ARTH 305
Art, Life, Death: Studies in the Italian Renaissance Spring 2010
Division I Writing Skills
This is not the current course catalog

We often think the Italian Renaissance as a transformation of the visual arts–a moment that pulled away from the Middle Ages and set the stage for a new world of images detached from function and human experience. But art in Renaissance Italy was hardly produced “for art’s sake.” This sophomore-level tutorial course will examine, through a series of focused case studies, ways in which the exciting and innovative world of the Renaissance was also a vital one. We will examine canonical works by Masaccio, Donatello, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Raphael, and others not as mere examples of artistic achievement, but as complex visual responses to life’s big questions. What is love? How do we bridge the world of the living and that of the dead? How can we conceptualize our relationship with divinity? How is power constructed along the lines of gender and sexuality? What defines us and constructs us as individuals? How will we be judged by our contemporaries and by posterity? We will consider these questions and more. Along the way we will explore the distance and proximity of the Renaissance past and our own moment, considering ways to articulate or refine the notion of universal resonance of artistic expression. Coursework will include many primary sources, not least the works of art themselves (students will be expected to look as well as read in preparation for class).