3 – NEW – Heroines: Depicting Famous Women in Italian Renaissance Art
Online
Course 3 – Summer School online
Monday 10 – Friday 14 June 2024
Dr Claudia Daniotti
£395
You may also be interested in our course Magnificent Women: Elite Female Agency and the Arts of Medieval Europe, which will run online in the evenings from 7 November to 5 December 2024.
Course description
This course explores the evolving theme of ‘Famous Women’ from ancient history and mythology in Italian Renaissance culture. From the mid-fourteenth century, a flourishing textual and visual tradition grew up around the figures of ancient heroines like Medea, Cleopatra, Lucretia and Judith, whose stories, whether edifying or controversial, provided Renaissance women with exemplary models of how to (or how not to) behave. Selected from Greek and Roman myth and history, and from the Bible, ‘Famous Women’ were depicted in the visual arts as well as in collections of biographies and educational treatises. What role model did they provide for Renaissance women? What kind of contribution did they make to the developing notions of female identity between the medieval and early modern periods, and the changing role of women in society?
Starting from the lavishly illuminated manuscripts of Giovanni Boccaccio and Christine de Pizan, we will discuss the visual imagery developing in the Renaissance around notable heroines (like Helen of Troy, the Amazon Penthesilea, Queens Semiramis and Queen Tomyris of Scythia). The focus of our enquiry will be on artefacts from c. 1350 to c. 1600, belonging to a variety of artistic media (including painting, ceramics, marriage chests and the domestic art) and extending to iconographic themes particularly favoured north of the Alps (such as ‘the Nine Worthy Women’ and ‘the Power of Women’).
How to book
To book your chosen course(s) please use the book now button below and you will be taken to our booking system where you can book and pay (Visa / Mastercard / GooglePay / ApplePay).
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(Please note: this ticketing login is not the same as your short courses VLE login if you have one).
Once you have made your selection, your chosen course(s) will be added to your shopping basket which has a timer of 20 minutes, after which time your basket will be cleared and you will need to start again. The timer starts from when you put an item in the basket (not when you login or register).
If you have any questions please email us at short.courses@courtauld.ac.uk
Lecturer’s biography
Dr Claudia Daniotti is a specialist in Italian Renaissance art with an emphasis on iconography and the reception of classical antiquity. A Warburg alumna and an experienced teacher in academia and in the museum sector, Claudia is currently based at the University of Warwick, where she has recently completed a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship in its Centre for the Study of the Renaissance. Claudia’s research interests include the posthumous life of Alexander the Great, the reception of ancient Famous Women, and macabre imagery and the representation of Death in medieval and early modern Europe. She has a number of publications in the fields of the classical tradition and fourteenth- to eighteenth-century art, including the monograph Reinventing Alexander: Myth, Legend, History in Renaissance Italian Art (2022).