In Early Renaissance Italy, a new type of art emerged that was to change the concept of looking and representation, and the relationships between artist and patron, viewer and artwork. Beginning with the revolutionary vision of such artists and architects as Donatello, Ghiberti, Masaccio and Brunelleschi in the early 15thC, and concluding with the flourishing of art and architecture in Florence under Cosimo de’Medici, this course will investigate the culture and accomplishments of a period of creativity which lay the critical groundwork for Western art until the later 19thC.

            A basically chronological exploration of works of painting, sculpture and architecture in, especially, Florence, Siena and Rome will present a consideration of major art historical issues concerning this period. Students should gain familiarity not only with the selected artworks themselves, but also with the historical, religious and social context in which they were produced, and debates concerning style, patronage, function, iconography and meaning. Other topics will include art and the role of women, family identity, monastic life, the miraculous image, and other recent fields of inquiry.

Investigation will include: the Renaissance “rediscovery” and reinterpretation of antiquity; the relationship of humanist study to art;  the social and economic structures of art patronage; observation of nature and artistic convention; narrative and “istoria”; the effects of religious thought and practice on the devotional image; portraiture and social identity; civic pride and self-imaging in Florentine art; the “renovatio” of Rome under the Quattrocento popes; perspective as science and as symbolic space.

            An important aspect of the course will be on-site study, in Rome (for your Journals) and, especially, in Florence.  These experiences will give students the opportunity to examine works of the Early Renaissance in person, and often in their original context. Though the “start-up” of the Renaissance was slow in Rome, and few monuments from the early 15C survive, you will be visiting museums and sites relevant for the course as well.

Textbook and Readings:

Frederick Hartt and David Wilkins, History of Renaissance Art. Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Lawrence King Publishing, 2011, 7th ed.

Several supplementary readings will be required for each lesson, including writings from Renaissance sources such as Alberti and Vasari, plus selections chosen from the work of a variety of modern scholars, to introduce you to some different methods, views and approaches. Recommended articles and book chapters will also be suggested.

            Students will be expected to develop, in the course of the semester, the following:

-       A familiarity with period and individual styles of Late Gothic and Early Renaissance art through a study of major works. Ready recognition of selected works, and knowledge of relevant factual information. 

-      Command of problems of interpretation in relation to the study of selected works; basic familiarity with subject matter and iconography,

function, patronage and purpose

-       An understanding of different art historical methodologies and views of the period through selected readings by major scholars in the field 

-       A familiarity with some contemporary sources and writings on Early Renaissance art. 

-       A basic understanding of the historical, political and social context in which this art and architecture was produced and in which artists and architects were formed.

-       Development of critical thinking about art and art history through course readings,  assignments and class discussion

-       Improved research skills through use of not simply the JCU library (and ideally, others in Rome), Jstor, and use of bibliographical sources, published and electronic.

-      Furthering of writing skills: declaration and development of a clearly stated theme, organization, discussion of distinctive views and approaches, written expression and structure.

-      Furthering of oral communication skills, through class discussion.

Sequence of Classes

A specific schedule is forthcoming; due the double class period, several sections below will, of course, be combined in one class.

TBA: Due dates of assignments, examinations, Florence trip; additional readings

I)  Introduction

II)  Art in Italy in the 14C. 

Byzantine, Gothic, Antique currents and changing attitudes to nature in painting, sculpture and architecture. The rise of the mendicant orders and a new emphasis on the substance of the eucharist brought changes to ways of representing religious subjects.

Reading: Hartt and Wilkins

III)  Late Gothic painting in Tuscany, especially Florence: elaboration and reaction to Giotto’s heritage; theories on the influence (or not) of the Black Death on art

Reading: HW,  Chapter 5, pp 137-148

              Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death, Chapter I, “The New Form and Content”

            Recommended: Maginnis, Chapter VIII: The Mid-Century and the Mannered Style         

IV) Brunelleschi: Antique and medieval models, rationality and measure, and the synthesis toward a new ideal of architecture

Reading: HW, Chapter 6

The Cupola of Florence Cathedral; The development of one-point perspective.

Readings – Vasari, “Life of Brunelleschi” in Lives of the Artists

              Recommended: Ross King, Brunelleschi’s Dome (readable account of the construction of the cupola, though extremely dependent on an earlier, more scholarly publication!)

V) – Sculpture in Early 15thC Florence: politics, society and public art projects; the competition panels for the Baptistery Doors; Ghiberti’s reliefs for the North Doors of the Baptistery

Works for the Cathedral and Orsanmichele; Ghiberti, Nanni di Banco, and early Donatello

Continuation of discussion of public sculpture in Florence and notions of civic identity; discussion of Vasari’s conception of art history

Reading: HW, Chapter 7 

             Accounts of the Competition by Renaissance writers, in Krautheimer, Lorenzo Ghiberti

             Vasari, Preface II

VI) – Introduction to new trends in Renaissance painting: Gentile da Fabriano and the courtly style; Masaccio’s style of imposing simplicity; concepts of “naturalism” in early 15thC Florence; two currents of naturalism in Florence and elsewhere.

Fra Angelico: painting and piety in the work of a Domenican artist; Altarpieces; his work at S. Marco

Readings: HW, Chapters 8 and 9 

                Steinberg, Sexuality of Christ, selections

               Recommended: Keith Christianson, Gentile da Fabriano, chapter on the Adoration of the Magi

 Recommended: William Hood, Fra Angelico at S. Marco

VII) – Fra Filippo Lippi, iconographical invention and stylistic elaboration

Reading:  Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy, 

                Chapter II, “The Period Eye,” pp 29-108 

                Vasari, Lives of Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi

Recommended: Megan Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi the Carmelite Painter, selections

VIII)  – Leon Battista Alberti. Humanism and the theory of art and architecture: Perspective and “istoria;” Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise”

Alberti’s architecture: Architectural theory and practice

Reading: HW, Chapter 10 

               Alberti, On Painting, selection

              John Summerson, The Classical Language of Architecture, pp 7-20

IX) – THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN ROME:

The Papacy established in Rome: Florentine artists and first Renaissance developments in the renovation of the papal city in the early 15thC

Art and Architecture in early Quattrocento Rome

Reading: Loren Partridge, The Renaissance in Rome 1400-1600, 1996, selections: Chapter One – to p 24; Chapter Two – 46-79; Chapter Three – 61-68; Chapter Four – 79-83; Chapter Five – 110-115

               Recommended: Meredith Gill, “The 14^th and 15^thCenturies,”in M. Hall, ed., Rome

              Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, Chapter II, esp. pp 49-79

X) – The later work of Donatello in Florence and Padua. Tomb sculpture and funerary chapels in mid-15thC Florence. 

Reading: HW, Chapter 12, pp 299-311

             Recommended:  Start reading Kent, below

XI) – Paolo Uccello, Domenico Veneziano,  Andrea del Castagno: “La dolce prospettiva”- spatial formula, ambiguities, and manipulations; devotion and diversion. Medici Patronage examined. Civic responsibility or propaganda in building projects, sculpture and painting commissions.

Reading: HW, Chapter 11, pp 265-281

               Recommended: Dale Kent, Cosimo de’Medici and the Florentine Renaissance, Chapter XI, pp 217-238;  Chapter XII, pp 239-291 

XII) – Piero della Francesca: Ideal geometry and problems of interpretation. The frescoes of the Legend of the True Cross in Arezzo

Readings: HW, Chapter 11, pp 281 - 297

                 Verdon, “The Spiritual World of Piero’s Art,”in Cambridge Companion to Piero della  Francesca

                 Recommended: Jeraldyne Wood, chapter on Legend of the True Crossin Cambridge Companion to Piero della Francesca