This thesis studies the style of Native American portrait photographs of William S. Soule (1836-1908), John K. Hillers (1834-1925), and William E. Irwin (1871-1935), who worked in Oklahoma from 1869 to 1904. The examination of the three men's work revealed that each artist had different motivations for creating Native American portrait photographs, and a result, used a distinct style. However, despite the individual artistic styles, each artist conformed to Native American stereotypes common during the nineteenth-century. The thesis includes a discussion of the history of the area, photographer biographies, a stylistic analysis of the photographs, and how the images fit into American Indian stereotypes.

The Universalis Ecclesiae of 1508 authorized Spanish colonization of the Americas in return for the conversion of native populations to Christianity. From its inception therefore, the Mexican nation lived an alliance between Church and State. This alliance promoted the transfer of Castilian Catholicism to American shores. Catholic practices, specifically the ex-voto tradition, visualize this intermingling of religion and politics. The ex-voto is a devotional painting that expresses gratitude to a religious figure for his/her intervention in a moment of peril. It is commissioned by the devotee as a means of direct communication to the divine. This project analyzes 40 Mexican ex-votos for their reflection of political issues in Mexico. I assert that the Mexican ex-votos engage discussions of social politics. To support this argument, visualizations of socio-political discourses such as the Virgin of Guadalupe as a national religious symbol, police action and economic disparity were examined.

This thesis examines Rogier Van Der Weyden's two unique fifteenth century Crucifixions, The Crucified Christ Between the Virgin and Saint John and The Diptych of the Crucifixion, in light of Carthusian beliefs, practices and relevant devotional texts. The specific text used to support this examination is the Vita Christi by Ludolph of Saxony, which in part deals specifically with the Hours of the Passion. Ludolph's text is given visual form in Rogier's paintings and supports the assertion that Rogier and Ludolph were connected by a shared belief and worldview. Key aspects of Rogier's life, supported by original documentation- familial ties, associates, patrons, use of finances, and his close involvement with the Carthusians-- support this assertion. Other models of connections of belief, evidenced through artist's work, are corroborated in the work of Grunewald, Sluter and Durer.

The primary objective of this thesis is to identify patterns of appearance among the flora and fauna of selected eighteenth-century New Spanish casta paintings. The objectives of the thesis are to determine what types of flora and fauna are present within selected casta paintings, whether the flora and fauna's provenance is Spanish or Mexican and whether there are any potential associations of particular flora and fauna with the races being depicted in the same composition. I focus my flora and fauna research on three sets of casta paintings produced between 1750 and 1800: Miguel Cabrera's 1763 series, José Joaquín Magón's 1770 casta paintings, and Andrés de Islas' 1774 sequence. Although the paintings fall into the same genre and within a period of a little over a decade, they nevertheless offer different visions of New Spain's natural bounty and include objects designed to satisfy Europe's interest in the exotic.

This thesis is an investigation of the way in which the painter May Stevens (b. 1924) synthesizes her personal experiences and political philosophy to form complex and enduring works of art. Primary data was accumulated through an extended interview with May Stevens and by examining her works on exhibit in New York and Boston. An analysis of selected works from her "Big Daddy" and "Ordinary/Extraordinary" series revealed how her personal feelings about her own family became entwined with larger political issues. As an important member of the feminist art movement that evolved during the 1970s, she celebrated this new kinship among women in paintings that also explored the contradictions in their lives. In more recent work she has explored complex social issues such as teenage prostitution, sexism, and child abuse in a variety of artistic styles and media. This study investigates how May Stevens continues to portray issues of international significance in works that consistently engage the viewer on a personal, almost visceral level.

This thesis analyzes the destruction of imagery dedicated to Saint Thomas Becket in order to investigate the nature of sixteenth-century iconoclasm in Reformation England. In doing so, it also considers the veneration of images during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Research involved examining medieval and sixteenth-century historical studies concerning Becket's life and cult, anti-Becket sentiment prior to the sixteenth century, and the political circumstances in England that led to the destruction of shrines and imagery. This study provides insight into the ways in which religious images could carry multifaceted, ideological significance that represented diversified ideas for varying social strata--royal, ecclesiastical and lay.

This thesis examines the roles of the sublime and the beautiful in the works of eighteenth-century French landscape painter Claude-Joseph Vernet. An introduction to the study, a history of the sublime and beautiful, and an overview of the way these ideas are portrayed in Vernet's calm and storm pendants are provided. How commissions for these pendants relate to theoretical developments of the sublime and beautiful and how Vernet became aware of the these ideas are addressed. The thesis shows Vernet was not dependent on British patrons or on the century's most influential aesthetic treatise on the sublime and the beautiful by Edmund Burke, because Vernet started painting such themes well before Burke's treatise (1757) and did so in response to French patrons.