| Summary: | <p>This thesis investigates the significance of portraits of female patrons in the colleges of England's two early modern universities, Oxford and Cambridge, during a crucial period of change for these institutions between 1500 and c.1640.</p>
<p>The outcome of a collaborative project between the University of Oxford and the National Portrait Gallery, London, this thesis builds on recent art historical scholarship on British portraiture, presenting focused research on a group of early university portraits that have not yet received systematic attention. New discoveries allow us to reassess some better-known examples of university patrons' portraits and expand our knowledge of previously unexplored images. This research informs a new kind of social history of England's two early modern universities, with a particular focus on women's involvement in patronage.</p>
<p>The accumulation of portraits of women in male-dominated colleges was, the author proposes, initially an unplanned reflection of their involvement in patronage, with donations influenced by the popularity of portraiture elsewhere. Images of these female patrons, seldom commissioned with the university in mind, demonstrate their wider values and aims. They provide an opportunity to reflect on how particular identities shaped women's relationships with colleges and how they affected their depiction through portraiture.</p>
<p>The author argues that, towards the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, these female portraits formed part of the development of a new kind of institutional commemoration specific to collegiate universities. An examination of the dynamics of colleges' relationships with their patrons and institutional practices related to the commission, acquisition, and display of portraiture also allows us to better understand the construction of corporate identity, and the impact of the religious, social, and architectural transformations of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries on academic spaces and communities.</p>
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