107-020 Art of the Italian Renaissance

Usually 25 points of first-year art history, see Prerequisites.

This subject focuses on the art and culture of Renaissance Italy. It commences with early 15th century Florence and the ground-breaking sculpture of Ghiberti and Donatello and the architecture of Alberti and Brunelleschi, and concludes at the beginning of the 16th century with the rivalry between Michelangelo and Leonardo at the Palazzo della Signoria. An understanding of emerging Renaissance artistic ideals and a modern attitude to art is central to the subject. It is, at the same time, careful to develop an awareness of the many other ways in which Renaissance viewers experienced art: as craft, as divine presence, or as charged sexual talisman. By opening up the Renaissance to varied perceptions and interpretative frameworks, the subject thus seeks to advance students' understanding beyond such generalisations as Renaissance individualism or Renaissance rebirth.