THEME III: THE ARTS IN RENAISSANCE ITALY

NEW COURSE

Course 3: Dr Janet Robson

The Art of the Friars in Early Renaissance Italy c. 1250–1470

£420

THIS COURSE IS NOW FULL. PLEASE DO LET US KNOW IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE PLACED ON A WAITING LIST.

The new mendicant orders of Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinian Hermits and Carmelites (otherwise known as the Friars) were the leading patrons for religious art in early Renaissance Italy, where their monumental churches dominated the city skylines. With their new saints and their engagement with the wealthy urban elite of bankers and merchants, the Friars brought major changes in religious devotion and spirituality. This, combined with the spirit of competition between the different orders, generated new forms of artworks and a rapid development in the iconography and style of altarpieces, fresco cycles and tombs. The Friars commissioned all the leading artists of the day: we will study frescoes and panel paintings in Assisi, Florence and Siena, including works by Giotto, Duccio, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti; Fra Angelico’s frescoes in San Marco, Florence; Piero della Francesca’s Legend of the True Cross fresco cycle in Arezzo; and the Brancacci Chapel in the Carmine. The course will include visits to the National Gallery, The Courtauld Gallery and the V&A.


THEME IV: THE ARTS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: MEDIA, MATERIALS, TECHNIQUES AND PHILOSOPHIES
Course 4: Dr Susie Nash and Clare Richardson
Early Netherlandish Painting and Technical Art History
The fee for this course is £485 as  the group will be limited to 10 students; this also includes the cost of course materials.

THIS COURSE IS NOW FULL. PLEASE DO LET US KNOW IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE PLACED ON A WAITING LIST.

This course will examine the way Early Netherlandish painters made their images, and the way we investigate aspects of that making. It will consider the properties of oil and egg tempera, how panels were made and prepared, how works were designed and underdrawn, and how they were brought to completion in the application of the paint layers. To consider these aspects we will investigate works of art in the conservation studio of the Courtauld Institute, as well as in the gallery there and in the National Gallery. We will consider how we can discover various aspects concerning the making of panel paintings by different means from close looking with the naked eye and with magnification, though to paint sampling, x-radiography, and infrared reflectography and by replicating their techniques ourselves. The purpose is not just to understand how Netherlandish painters such as the Master of Flemalle (Robert Campin?), Jan Van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling and Hugo van der Goes created their works, but also to understand the implications of how we study that creative process, how we understand and accommodate changes over time, and how technical methods can be used by the art historian in the service of investigating meaning, function and audience as well as the physical processes of making a work of art.

THEME V: ART AND SOCIETY IN NORTHERN EUROPE

Course 5: Dr Richard Williams

Dürer and Venice

£420

When Albrecht Dürer arrived in Venice artists there received him with great honour but also with a degree of jealousy. The technical brilliance of his graphic work had made a big impact in Italy, yet his paintings were said to lack such qualities as the deep, rich colour for which Venetian art was renowned. Dürer was determined to learn from Italian art before returning to effect a revolution, a ‘renaissance’ in the arts back in Germany. Close links between Venice and Germany had been long established and this course will examine this direct cultural cross-fertilisation. The works of Dürer and other German painters and sculptors influenced by Italian art will be contrasted with others, such as Cranach, who seemed determined to create a more distinct Germanic style. Paintings by Venetian artists such as Bellini and Giorgione will also be studied for their indebtedness to Dürer and Northern art. Original works will be examined at first hand during visits to major museum and gallery collections in London.


THEME I: ART, RELIGION AND SOCIETY

NEW COURSE

Course 9: Dr Federico Botana

Understanding the early Italian Altarpiece: Function, Style and Context

£420

Among the pictures in the National Gallery and The Courtauld Gallery we find some of the most striking early Italian altarpieces. These paintings performed an integral function in religious life.  But today, in museums, they are divorced from their original contexts. What is more, in many instances, the panels in display are only fragments of monumental altarpieces.  This course will reinstate these remarkable paintings into their contexts, by considering their original locations, liturgical and devotional practices, and the interests of the patrons who commissioned them.  Such factors are fundamental to the understanding of the original functions of these works.  Moreover, they determined the evolution of altarpiece design in late-medieval Italy, from the early Sienese polyptych to the single-field altarpieces produced in 15th-century Florence. In this course, visits to museums will be complemented by a series of lectures at The Courtauld, which will be structured around specific themes, including liturgy, the cult of saints, private and civic patronage, and the development of painting schools.


THEME III: THE ARTS IN RENAISSANCE ITALY

NEW COURSE
Course 11:Caroline Brooke

Art, Money and Power: Medici Patronage in Florence c. 1420–1570

£420

THIS COURSE IS NOW FULL. PLEASE DO LET US KNOW IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE PLACED ON A WAITING LIST.

The name ‘Medici’ is synonymous with artistic innovation and achievement during the Renaissance in Florence. This course examines the art patronage of more than five generations of the dynasty, from the emergence of the family as a political force early in the Renaissance, to the establishment of the grand duke dynasty that reigned for almost two centuries. It focuses on the commissions of Cosimo the Elder, Piero the Gouty, Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Cosimo I Grand Duke of Tuscany, in order to consider how the political, religious and social aspirations of individual members of the Medici family shaped the cultural and artistic life of the city. The works of major Florentine artists such as Donatello, Fra Filippo Lippi, Michelangelo and Bronzino are examined in relation to the tastes and aspirations of their patrons, as manifestations of civic pride, devotion, and personal ambition. Issues such as familial pietas, the varying fortunes of the Medici bank and the political climate of the period are also considered in relation to the development of Medicean patterns of patronage. Visits to the British Museum, the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum are an integral part of the course.


 

THEME VI: ART IN BRITAIN, THE NETHERLANDS AND ITALY

NEW COURSE
Course 14: Dr Richard Williams

Renaissance Art at the Crossroads: Italy and the Netherlands

£420

THIS COURSE IS NOW FULL. PLEASE DO LET US KNOW IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE PLACED ON A WAITING LIST.

The impact of Netherlandish painting, founded by Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, was so profound in Italy that it changed the direction of Italian Renaissance art. From Filippo Lippi to Raphael, Italian painters switched from egg tempera to the Netherlandish technique of painting in oils, adopted the northern approach to portraiture, emulated the depiction of light, texture and other illusionistic effects, and even copied landscape backgrounds from imported northern altarpieces. In the 15th century this influence travelled almost exclusively in one direction from north to south. However, in the 16th century this direction was effectively to reverse as the works of Michelangelo and other Italian masters caught the imagination of Netherlandish artists and their patrons (from Gossaert ultimately to Rubens). In studying this cultural cross-fertilisation in the 15th and 16th centuries this course draws on more recent scholarship that has caused a major re-evaluation of Renaissance art. Cutting across national boundaries and the boundaries existing in traditional art history the course tells a newly-emerging story and looks at well-known works from a fresh perspective.

 


THEME III: THE ARTS IN RENAISSANCE ITALY

NEW COURSE
Course 20:

Dr Peter Dent

Splendid Things in Stone, Wood and Gold: Italian Sculpture 1250–1400

£420

‘If I were to choose ten great artists, the greatest in European art, I would put Giovanni Pisano among them.’  Henry Moore’s admiration for one of the most brilliant and charismatic Italian Gothic sculptors was matched only by Giovanni’s own confidence in his talent.  He is described on one work as ‘endowed above all others with command of the pure art of sculpture.’  These judgements reflect the fascination of one of the most dynamic, yet less familiar, periods in Italian art.  This new course has been created to coincide with the opening of the new medieval and renaissance galleries at the V&A, which contain the greatest collection of Italian Gothic sculpture outside Italy.  We will explore the work of the major artists, Nicola Pisano, Giovanni Pisano, Arnolfo di Cambio, Tino di Camaino and Andrea Pisano.   But we will also follow some of the less well travelled paths that lead to such delights as the idiosyncratic sculptures of late medieval Verona and the horrific painted wooden images of Christ on the cross known as crocifissi dolorosi. 

 

THEME III: THE ARTS IN RENAISSANCE ITALY

Dr Michael Douglas-Scott

The ‘High Renaissance’: Art and Architecture in Rome 1500–1527

£420

THIS COURSE IS NOW FULL. PLEASE DO LET US KNOW IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE PLACED ON A WAITING LIST.

Rome in the first decades of the sixteenth century became a powerhouse of artistic production which set standards of excellence for centuries. Bramante, Michelangelo and Raphael worked for the energetic Pope Julius II and his successor Leo X on projects of unparalleled grandeur and ambition, such as rebuilding St Peter’s and the painting of the Sistine chapel ceiling. These achievements are set within the framework of the urban renewal of the city inherited from the fifteenth-century papacy, the spread of the cult of the antique beyond the intellectual circles of the papal bureaucracy, the institution of permanent collections of antiquities and the patronal activities of the cardinals and bankers in Rome. The devastating Sack of Rome in 1527 and the origins of ‘Mannerism’ are also examined. Visits include the National Gallery, the Prints & Drawings Collections at the British Museum and the V&A.


You may also be interested in Dr Douglas-Scott’s study tour to Rome from 23 - 26 September 2010.