AH 291 surveys Roman monuments of art and architecture surviving from the thousand-year ‘Age in the Middle’ between Classical Antiquity and the Early Modernity, i.e. the Renaissance. The class meets entirely on location in Rome, allowing for first-hand study of buildings, paintings, mosaics, sculpture, and other objects. Class meetings will consist of lectures, group activities, and discussions, for which students are expected to prepare in advance.
IMPORTANT: You may not be registered for a class that immediately precedes or follows this one, given the time required for travel to and from the monuments.
Recommended bibliography for the research project and optional independent reading:
Andaloro, Maria, La pittura Medievale a Roma, 312-1431. Atlante percorsi visivi – Volume I. Suburbio, Vaticano, Rione Monti, Jaca Book, 2006. (Note: even if you do not read Italian, you should consult this book, which has amazing, state-of-the-art reconstructions of Late Ancient and medieval monuments. Be sure to check the period to which a given reconstruction pertains by reading the brief caption using an Italian-English dictionary or with the help of an Italian-speaking friend.)
Beckwith, J., Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 2nd ed., Yale University Press, 1986.
Belting, H., Likeness and Presence. A History of the Image Before the Era of Art, trans. E. Jephcott, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Birch, D., Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge, 1998.
Brentano, R., Rome Before Avignon, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990.
Brown, P., The World of Late Antiquity: A.D. 150-750, New York: Norton, 1989.
Davis-Weyer, C., Early Medieval Art 300-1150. Sources and Documents, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971.
Christian Classics Ethereal Library: http://www.ccel.org/index/author-A.html
Crook, J., The Architectural Setting of the Cult of Saints in the Early Christian West, c. 300-1200, Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Davis-Weyer, Caecilia, Early Medieval Art, 300-1150 (Sources and Documents), 1986.
Elsner, J., Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.htm
Grabar, A., Christian Iconography: A Study of its Origins, Princeton, 1968; rpt.1980f.
Kessler H, & J. Zacharias. Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim. New Haven and London, 2000.
Krautheimer, R., Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 4th ed, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1986.
--------, Three Christian Capitals, University of California Press, 1983.
Lenski, N., ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
The Marvels of Rome (Mirabilia Urbis Romae), F. Nichols, ed., 2nd ed., Italica Press, 1986. CAUTION: This is a medieval source. Be sure to read the modern introduction carefully so that you know how to treat its contents.
Nees, L., Early Medieval Art, 2002.
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973. Other versions of the Bible text are available on line: http://etext.virginia.edu/kjv.browse.html for the majestic, if not always easy, language of the King James translation of the Bible; http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/browse/ for the English Standard Version, a twentieth-century translation in very plain English; or http://www.newadvent.org/bible/ or http://www.drbo.org/ for the Douay-Rheims Bible, an English translation from the Latin Vulgate Bible, i.e. St. Jerome's translation from the Greek and Hebrew texts. Jerome's Vulgate was the version of the Bible most widely used in Western Europe from the Early Middle Ages to the twentieth century and so the most appropriate version for our course.
Mathews, T., The Clash of Gods, rev. ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Milburn, R., Early Christian Art and Architecture, Aldershot: Scholar Press / Wildwood House, 1998.
The ORB: On-Line Reference Book for Medieval Studies: http://www.the-orb.net/
Shelton, J., As the Romans Did. A Sourcebook in Roman Social History, 2nd ed., New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Snyder, J., Medieval Art, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989.
Stokstad, M., Medieval Art, 2nd ed., Boulder, 2004.
Tronzo, W., ed., Italian Church Decoration of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, 1989.
--------, St. Peter’s in the Vatican, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Yawn, L., “Clement’s New Clothes. The Destruction of Old S. Clemente in Rome, the Eleventh-Century Frescoes, and the Cult of (Anti)Pope Clement III” Reti Medievali Journal, North America, 13, Apr. 2012: <http://www.rmojs.unina.it/index.php/rm/article/view/343>.
--------, “Fields of Dreams: Sacred Visions in Mosaic on Roman Church Façades and Portals,” in Riflessi di politica papale verso di saraceni al tempo di Innocenzo III: evoluzione dicolori e significati: ‘Croce disarmata’, ed. Giulio Cipollone and Silvia Boari, Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2013 (Collectanea Archivi Vaticani, 87), pp. 169-192.