F1526 Great Works of Art Re-visited

Class 1. Orientation.
Course introduction. Approaches to the interpretation of art

Class 2. Botticelli, Annunciation (Cestello Annunciation), c. 1490 / Robert Campin. The Mérode Altar, c. 1427-32
The class examines how Renaissance Italian and Flemish painters organized their visual narratives and how two art historical methodologies interpret the meaning of a work of art. Panofsky establishes an extremely influential concept of “disguised symbolism” in Northern Renaissance painting and in doing so turns a work of art into a visual cipher while Baxandall explains Botticelli’s painting though the social and religious practices of the period.
Reading:
Baxandall, Michael, Painting and Experience in Fifteen-century Italy, Oxford, 1972, 45-56.
Schapiro, Meyer, “‘Muscipula diaboli’, the symbolism of the Mérode Altarpiece,” in: Art Bulletin, vol. 27, No. 3. September 1945, 182-187.
Panofsky, Erwin, Early Netherlandish Painting. Its Origin and Character, Cambridge (Mass.), 1953. Chapter 5 and 6, V.
Recommended further reading:
Heckscher, William, “The Annunciation of the Mérode Altarpiece: An Iconographic Study,” in: Miscellanea Jozef Duverger. Ghent, 1968, 37-65.
Holly, Michael Ann, “Witnessing an Annunciation,” in: Holly, Michael Ann, Past Looking: Historical Imagination and the Rhetoric of the Image. Ithaca and London, 1985, 149-169.
Carrier, David, “Naturalism and Allegory in Flemish Painting,” in: Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 45, Spring 1987, 237-49.

Class 3. Leonardo, Last Supper, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milano, 1495-97
The Milan fresco marks the climax of Renaissance narrative painting where a story is told through the movement of bodies and facial expressions in a stage-like space. For a long time Leonardo’s Last Supper was seen as a clear and straightforward orchestration of the different psychological reactions of the apostles to the words of Jesus “One of you will betray me”. Following Goethe’s 1817 essay this reading became almost exclusive, despite the obvious religious significance of the sacred event presented by Leonardo – the institution of the Eucharist. The class will discuss Leo Steinberg’s acute and multifaceted analysis of different aspects of the fresco (iconography, physiognomy, spatial structure, perspective, etc.) which argues that both meanings of the Last Supper – psychological and mystical – are intentionally inseparable.
Reading:
Clark, Kenneth, Leonardo da Vinci, an Account of his Development as an Artist, Baltimore, 1959, 89-97.
Steinberg, Leo, Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper, Cambridge, MA, London, 2001, 12-53.
Zöllner, Frank, Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519, The Complete Paintings and Drawings, Köln, 2012, 122-29.

Class 4. Leonardo, Mona Lisa, c. 1503-06
By now the Mona Lisa is the most celebrated painting in the world. This status was built up gradually, beginning with mid-19th century French and English writers who invested the portrait of an upper middle-class Florentine woman with Romantic ideas of Eternal Femininity. Since then the painting has been the subject of endless interpretations concerning its different aspects, the identity of the sitter in particular. The class and seminar will examine both the portrait in its art historical context and the most indicative examples of the painting’s interpretation in scholarship, fiction, and mass-culture.
Reading:
Boas, George, “The Mona Lisa in the History of Taste,” in: Journal of the History of Ideas. Vol. I. No. 2. April. 1940, 207-223.
Clark, Kenneth, “Mona Lisa,” in: The Burlington Magazine. March 1973, 144-150.
Zöllner, Frank, “Leonardo’s Portrait of Mona Lisa del Giocondo” in: Gazette des Beaux-Arts, T. CXXI. Mars 1993, 115-138.
Recommended further reading:
Sassoon, Donald, Becoming Mona Lisa: The Making of a Global Icon, New York, San Diego, London [2001].
Garrard, Mary D. “Leonardo da Vinci. Female Portraits, Female Nature,” in: The Expanding Discourse. Feminism and Art History. Ed. by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. New York, 1992, 59-85.

Class 5. Seminar on Mona Lisa.

Class 6. Giorgione/Titian, Pastoral Concert, c. 1509
Pastoral Concert is an early example of a specifically Venetian type of painting – poesia, where narrative is hidden or at least not clearly presented and the emphasis is often put on such non-discursive elements as landscape. The Concert successfully avoids clear interpretation and challenges art historians who try to reveal in it a specific coherent meaning related to a specific story or a piece of poetry. A comparison of different readings of the painting allows us to discuss some basic limitations of art historical analysis.
Reading:
Holberton, Paul, “The Pastorale or Fête champêtre in the Early Sixteenth Century,” in Titian 500 (Studies in the History of Art, vol. 45), Washington, D.C., 1993, 245-262.
Maiorino, Giancarlo, “Titian’s Concert Champêtre and Sannazaro’s Arcadia: Typology and the Invention of the Renaissance Pastoral,” in: The Eye of the Poet. Studies in the Reciprocity of the Visual and Literary Arts from the Renaissance to the Present, edited by Amy Golahny, London, 1996, 53-69.
Unglaub, Johnathan, “The Concerte Champêtre: The Crises of History and the Limits of Pastoral,” in: Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, V, 1997, 1, Third Series, Spring – Summer, 46-96.

Class 7. Titian, Venus of Urbino. 1538
The strong sensual appeal of this image of a voluptuous nude was hardly acceptable to Christian/bourgeois society and for this reason was successfully obfuscated for centuries by the painting’s status of museum masterpiece and by art historical rhetoric: it was interpreted as a Neo-Platonic emblem or celebrated as an incarnation of perfect form almost stripped of its sexuality. On the other hand, exactly this unwelcome nature of Titian’s painting has subsequently been emphasised by a variety of interpretations – both artistic (Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1865) and scholarly (John Burger, Ways of Seeing, 1972, and subsequent writers). The lecture will analyze Titian’s visual strategy, compare different interpretations of the Venus and focus on the original function of the painting suggested by contemporary scholars employing the tools of social history of art, gender studies, and resources from the history of Renaissance medicine.
Reading:
Clark, Kenneth, The Nude, New York, 1956, 172-174.
Reff, Theodore, “The Meaning of Titian’s Venus of Urbino,” in: Pantheon, Bd. 21, 1963, 359-66.
Panofsky, Erwin, Problems in Titian, Mostly Iconographic. New York, 1969, 109-138.
Goffen, Rona (ed.) Titian’s “Venus of Urbino”, Cambridge University Press, 1997, 63-90.
Further reading:
Hope, Charles, “Problems of Interpretation in Titian’s Erotic Paintings,” in: Gemin, Massimo and Paladini, Giannantonio (eds.) Tiziano e Venezia, Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Venezia, 1976 Vicenza, 1980, 11-24.
Jósef Grabski, “Victoria Amoris”: Titian’s Venus of Urbino, A Commemorative Allegory of Marital Love,” in: Artibus et Historia. 1999. No. 40, 9-33.

Class 8. Dürer. Melancholia I. 1514
Erwin Panofsky’s and Fritz Saxl’s deciphering of Dürer’s mysterious print remains a classical example of iconological analysis based on the ties between visual topoi and a wide range of intellectual traditions, such as Florentine Neo-Platonism, pseudo-Aristotelian theory of the four temperaments and Renaissance occult philosophy. The lecture and the seminar demonstrate how Renaissance art responded to such intellectual vogues of the epoch as the cult of melancholy in relation to the newly formulated idea of creative genius, and how this concept was transmitted through the centuries in visual culture and the arts.
Reading:
Panofsky, Erwin, The Life and Work of Albrecht Dürer. 2nd ed., revised [1945]. P. 156-171.
Recommended further reading:
Klibansky, Raymond; Panofsky, Erwin; Saxl, Fritz, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art, New York, 1964.
Nordström, Folke, Goya, Saturn and Melancholy, Stockholm, 1962. Pages to be added.
Cummings, Frederick, “Boothby, Rousseau and Romantic Malady,” in: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 110, No. 789, Dec., 1968, 659-667.

Class 9. Seminar on Melancholia I and the melancholic tradition in visual arts

Class 10. Hans Baldung Grien. Holy family with St. Anna, 1511, engraving
This class deals with one of most groundbreaking art historical hypothesis of the last decades – Leo Steiberg’s approach to one of the strongest taboos of Christian culture in general and the discipline of the history of art in particular – the sexuality of Christ as represented in Renaissance art. Steinberg demonstrates that artists from about 1320 start to “undress” the infant Jesus and in the end of 15th century the genitalia were often proudly displayed and viewers’ attention to them was stimulated by the behavior of other characters in the painting or engraving. According to Steinberg, the genital display by the infant Christ defies a simplistic explanation based on idea of Renaissance ‘realism” and should be interpreted as a proof of the Incarnation.
Reading:
Steinberg, Leo, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, Chicago, 1996. Pages to be added.
Hope, Charles, “Ostentatio genitalium,” in: London Review of Books, Vol. 6. No. 21. 15 November 1984.

Class 11. Bronzino, Allegory, c. 1545
Striking and provocative, Bronzino’s Allegory is an exemplary case of Mannerist art produced for a limited audience of initiates who recognised the clues to the message of a sophisticated and usually complex emblematic painting. Art historians still haven’t reached agreement about the Allegory’s meaning, and the lecture will present alternative readings of the painting related to the moralizing emblematic tradition, issues of Renaissance sexuality and public health.
Reading:
Panofsky, Erwin, Studies in Iconology, New York, 1962, VII, 69-91.
Hope, Charles, “Bronzino’s Allegory in the London National Gallery,” in: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 45, 1982, 239-243.
Conway, J.F., “Syphilis and Bronzino’s London Allegory,” in: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, ol. 49, 1986, 250-255.
Bosch Lynette, M.F., “Bronzino’s London Allegory: Love versus Time,” in: Source, Vol. 9. No. 2, Winter 1990, 30-35.
Recommended further reading:
Cheney, Iris, “Bronzino’s London Allegory: Venus, Cupid, Virtue and Time,” in: Source, Vol. 6, No. 2, Winter 1987, 12-18.
Barnard, Imelda, ‘Venus, Cupid and Time (Allegory of Lust)’ (c. 1540–45), Agnolo Bronzino. The National Gallery, London https://www.apollo-magazine.com/with-love/bronzino-allegory-of-love-lust-2/

Class 12. Rembrandt, Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, 1632
This first group portrait by Rembrandt is an example of a radically new 17th century art. It builds on Caravaggio’s revolution: using a heightened contrast between the bright light in the center of the painting and the dark background to intensify the effect of immediacy and presence and helps to bring the viewer into the imaginary space of the picture. Thematically it’s strikingly modern too – Anatomy documents a public autopsy as practiced in the 17th century Holland, open to professionals and the general public. The painting raises several broader cultural issues, for example, the new significance of visuality in expanding scientific knowledge.
Reading:
Heckscher, William S., Rembrandt’s “Anatomy of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp”: An Iconological Study. New York, 1958. Pages to be added.
Riegl, Alois, “Excerpts from The Dutch Group Portrait,”, in: October, 74, Fall 1985, 3-14.
Middelkoop, N., Noble P., Wadum J., Broos B. Rembrandt under the Scalpel: “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” Dissected. Exh. Cat., The Hague, 1998-9. Pages to be added.
Recommended further reading:
Mitchell, Dolores, “Rembrandt’s “Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp”: a Sinner among the Righteous,” in: Artibus et Historiae, No. 32, 1993, 145-156.

Class 13. Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434
Van Eyck's portrait of this couple of wealthy Italians resident in Bruges is outstanding for its realism of detail, complex visual structure and the presence of the artist as witness to the legal procedure relating to matrimony. Panofsky’s 1934 article established the tradition of the interpreting the picture in terms of hidden symbolism and alternative rituals of marriage which turns this brilliant painting into a unique social document. Contemporary scholars have challenged his reading from different methodological perspectives such as social history of art, gender studies, etc.
Reading:
Panofsky, Erwin. “Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait,” in: The Burlington Magazine. Vol. LXIV. No. CCCLXXII. March. 1934, 117-127.
Bedaux, Jan Baptist, “The reality of symbols: the question of disguised symbolism in Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait,” in: Simiolus, Vol. 16. 1986, 5-28.
Hall, Edwin. The Arnolfini Betrothal. Medieval Marriage and the Enigma of Van Eyck's Double Portrait, Berkeley. Los Angeles, London, 1994, XVII-XXI, 49-129.
Recommended further reading:
Seidel, Linda. “Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait: Business as Usual?” in: Critical Inquiry 16 (1989), 55-86.
Harbison, Craig, “Sexuality and Social Standing in Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Double Portrait,” in: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. XLIII. No. 2. Summer. 1990. P. 249-291.

Class 14. Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors, 1533
This unique portrait of two French aristocrats painted in Renaissance London presents a complex symbolic message with a very personal atmosphere. Its message is formulated through an elaborate combination of objects combining the commonplaces of the moralistic tradition of representations of Vanitas with up-to date scientific knowledge and popular visual tricks such as anamorphosis. The lecture demonstrates how contemporary scholars have approximated to the intended meaning of the portrait employing different approaches which complement each other – from traditional iconology to Lacanian psychoanalysis and queer studies.
Reading:
Bätschmann, Oskar and Griener, Paskal. Hans Holbein. Princeton, 1997, 149-192.
Foister, Susan; Roy, Ashok; Wyld, Martin. Holbein’s “Ambassadors”: Making and Meaning. National Gallery Publications, London, 1997.
North, John, The Ambassadors’ Secret: Holbein and the World of the Renaissance, New York, 2003, 247-334.
Recommended further reading:
Lacan, Jaques, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis , London, 1977, 85-89.
Kenaan, Hagi. “The ‘Unusual Character” of Holbein’s Ambassadors”, in: Artibus et Historiae. 2002. No. 46, vol. XXIII, 61-75.
Calderwood, Mark. The Holbein Codes. An Analysis of Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors [2005] http://web.archive.org/web/20060423155438/ http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school/fine-art/arttheoryessaywritingguide/analysisofhansholbeinstheambassadors.html (25.09.2014)

Class 15. Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1665
When the painting first became widely known in the 19th century it was considered a big impressionistic snapshot of a casual moment in the life of Spanish court. The immediacy of Velázquez’s manner encouraged a predominant view of Las Meninas as a genuine manifestation of 17th century Realism. This simplistic reading was challenged by Michel Foucault in the opening passages of The Order of Things where the complex arrangement of sightlines, hiddenness, and appearance was presented as a model of a new épistème in European culture. His ekphrasis launched a new discussion of the painting.
Reading:
Brown, Jonathan, “On the Meaning of Las Meninas,” in: Brown, Jonathan, Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting, Princeton, 1978, 87-110.
Steinberg, Leo, “Velázquez’s Las Meninas” in: October, Vol. 19, Winter 1981, 45-54.
Alpers, Svetlana, “Interpretation without Representation, or, The Viewing of Las Meninas,” in: Representations. Vol. 1. No. 1. February, 1983, 31-42.
Recommended further reading:
Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archeology of Human Sciences, London, 1970, 3-16.
Moffitt, John F. “Velàzquez in the Alcázar Palace in 1656: the Meaning of the mise-en-scene of Las Meninas,” in: Art History, Vol. 6, No. 3, September 1983, 271-300.
Stratton-Pruitt, Susanne L., “Velázquez’s, “Las Meninas”: An Interpretive Primer,” in: Stratton-Pruitt, Susanne L. (ed.), Velázquez’s, “Las Meninas”, Cambridge, 2003, 124-49.
De Diego, Estrella, “Representing Representation: Reading Las Meninas, again,” in: Ibid., 150-69.

Class 16. Seminar on Las Meninas

Class 17. Watteau, L'Enseigne de Gersaint, 1720-21
Watteau's last masterpiece is unique in the œuvre of this master of exquisite Rococo pastorals: it was made as a shop-sign for the artist’s dealer’s store and represented its interior, shop staff, and customers. Because it was painted shortly before the painter’s untimely death, the painting was considered his testament, an eloquent speculation on the philosophy of art comparable to Las Meninas. Recent art historical analysis has suggested alternative interpretations based on early 18th century urban visual culture and the Baroque emblematic tradition: the celebration of the first surge of consumerism in Europe.
Reading:
Neuman, Robert, “Watteau’s ‘L’enseigne de Gersaint’ and Baroque Emblematic Tradition,” in: Gazette des Beaux-Arts. T. CIV. 1984, Novembre,153-164.
Posner, Donald, “In Detail: Watteau’s Shopsign for Gersaint,” in: Portfolio, vol. 1. No. 3. 1979, 29-33.
McClellan, Andrew, “Gersaint's shopsign and the world of art dealing in eighteenth-century Paris,” in: Mary D. Sheriff (ed.) Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the Artist and the Culture of His Time. Cranbury, NJ, 2006.
Recommended further reading:
Posner, Donald, Antoine Watteau, Ithaca, Cornell University Press [1984]. Pages to be added.
Plax, Julie-Anne, “Interpreting Watteau across the Centuries,” in: Mary D. Sheriff (ed.) Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the Artist and the Culture of His Time. Cranbury, NJ, 2006, 27-50.

Class 18. Tiepolo, Allegory of the Planets and Continents, fresco, Prince-Bishop’s Residence, Würzburg, 1750-53
The largest fresco in the world is commonly considered to be the last masterpiece of Baroque allegoric visual panegyrics where illusionistic painting effects endow the abstract emblems with an air of reality. By the mid-18th century this tradition was in decline and nowadays Tiepolo’s decorative paintings are often seen as superficial and shallow. However, a versatile analysis by two of the most stimulating art historians of our times – Baxandall and Alpers – has revealed not only the fresco’s perplexing visual structure ingeniously organized by the painter, but also presented it as an indicative example of a radical change in the arts evolving from story-telling in the direction of pure visuality.
Reading:
Alpers, Svetlana and Baxandall, Michael, Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence, New Haven and London, 1996, 101-142.
Helmberger, Werner and Staschull, Matthias, Tiepolo's world: the ceiling fresco in the staircase hall of the Würzburg Residence. Munich, 2008.

Class 19. David, The Death of Marat, 1793
Despite its ostensible realism and Spartan simplicity, the Death of Marat is a complex and well-calculated political statement which effectively manufactures a heroic image of the martyr of the Revolution and excludes everything that doesn’t fit the political agenda of the artist who was himself deeply involved in the Jacobin terror. As T.J. Clark has demonstrated in his meticulous analysis of the ideological contexts of the painting, the powerful realist rhetoric of David’s painterly style and its multivalent political message make the painting a milestone of Modern art.
Reading:
Clark, T.J. “Painting in the Year Two,” in: Representations, Vol. 47, 1994, Summer, p. 13-63.
Howard, Seymour, “A Model for Early Romantic Necrophilia,“ in: Stil und Überlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes. Akten des 21. Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte in Bonn. 1964. Bd. I. Epochen Europäischer Kunst. Berlin, 1967, 217-225.
Crow, Thomas. Emulations: Making Artists for Revolutionary France, New Haven and London: Yale University Press [1995], p. 155-169.
Recommended further reading:
Vaughan, William and Weston, Helen (eds.), David’s ‘The Death of Marat', Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Class 20. Gericault, The Raft of Medusa, 1819
Gericault’s sensational painting was inspired by the tragic fate of the victims of a shipwreck adrift on a raft in the Atlantic. While following the Neo-Classical tradition of grand narrative paintings it challenges it radically in terms of formal structure, relation to the beholder and meaning. The Raft demonstrates how the visual revolution of Romanticism had resulted in the displacement of the traditional iconography in favour of a new one based not on emblematic schemata but rather on visual motives interwoven with different contexts of the work of art.
Reading:
Crow, Thomas, “Classicism in Crisis: Gros to Delacroix,” in: Stephen F. Eisenman (ed.), Nineteenth-Century Art: A Critical History, London: Thames and Hudson [1994], 51-77.
Belting, Hans, The Invisible Masterpiece, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press [2001], 87-95.
Recommended further reading:
Rosen, Cahrles and Zerner, Henri, “Romanticism: the Permanent Revolution,” in: Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner, Romanticism and Realism: The Mythology of Nineteenth-Century Art, New York & London: W.W.Norton & Cº [1984], 23-48.
Eitner, Lorenz, “The Open Window and the Storm-Tossed Boat: an Essay in the Iconography of Romanticism”, in: The Art Bulletin. Vol. 37. 1955, 281-290.
Boas, T. S. R., “Shipwrecks in English Romantic Painting,” in: Journal of Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. Vol. XXII. No. 3-4.1959, 332-346.

Class 21. Manet, Bar at the Folies-Bergères, 1881-2
Manet’s painting presents an image of an attractive young woman, a bartender in a famous Parisian café-concert. This mesmerizing combination of hues and textures seems to be a snap-shot of a fleeting moment of everyday life, but a deeper examination reveals a series of disturbing discrepancies in spatial structure, in the behavior of the characters, etc. demanding explanation and resisting it. The class will scrutinize a wide range of scholarly approaches (social history of art, gender studies, post-structuralism) to the problems of the late 19th century art and society encapsulated in Manet’s last masterpiece.
Reading:
Clark, Timothy J., “The Bar at the Folies- Bergères,” in: Beauroy, Jaques, Bertrand, Marc and Gargau, Edward T. (eds.), Popular Culture in France: the Wolf and the Lamb. From the Old Regime to the Twentieth Century, Saratoga, CA, 1977, 233-252 .
Flam, Jack, “Looking into Abyss: the Poetics of Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergères,” in: Collins, Bradford R. (ed.), 12 Views of Manet’s “Bar”, Princeton, 1996, 164-188.
Recommended further reading:
Herbert, Robert L., Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society, New Haven and London, 1988, 76-91.
Gedo, Mary Matheus, “Final Reflections: “A Bar at the Folies- Bergères” as Manet’s Adieu to Art and Life,” in: Gedo, Mary Matheus, Looking at art From Inside Out: the Psychoiconographic Approach to Modern Art, Cambridge, 1994, 1-55.
Iskin, Ruth E. “Selling, Seduction, and Soliciting the Eye: Manet’s bar at the Folies- Bergères,” in: Broude, Norma and Garrard Mary D. (eds.), Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History after Postmodernism, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2005, 235-57.

Class 22. Seminar on Bar at the Folies-Bergères

Class 23. Picasso. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907
Since Alfred Barr Jr. acquired Les Demoiselles for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, this canvas has been seen as the major break with a five-hundred-year tradition of Western representational painting and the beginning of contemporary art. Indeed, Picasso produced a painting where the commonplaces of narrative and salon art were challenged, disclaimed and recycled for new artistic purposes. Our analysis of modern interpretations of Les Demoiselles will highlight the nature of the major early 20th century cultural turning point represented by Picasso’s painting.
Reading:
Golding, John, “The Demoiselles d’Avignon”, in: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 100, No. 662, May 1958, 155-63.
Steinberg, Leo, “The Philosophical Brothel,” in: October, No. 44, Spring 1988, 7-74.
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Special issue by William Rubin, Hélène Seckel, Judith Cousins. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1994 / Studies in Modern Art, 13-34, 91-116.
Recommended further reading:
Green, Christopher (ed.), Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,’ Cambridge, 2001.

24. Exam-week. Papers due.

20% -- participation in class discussion and seminars
40% -- seminar presentation
40% -- final paper

The final paper is a 10-12 page essay on a work of art based on scholarly literature. The subject must be selected and approved by the tenth week of the semester.

Prof. Annarita Paolieri

Course Aim:

The main aim of this short course is to provide an introduction to one of the more fascinating period of the Italian Art.

Through the discussion about several paintings presented in class, the participants will learn to understand the main characteristics of the Renaissance style and of the conditions that led to it.

Another topic of the course will follow the evolution of Renaissance from its beginning in Florence to its spreading through other Italian cities until its maturity during the "great Cinquecento".

The art works will be analyzed against the background of religious, social and political conditions in Renaissance Italy.

The course will involve a final site visit to Florence.

Participation to the Course:

"Italian Renaissance Painting" is offered to external auditors interested in the topic and as a supplementary Art course to VIU students.

You can participate:

1) as auditor

2) as student enrolled in Art and Architecture in Renaissance Venice or Great Works of Art re-visited.  Attending all classes and participating in the site visit in Florence, Prof. Pattanaro/Savy and Prof. Mazur will recognize a bonus towards the final evaluation.

3) for 2 ECTS  credits - if you attend all classes, participate in the site visit in Florence and write a short paper of 4500-6000 words, VIU will issue a certificate recognizing 2 ECTS (European credits).

- All participants attending all classes and the visit will receive a final certificate of attendance.

Readings:

Readings Berenson, Bernard, The Italian Painters of The Renaissance, Phaidon, London 1912

Burckhardt, Jacob, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Phaidon, London (ed) 2006

Gombrich, Ernest, The Story of Art, Phaidon , London 1961

Nichols, Tom, Renaissance Art. A Beginner's Guide, Oxford 2010

Additional readings might be suggested during the classes.

Class schedule:  On Wednesdays and the Field trip on Friday

October 7 (Wednesday): 5.00 - 6.30 pm

October 14 (Wednesday): 5.00 - 6.30 pm

October 21 (Wednesday): 5.00 - 6.30 pm

October 23 (Friday): All day - site visit to Florence

November 4 (Wednesday): 5.00 - 6.30 pm