Armed conflict has often served as a catalyst for the looting of cultural heritage. The lootings of Iraqi antiquities during the Persian Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom serve as examples of this horrific consequence. From 1990 to 2014 there have been four major cases of looting in Iraq: the Iraqi regional museums in 1991, archaeological sites throughout the 1990's, the National Museum of Iraq in April 2003, and Iraqi archaeological sites starting in 2003. During this time period, The New York Times reported 84 articles about the status of Iraqi antiquities. Interestingly, the newspaper focused 62 of the articles on the looting of the National Museum of Iraq and subsequent recovery efforts. In this thesis, I will evaluate factors such as subject, article length, word choice, author, paper section, date, accuracy of information, and other relevant influences to determine differences in coverage between the different instances of Iraqi cultural heritage looting. The factors will demonstrate that the marketable qualities of the story, availability of information, and danger of location are some of the factors that led to the disproportional reporting by The New York Times.

Throughout his lifetime Leonardo Da Vinci was an ardent observer of natural phenomena. He sought to explain these phenomena and to understand how the natural world works. Being an illegitimate child he was forced to educate himself independently and that helped him develop a scientific mind that was not subject to the religious, traditional, and unproved biases of his contemporaries. In order to understand the world he kept many notebooks to record his observations. They are now known as codices. One Codex in particular was devoted, in its entirety, to scientific observation of geology, hydrological and astronomical processes. This is the Codex Leicester. Written in the latter part of his life, the Codex Leicester is a scientific marvel that contains within its pages, the discovery of stratigraphy, the theory that mountains can be built and eroded away, a refutation of the story of Noah's Ark, and the discovery of the process known as planet shine. In addition, the Phoenix Art Museum exhibited the Codex Leicester recently during the time period of January to April 2015. On loan from former Microsoft CEO and Chairman Bill Gates, the Codex was on full display surrounded by artwork meant to enrich the patron's experience. In this thesis I will review the exhibit examining its successes and failures in its attempt to educate the Phoenician public about Leonardo Da Vinci, the scientist.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the materiality of a unique text, Random House and The Illustrated Modern Library’s 1946 Don Quixote, illustrated by Catalonian painter Salvador Dalí. It analyzes Dalí’s classical trajectory, how Dalí and the text were received in mid-twentieth century North America, and how they both fit into the print history of illustrated editions of Don Quixote. Each is revealed to be unique in comparison with the history of the genre due to the publishing house’s utilization of Dalí’s high-quality illustrations in a small-sized text. Lavish illustrations traditionally have been reserved for larger, collectible editions. The contemporary material significance of the 1946 edition is revealed by examining organizations, people, and circumstances that were necessary for its production in the United States, and by contextualizing the text’s reception by North American popular culture, high art echelons, and art critics.

The overarching history of illustrated editions of Don Quixote is examined, comparing Dalí and his illustrations with important thematic and methodological benchmarks set by illustrators within this 400-year period, especially regarding renderings of reality and fantasy. Analyses of the first three watercolor illustrations of Dalí’s 1946 Don Quixote reveal how the painter forms mythological imagery and composes the quixotic dichotomy of reality and fantasy through the metaphoric gaze of an inanimate figure representing the protagonist. Dalí at times renders the “real” Don Quixote as incapacitated, omitting from his illustrations universalized iconography utilized in previous centuries achieved by rendering Don Quixote’s perspective, gaze, and heroic interpretation of events. In these three illustrations, Dalí forms Don Quixote as a deflated figure based in burla (mockery) and engaño (self-deception) by negating Don Quixote’s gaze within the compositions, without compromising the painter’s trademark surrealist style.

The text therefore challenges the genre’s print history while Dalí challenges French and German Romantic illustrators’ universalized iconography that traditionally highlights the nobility of the knight errant. By focalizing fantastic madness as interacting with burlesque reality, Dalí creates a new episteme within the genre of illustrated editions of Don Quixote, establishing his unique niche as an illustrator in this genre.

Peacocks are ubiquitous in art. Artists from societies across the globe, undoubtedly attracted to the male peafowl’s colorful plumage and unique characteristics, used images of the bird to form visual semantics intended to aid in the understanding of a work of art. This was particularly the case in Europe, where depictions of peacocks appeared in Christian art from the onset of the continent’s dominant religion. Beginning in Early Christianity, peacocks symbolized the opportunity for an eternal life in heaven enabled by Christ’s sacrificial death. Illustrations of peacocks were so frequent and widespread that they became the standard symbol for eternal life in Christian art consistently centered on recounting the stories of Christ’s birth and death.

Overtime, peacock iconography evolved to include thematic diversity, as artists used the peacock’s recognizable physical attributes for the representation of new themes based on traditional ideas. Numerous paintings contain angels wings covered in the iridescent eyespots located on the male peafowl’s tail feathers. Scientifically known as ocelli, eyespots painted on the wings of angels became a widespread motif during the Renaissance. Artists also recurrently depicted the peacock’s crest on figures of Satan or Lucifer in both paintings and prints. Indicative of excessive pride, a believed characteristic of peacocks, the crest is used as an identifying characteristic of the fallen angel, who was cast from heaven because of his pride.

Although the peacock is a known iconographic motif in medieval and Renaissance art history, no specific monographic study on peacock iconography exists. Likewise, representations of separate and distinctive peacock characteristics in Christian

art have been considerably ignored. Yet, the numerous artworks depicting the peacock and its attributes speak to the need to gain a better understanding of the different strategies for peacock allegory in Christian art. This thesis provides a comprehensive understanding of peacock iconography, minimizing the mystery behind the artistic intentions for depicting peacocks, and allowing for more thorough readings of medieval and Renaissance works that utilize peafowl imagery.

Eighteen late medieval central Italian paintings featuring the figure of Eve reclining on the ground beneath the enthroned Virgin have been the center of a decades-long debate among scholars. The dispute centers on whether the imagery depicts Mary as Eve's counterpart in the role of virgin mother or intercessor as the Second Eve. I argue that these two possibilities are not mutually exclusive and instead support one another. I maintain that Eve and Mary appear as opposites according to their contrasting sexual statuses because their antithesis lies at the center of the theology of the Second Eve and the heart of the signification of these paintings. Though frequently overlooked, my exploration of this imagery begins with the attributes used to identify Eve: the woman-headed serpent, the fig, and clothing. Specifically, I analyze the relationship between the particular attributes employed and the theological interpretation of the Fall as a result of concupiscent sexual intercourse. My study then turns to the individual imagery of the central figure of Mary and its reference to church teachings. Appearing amidst allusions to the Annunciation and with emblems of her roles as mother and queen, the Marian imagery in these eighteen paintings specifically reiterates the dogma of her perpetual virginity. I conclude my investigation with a discussion of how the attributes and imagery examined in the first two chapters relate to the theology of the Second Eve and provide a fundamental meaning for all medieval audiences. In light of the references to these women's sexual statuses, the imagery of the Second Eve suggests that Mary is the special advocate of men and women, religious and lay.

Ancient Mediterranean cultures incorporated equine iconography into their artistic repertoires, demonstrating the horse's importance not only as a beast of burden and war, but also as a visual symbol of wealth and prestige. Interaction between man and horse appears in clay as early as the third millennium BC, along with the early development of ancient Near Eastern cultures. Tactical evolution in Near Eastern warfare, particularly the eclipse of chariot forces by the rise of cavalry, coincided with the emergence of equestrian terracotta figurines and facilitated the popularity of horse and rider imagery. Cyprus' many city-kingdoms have yielded a vast, coroplastic corpus in both votive and mortuary contexts, including figurines of equestrian type. These terracottas are an important contribution to the understanding of ancient Cypriote cultures, cities and their coroplastic oeuvre.

While many studies of excavated terracottas include horse and rider figurines, only a limited number of these publications dedicate adequate analysis and interpretation. Ancient Marion is one of the Cypriote city-kingdoms producing a number of equestrian terracottas that are in need of further examination. By focusing on the unpublished horse and rider figurines from Marion, this paper will add to the conversation of Cyprus' inclusion of equestrian iconography in coroplastic production. Through thorough analysis of the horse and rider terracottas, specifically their plastic and stylistic components, this thesis establishes typologies, makes visual comparisons and demonstrates Marion's awareness of an equine vogue both in contemporary Cyprus and abroad. The horse and rider figurines of Marion are an important contribution to the better understanding of the city-kingdom and exemplify the inclusion of equestrian imagery within the context of ancient societies.