Caitlin Schwarz
MA, Art History
Caitlin Schwarz completed her undergraduate work at Case Western Reserve University, located in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2017. She received her BA in Art History as well as Anthropology with a specialization in Archaeology and a minor in French. Her research interests lie in the art of the high to late medieval periods of the Western world and specifically in how the holy and secular human body is depicted and therefore perceived. Through her internships at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Western Reserve Historical Society she has also fostered an interest in material culture and costume history with a focus on Victorian mourning customs and how death does not always sever the ties between those of the living and the deceased.
For her MA thesis, Caitlin will explore how Mariano Fortuny, the early 20th century fashion designer, engages with Greek, Roman and Byzantine art history at the end of the 19th century. By combining ancient and Greek forms with early Christian and Byzantine motifs, Fortuny expanded the definition of the “classical” while simultaneously suggesting that the modern woman wearing his designs is both a pagan, or Greek Goddess, and a devout Christian virgin.