The Baroque and its Rebels: Propaganda and Dissent in seventeenth-century Rome

Our Summer School programme

Summer School Online offers 29 intensive week-long art history short courses on a wide and global range of subjects and periods, from medieval mosaics to the contemporary Chinese art scene. We aim for a high level of scholarly expertise, an engaging delivery and a friendly atmosphere, and we welcome everyone over the age of 18, irrespective of previous experience. Small-group teaching facilitates discussion and ensures each student is given the lecturer’s attention. The fee for each online course is £395 and includes expert tuition and extensive learning materials on our Virtual Learning Environment.

Course 18 – The Baroque and its Rebels: Propaganda and Dissent in seventeenth-century Rome

Dr Giulia Martina Weston

Monday 5 – Friday 9 July 2021

£395

Delivered online

Course description

The course explores opposing yet complementary patterns of artistic production and consumption in seventeenth-century Rome.  The term ‘Baroque’ is traditionally associated with the Catholic Counter-Reformation and with Absolutist monarchies, and our course will begin by exploring the output of such giants of painting and sculpture as Caravaggio, Pietro da Cortona and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Through chief examples of their propagandistic use of illusionism and theatricality, our analysis will closely interrogate the revolutionary and performative nature of their imagery, which was rewarded with fame and wealth by contemporary patrons, religious and secular alike.

At the same time, however, the Eternal City saw the rise of less orthodox and less well-known artistic expressions, that were openly at odds with the official culture and its dogma. In a detailed study of the works produced by Salvator Rosa, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Pier-Francesco Mola and Pietro Testa, we shall discover the first depictions of dissent in Western art. We shall trace the unfolding of this alternative Baroque in these artists’ treatments of unprecedented subject-matters. Moreover, investigating these rebels’ finely crafted entrepreneurial strategies will enrich our understanding of the intellectual ambitions and economic life of artists working in seventeenth-century Rome.

N.B. this is an extended version of Dr Weston’s previous course ‘Rebels of the Baroque: Painting Dissent in Seventeeth-Century Rome’

Lecturer’s biography

Dr Giulia Martina Weston holds a PhD from The Courtauld, where she has been Associate Lecturer since 2016. She is Consultant Lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and a member of several editorial boards. She has published on various aspects of Renaissance and Early Modern art and society. She authored the monograph Niccolò Tornioli (1606-1651). Art and patronage in Baroque Rome (2016), and coedited the volumes I Pittori del Dissenso (2014) and ‘A tale of two cities’: Rome and Siena in the Early Modern period (2020). Her forthcoming book focuses on Salvator Rosa’s afterlife and influence in Britain.  She has lectured for the London Art History Society, the Lincoln College, University of Oxford, and the Paul Mellon Centre.