McCormack, Catherine;
(2020)
Rethinking the Foot: Early Modern Visuality and the Body in Rome.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
In this thesis I seek to rethink the position of the foot within hierarchies of knowledge concerning the body, hierarchies that I suggest have contained and evaded the complexity of the foot in critical histories of the body. I do this by focusing on four case studies of objects from visual and material culture in Rome that were the significant focus of ritual in the early part of the seventeenth-century. The first chapter considers touching the feet of sculpture of sacred bodies and the way in which touching the foot enacted processes of conversion and change. I then explore the issues relating to the much overlooked Domine Quo Vadis? footprint relic in the second chapter and the potential of the footprint as a representational mark left by the body in walking. I also consider how this contact relic contributed to the production of space in Rome and the issue of duplication of the footprint into another icon and into a printed engraving. The third chapter unpacks in critical detail the problematic depiction of feet in paintings by Caravaggio, seeking to address this often mentioned but unexplored aspect of scholarship. This chapter suggests that viewing the feet and underside of the body leads in unexpected and disorientating directions that deviate from institutional and archival models of knowledge. Lastly, in the fourth chapter I turn to the foot relic of the controversial body of St. Teresa of Avila that arrived in Rome in 1616. I discuss how it was inserted into ritual practice and systems of representation in the city, and how the foot in this instance negotiated the fraught issue of body and soul.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Rethinking the Foot: Early Modern Visuality and the Body in Rome |
| Event: | UCL (University College London) |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Some third party copyright material has been removed from this e-thesis. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History of Art |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10050011 |
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