Picturing the Worlds of Mediterranean Painting: The Kingdom of Aragon and its Cultural Mobility

This thesis explores the cultural mobility of the medieval Mediterranean through the Kingdom of Aragon’s religious paintings. In the fourteenth century, Aragon presided over an enormous portion of the Western Mediterranean. The dynastic union between the Houses of Aragon and Barcelona in 1150 provided its rulers with abundant access to Catalonia’s Mediterranean ports. The later absorption of the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Sardinia, Montpellier, Perpignan, Marseilles, and the Duchy of Athens into the Kingdom of Aragon solidified its mercantile identity and its significant influence on Mediterranean trade. Aragon’s mobility in the medieval Mediterranean is revealed in its material culture. Altarpieces, illuminated manuscripts, embroidered textiles, and portable panel paintings were shipped into its ports from Avignon, Florence, Siena, Genoa, and Byzantium. These goods acted as deposits of visual culture and had an immediate and long-lasting influence on local painters. However, this process of exchange was dynamic. Imported iconographies such as the Virgin of Humility and the Maestà were innovated on and adapted to complement the unique concerns of indigenous patrons. This thesis will investigate specific instances of cultural contact in the formation of Aragon’s painted traditions. This includes an examination of the principal agents who disseminated visual ideas, such as the mendicants (the Franciscan Order), the circulation of devotional literatures, and the role of patronage as an energetic act. The outcome is a systematic reassessment of the materiality of Aragon’s religious culture in the context of its Mediterranean mobility.