The structure of memory in Italian renaissance art

This dissertation explores the ways in which the survival of the ancient ars memoria had a direct and significant impact on the appearance of art in the period of the Renaissance. The influence of this complex system of visualization can be divined in the format of a popular type of urban perspective view best represented by the well-known "Ideal City" panels in Urbino, Baltimore, and Berlin. The presence of mnemonic structure in these images belies the continued use and cultivation of this ancient intellectual exercise on a wide scale in both a secular and religious milieu.; An underlying mnemonic framework is also apparent in some narrative images produced during the Renaissance, hinting at a long-standing reciprocal relationship between the formation of mnemonic imagery and the production of pictorial art. Mnemonic structure is evident as well in certain decorative motifs commonly found in ecclesiastical settings like sacristies and choirs, and secular ones like the intarsiated studies of Federico da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino. The presence of mnemonic motifs in Renaissance studies is an indicator of the extent of some scholars' continued reliance on the Art of Memory. Moreover, the development of these decorative motifs in both real studies and painted ones follows an evolution in the perceived role of the memory arts from their primary employment as a practical tool in the fifteenth century to their elevation in the sixteenth century to a mystical level as a powerful key to cosmic understanding.