Description of the Course
“No short history of art can give more than an inkling of the rumbustious, ant-heap turmoil of the fourteenth century in Italy. The pullulation of ideas and works of art, the surge and sway of populations, classes, factions, systems, the cost in failure for the glories shining from a seething cut-throat vital age are hard to recapture.” – John White, Art and Architecture in Italy 1250-1300
This “vital age,” the very brink of the Early Modern period, presents both delight and challenge to the art historian. The accomplishments of artists and architects of the Trecento spring from upheaval and change, and from the world of Petrarch and Dante. This course will address the development of the arts in the churches, civic halls, palaces and homes of the great republics and courts of 14C Italy.
With the rise of the city states in central Italy, the economic prosperity of the towns, the success of the new mendicant orders, and the brief flourishing of papal Rome in the later 13C, Italian artists and their patrons began to cast off earlier medieval ways until at the turn of the century, Giotto and Duccio invented a fresh mode of visual representation. Civic pride and wealth gave birth to the great churches and public buildings that still host some of the most remarkable painted and sculptural programs in Italy.
Centers in southern and northern Italy, throughout the century, were dominated by powerful lords such as the Angevins in Naples and the Visconti in Milan. Here, distinctly courtly styles flourished. The artists and architects of the republic of Venice, long attached to Byzantine models, were beginning to create a rich Gothic tradition of their own.
Scholars still debate whether the plague (the “Black Death”) of 1348, which decimated over a third of the population of Europe, may have had a direct effect on the shift in Tuscan art to follow, but painting and sculpture after mid-century takes on different forms. A harsher, less naturalistic style might signal a reaction to the mid-century trauma, or be an expressive development at deliberate variance with the more solid and warmly communicative art of the first part of the century – arguments still continue.
The course will investigate various selected monuments of Trecento Italy through a consideration also of the political, religious, and social context which formed them. We will be reading the often contrasting views of selected scholars in order not only to understand Trecento art, but to examine different art historical approaches and methods as well. Through lecture and discussion, readings, and on-site study, students will be introduced to some of the most significant works of the period, and issues of looking, thinking, and interpretation.
Textbook:
There is no required textbook for the course, since readings will be drawn from a variety of sources – on reserve, and on-line.
Should the student like a useful handbook, just as a back-up for images and basic background, I recommend the still very engaging classic by John White (quoted above): Art and Architecture in Italy 1250-1400 (Pelican History of Art, first edition 1966), New Haven and London, Yale UP, 1993/ 1995 eds. Some of this intelligent study has been superseded by new documents and methods, and White’s stylistic approach is now considered old-fashioned; it however remains worth reading, necessarily accompanied with the more recent texts assigned on the Schedule and supplemented by the Bibliography.
The readings and research assignments will require bibliography from JStor, other scholarly sources on-line, and reading from JStor and other reputable scholarly sources are of course a must. The student is expected to create a list of needs for research sources in the JCU library, Interlibrary Loan, etc – if scans are required, given in a reasonable time of anticipation. Required and recommended readings for each lesson will be either indicated if on-line sources, or scanned on Moodle for access.