Inside the church of San Marcello al Corso in Rome, there are two frescoes in a series by Francesco Salviati (1510-1563) whose unusual iconography caught my interest during a semester abroad. Though ostensibly depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, in both cases the titular narrative is rendered obscurely in the far background of the work while the foreground is dominated by the bodies of spectators who watch the scene. My senior thesis project, titled “Shaping Spectatorship in Art: a Study on Francesco Salviati’s ‘Scenes from the Life of the Virgin Mary,’ ” explored these frescoes in relation to a thought-provoking facet of art history that has received little scholarly attention: the development of meta-representations within
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Instead of cataloging my research interests I start with a description of my senior thesis, the proposal of which was awarded the Willamette University Presidential Scholarship so that I might conduct a project of extended scope and design. Thanks to the course credit and funding provided by the Presidential Scholarship, I was able to spend two semesters researching and writing my thesis as well as travel to Rome in the summer of 2014 to observe and photograph the frescoes of my study and related artworks around the city—therefore immersing myself in this research for over a year. This initial foray into serious art historical scholarship solidified my passion for early modern art and the status of contemporary viewer engagement therein, and has allowed me to confidently assert that I enjoy the challenge of long-term, in-depth research. Though I cannot know precisely where my graduate studies will take me, I would be very interested to continue research within the themes and topics of my senior thesis. Even beginning where the conclusions of my project left off, by complicating and modifying my assertion that a meta-linguistic dialogue facilitated by the engaged viewer increasingly becomes a significant theme within early modern Italian art, could be a promising jumping off point for future
Instead of cataloging my research interests I start with a description of my senior thesis, the proposal of which was awarded the Willamette University Presidential Scholarship so that I might conduct a project of extended scope and design. Thanks to the course credit and funding provided by the Presidential Scholarship, I was able to spend two semesters researching and writing my thesis as well as travel to Rome in the summer of 2014 to observe and photograph the frescoes of my study and related artworks around the city—therefore immersing myself in this research for over a year. This initial foray into serious art historical scholarship solidified my passion for early modern art and the status of contemporary viewer engagement therein, and has allowed me to confidently assert that I enjoy the challenge of long-term, in-depth research. Though I cannot know precisely where my graduate studies will take me, I would be very interested to continue research within the themes and topics of my senior thesis. Even beginning where the conclusions of my project left off, by complicating and modifying my assertion that a meta-linguistic dialogue facilitated by the engaged viewer increasingly becomes a significant theme within early modern Italian art, could be a promising jumping off point for future