ARTH 232
Renaissance Rome: Renovating the Eternal City Spring 2023
Division I
This is not the current course catalog

George Eliot called Rome “the city of visible history,” a place with the power to bring “the past of a whole hemisphere” right before our eyes. The magnetic visual power of Rome did not just occur naturally, however; it is a product of a bold urban project first envisioned by Renaissance popes and brought into being by the artists and architects they hired. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Rome was transformed from a shrinking and neglected medieval town into a thriving center of artistic energy and invention. Beginning with the papacy’s return to the city in 1417, we will focus on the historical, ideological, and artistic forces behind this period of renovation and restoration that reshaped the urban and artistic fabric of the city. We will study the particularly Roman foundations for the period known as the High Renaissance, then, approaching art historical touchstones by Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bramante as works grounded in a uniquely Roman sense of time and historical destiny. We will conclude with a selective look at Baroque works by Caravaggio, Bernini and Borromini, exploring their powerful innovations and effects as a continuation of the Renaissance renewal of the eternal city.