their retrospective character, the ways in which they engage with the past cannot be primarily explained through reference to the earlier fourteenth century. They are instead viewed in the scholarship as anomalous in one way or another. The research conducted for this project yielded an unexpectedly unified result, and the dissertation presents the argument that the retrospective character of each of the four selected paintings creates a link between the present and early Christian antiquity through self-conscious engagement with ancient art.

The paintings that serve as the focus of the project were painted by Taddeo di Bartolo in the first two decades of the fifteenth century. The leading artist in Siena at the time, Taddeo was sought out by a wide spectrum of patrons throughout Italy, as evidenced by this group of paintings commissioned for churches in Orte (Lazio), San Gimignano (Tuscany), and Perugia (Umbria). All four of the artworks are altarpieces, and I have devoted one chapter to the study of each. Chapter One discusses a Madonna Avvocata painting produced for a church in Orte. Chapters Two and Three focus on paintings for the pieve of San Gimignano: one, a vita altarpiece, and the other, a half-length pentaptych. Chapter Four is centered on a double-sided standing-saint altarpiece made for the church of San Francesco al Prato, Perugia. The ancient objects discussed in relation to these paintings range from panel paintings perceived to have been painted by the hand of Saint Luke, small pagan ivory diptychs kept in Christian church treasuries, ancient Roman funerary sculpture lining the roads leading out of Rome, and ancient columnar sarcophagi found in ecclesiastic contexts throughout Italy.