The Nuremberg Chronicle, a world history book published by the foremost humanists, artists, producers, and merchants in the southern German city Nuremberg in 1493, exemplifies history’s capability of irony. Despite its proclaimed global perspective and serendipitous conception in that fateful year of 1492, the book, one of the finest examples of incunables, mentions no Christopher Columbus or his discovery. The omission was not deliberate, as the new world remained an “unknown unknown” to the German team in 1492. Yet the screeching silence offers peculiar insight into the spiritual, intellectual, and communicational realities of Europe, a continent then standing at the doorstep of modernity, unaware of the sea change soon to be brought about by wider discoveries, mass communication, and the colossal enterprise of colonization. 

A visual culture survey, this course begins with the blind spot of the Nuremberg Chronicle and examines the history of the early modern world—Christian Europe or otherwise—documented in and by a vast array of cultural artefacts. It attends to early modern works across geographic, political, and religious confines, drawing its narrative from not only Renaissance Italy, but also Ming China, not only early modern Amsterdam, but also golden age Baghdad. It emphasizes, in particular, objects and sites at the forefront of cultural exchange—such as Rembrandt’s Mughal miniatures or the Qianlong Emperor’s European-style Summer Palace—and the long shadow they cast on the formation of cultural identity. This course also gives attention to the question of media. Maintaining that medium does more than mediate, but also shapes, the message, it investigates how different media, such as oil painting, the printing press, and life-casting—and the technological advancement tantamount to their invention—figure in the cultural production of the early modern world. 

Designed to provide art history majors with an overview of early modern visual cultures, this course builds its narrative upon examinations of individual monuments, in particular their material property, building circumstance, and cultural impact. The objective of this course is to develop the skills needed to critically understand, evaluate, and write about the cultural heritage of the early modern world and beyond. 

This course will enable the students to:

·      Develop a familiarity with key monuments from different geographic and cultural spheres of the early modern world.

·    Cultivate the kind of visual literacy needed to identify artefacts previously unknown to them.

·     Acquire an understanding of the roles different cultural artefacts played in their changeful context, be it social, political, or spiritual.

·      Hone skills in collecting pertinent sources, formulating persuasive arguments, giving nuanced reasoning, and communicating original ideas. 

ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS: 

Attendance in classes: 

Attendance is mandatory. Notification must be sent by email before—or, in the case of unexpected events, at your earliest convenience after—the absence. A maximum of 2 unjustified absences are permitted.

Attendance at exams: 

A major exam (midterm or final) cannot be made up without the permission of the Dean’s Office. Contact the Dean’s Office prior to the exam to be missed. Absences due to the observance of a religious holiday will normally be excused. Notify me by the end of the Add/Drop period so that arrangements may be made for missed work. 

Meeting 1         Course Introduction

Meeting 2        What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Art History?

Meeting 3        The Pyrotechnic End of the Middle Ages

 Meeting 4        Trecento Italian Art

 Meeting 5        Art of Quattrocento Florence: Sculpture and Architecture

 Meeting 6        Art of Quattrocento Florence: Painting and the Invention of Linear Perspective

 Meeting 7        Early Netherlandish Painting

 Meeting 8        Netherlandish Painting c. 1500

 Meeting 9        Art of Italian Renaissance Courts

 Meeting 10      The Age of Giants: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael

 Meeting 11      Rebuilding Rome

 Meeting 12      Renaissance Venice

 Meeting 13      Midterm Review

 Meeting 14      Midterm Exam

 Meeting 15      Circa 1492

 Meeting 16      The Age of Mechanical Reproduction 

 Meeting 17      Art and Nature: Renaissance Germany

 Meeting 18      Landscape Painting in China

 Meeting 19      Art of the Protestant Reformation

 Meeting 20      Counter-Reformation and the Anti-Renaissance

 Meeting 21      Art in the Age of Rembrandt

 Meeting 22      Pepper, Maps, and Porcelain: The Global Dutch Republic

 Meeting 23      The Language of Islamic Architecture

 Meeting 24      Baroque Rome 

 Meeting 25      The First Museums: Kunstwunderkammern

 Meeting 26      Art of the Kingdom of Benin 

 Meeting 27      Cultural Hybridity in Ming and Qing China

 Meeting 28      Final Review