Date of Award

10-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Art History and Visual Culture

Department

Art

First Advisor

James Hutson

Second Advisor

Elizabeth Melick

Third Advisor

Ana Schnellmann

Abstract

This thesis seeks to examine the so-called Vienna Diptych (1478/1479) by Hugo van der Goes. The two panels of the diptych have been displayed together since the 19th century, yet difficulties in provenance and the dating of the artist’s oeuvre have resulted in the continued questioning of its intended creation as a single campaign. This research seeks to assert the diptych’s thematic unity through a concentrated analysis of its leading female figures, a vantage point that has not yet been fully addressed in the literature. This paper will therefore examine the iconographic precedents for the unique imagery of the panels and analyze their iterations in the Vienna Diptych. The results will demonstrate how the female figures of the panels are related through the moralizing idiom of mirroring, a uniquely medieval concept that was, itself, highly gendered. By examining the Vienna Diptych as a single work unified through gendered themes of sin and salvation as exemplified by its female figures, this research hopes to contribute to the small but growing body of research on Hugo van der Goes as well as feminist and postmodern discussions in medieval art history. Finally, the results hope to provide avenues for further research into the role of works like the Vienna Diptych in the formation of witch-hunting iconography in the 16th and 17th centuries.

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