Art and Life in Renaissance Italy
History 342/442/542-Art 444/544
Professor Horodowich
Spring 2008, Williams 212, W 2:30-5
Office Hours: Breland 246, T W 10-12 and by appointment, 646-1515/lizh@nmsu.edu
This course examines how Italian Renaissance textual and visual culture offered Europe new ways of seeing and portraying itself between 1350-1550. Topics include: the rediscovery of classical antiquity; the cultures of Renaissance Florence, Venice, and Rome; the rise of the Medici family in Florence; an analysis of the work of artists and architects such as Brunelleschi, Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Titian; and Renaissance humanism and literary production including the works of Petrarch and Machiavelli.
Course Requirements and Grading:
Each week, class will consist of lecture for the first half and a short break, followed by a discussion of the week’s readings. I will always provide reading and discussion questions in advance, and I encourage you to keep them in mind while doing the reading to help you understand what is important to glean from the texts. Readings are essential to your success in this class. Assigned readings are due by the day for which they are assigned. We will always discuss and refer to readings, so please bring current assigned readings to class. Every week, you will be required to hand in a 1-2 page typed outline that summarizes the day’s reading and provides discussion questions. These outlines will be graded on a good/acceptable/fail scale (i.e. check, check plus, or check minus). Attendance, participation, and reading outlines will be worth 20% of your grade. In addition, during the second week, all students will sign up to lead one discussion during the semester, which will be worth 5% of your grade. The course will include two papers (15% each), a midterm (20%), and a final (25%). Graduate students will also complete additional assignments and will be evaluated on a different grading scale. Since class only meets once a week, or 13 times total excluding the introductory session and the midterm, it is very important that you attend every class. I will not accept late outlines, papers, or exams except in cases of documented personal, family, or medical emergencies.
Required Texts: (also available at Zuhl reserve desk)
J.R. Hale, Florence and the Medici
Laurie Schneider Adams, Italian Renaissance Art
Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists
Lorenzo Valla, The Forged Donation of Constantine
Roger Masters, Fortune is a River
Richard Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy
Judith Brown, Immodest Acts
**there will also be a course reader for sale on disk in Breland 171 for $1
How to write an outline:
Weekly outlines should be typed and handed in at the end of class. I do not accept outlines or papers by attachment; you must get a hard copy to me. Outlines do not need to use complete sentences or paragraphs, but should include, for each reading, several components. For PRIMARY sources (i.e. texts written by historical actors from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance), what is the author writing about? Why did he or she write their text? What are the main points discussed, and if you can discern it, what is his/her argument? For SECONDARY texts, (i.e. texts written about the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by modern people), outlines should include the topic being discussed, the main points made and/or principal subjects touched upon, the ARGUMENT of the article, if there is one, how or why you think the argument might be wrong or problematic, why this text is significant or what it’s significant contribution to our understanding of the subject is, and lastly, what do YOU think of the argument. Stating the argument of each reading and what you think of it is the most important part of the outline. Outlines for each reading should include a few possible discussion questions that are different from the ones I have already provided. Think about these questions in terms of LOCKS and KEYS. Meaning, what did not make sense? What questions did the reading leave you with? Or, what insights did you come up with or connections to other readings or class discussions? OUTLINES SHOULD NOT BE APPROXIMATELY TWO PAGES FOR ALL THE READINGS FOR THE WEEK. Lastly, while you can and should use the week’s study questions as a springboard for your outline, OUTLINES SHOULD NOT BE A LISTED ANSWER OF THE STUDY QUESTIONS! They should be an outline of the content of the reading material. While there are no absolute rules as how to best do an outline (there are many ways: whatever works best for you), lease see me or let me know if you would like to see an example outline to help you better understand how to complete these assignments. Lastly, while outlines should cover the Adams book, since this is our textbook, less space should be devoted to Adams and more to the other readings each week.
How to lead discussion:
There will be 11 class sessions in which groups of you will lead discussion. This will require you to organize questions and themes for the class to discuss each week. I will lead discussion the first week, to offer a model of how it could be done, but you are free to do whatever you would like. You can pass out questions and have people work on them in small groups and then we can discuss them all together as a group; you can devise some sort of game; you can go around the room and ask each person to respond to a question or series of questions; you can devise a debate or a role-play; you can show a piece of a related video or film to encourage discussion. Use the above concept of locks and keys to generate questions. How you decide to lead discussion is entirely up to you.The important thing is that you touch upon all the readings for the week, that you try to draw out main themes of these readings and why they are important. Many (if not all) of the texts we will read make specific arguments, so you want to think about, what are these authors arguing? Based on what evidence do they make these arguments? Are their arguments successful? Why or why not?
Papers: Paper topics will be announced and discussed in class several weeks before the due dates indicated on the syllabus. They will not be research papers, but papers asking you to analyze course readings, and to do an analysis of a textbook. PLEASE NOTE that papers in this class will require argumentative writing. While we will discuss this some in class, as an upper-division class, it assumes a knowledge of argumentative writing.
Examinations: Both the midterm and final examination will be a mix of short answer/identification and essay; both will ask you to discuss the significance of various images we have studied.
Students with Disabilities: If you have (or believe you have) a disability and would benefit from classroom accommodation(s), please contact the Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) Office located at Corbett 244. Phone: 646-6840.
Plagiarism: both intentional and unintentional plagiarism is considered academic misconduct and will result in the student failing the course. If you are unclear as to what constitutes plagiarism, or how to avoid it, see: http://gervaseprograms.georgetown.edu/hc/plagiarism.html
Do not wait
until the end of the course to let me know that you are having trouble with
reading, writing, note-taking, or any aspect of this course. Come see me right
away…I am happy to help you, but can only do so if you see me early on in the
semester.
Class Schedule:
Week 1/January 16 Introduction
Week 2/January 23 When and how did the Renaissance begin?
Burckhardt (CP); Vasari Preface to part I, Cimabue, Giotto; Adams 2-56
Week 3/January 30 Early Renaissance Art I
King (CP); Vasari Preface to Part II, Ghiberti, Brunelleschi; Hyman=Ghiberti, Manetti, and Vasari on the Baptistry Doors (CP); Adams 58-82
Week 4/February 6 Early Renaissance Politics/Humanism
Lorenzo Valla, The Forged Donation of Constantine
Week 5/February 13 Early Renaissance Art II
Hale 9-42; Adams 83-141, 222-26, (skim 142-160); Vasari on Uccello, Massaccio, Alberti, and Fra Angelico
*paper #1 due on Friday, February 15th (see end of syllabus for paper assignments)
Week 6/February 20 Lorenzo de Medici and Neoplatonism
Bartlett=Ficino and Pico della Mirandola (CP); Adams, (202-21 skim), 226-45; Vasari on Botticelli; Hale 43-75
Week 7/February 27 Midterm Examination
Week 8/March 5 Religion and Savonarola
Trexler (2 articles, CP); Muir (CP); Weinstein (CP); Bartlett=Savonarola (CP); Hale 76-108
**note: Monday, March 10=last day to drop with a W
Week 9/March 12 The Renaissance Court
Martines(CP); Adams 179-201, 248-53, 262-67;
Machiavelli (CP)
Vasari on Piero della Francesca (optional)
**NOTE: get started on Masters for next week!
Week 10/March 19 Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael
Masters, Fortune is a River
Adams 304-11, 336-47; Vasari Preface to Part III,
Leonardo, Michelangelo (skim/see specific study
questions), and Raphael (optional)
Week 11/April 2 Venice
Burckhardt 82-95 (CP); Adams 270-289, 361-74; Vasari on Giorgione and Titian; Muir (CP), Kohl and Smith=Venice Elects a New Doge (CP)
Week 12/April 9 Film, The Agony and the Ecstasy
Paper #2 due in class
Week 13/April 16 Italy, Trade, and Consumption
Richard Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300-1600
Week 14/April 23 Women and Gender
Judith Brown, Immodest Acts
Veronica Franco, “A Challenge to a Poet who has Defamed Her” (CP)
Week 15/April 30 When did the Renaissance end?
Hale 109-143 (144-96 optional)
Adams 379-399
Final Examination: Wednesday, May 7, 3:30-5:30 (to be confirmed)
Study Questions
NOTE: you should NOT hand in written answers to these questions each week as part of your outlines; these questions should serve as guides to the reading and discussion. Weekly outlines should follow instructions on syllabus above.
Week 2: How did the Renaissance Begin?
Nicolò Pisano, Cimabue, Giotto, Duccio, Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lorenzetti
1) According to Burckhardt, what happened at the end of the Middle Ages?
2) What would you say is Vasari’s “argument”? Do you buy it? How is it similar to
Burckhardt’s?
3) For Vasari, what art is good/bad? Who made the best art and the worst art? What does “bad” art look like? What are some examples?
4) What is design? How does Vasari describe its origins?
5) What factors destroyed the good art of the past?
6) Where and when does art begin to revive?
7) Why is Cimabue “the first”? How does Giotto surpass him?
8) What is the point of Franco Sacchetti’s story (p. 79-80)?
9) According to Adams, when did the Renaissance take place? What did the Renaissance comprise or entail? What did it mean?
10) Renaissance artists strove to imitate antique art. How would you describe the principal features of antique art? Of Byzantine art? Gothic art?
11) How does the work of the artist Cimabue mark both an end and a beginning? How is this mix of end/beginning also reflected in the cathedral of Pisa and the work of Nicolò Pisano?
12) Where is the Arena Chapel, and when was it painted? Why is it such a
revolutionary landmark in the history of the Renaissance? What adjectives could you use to describe the figures in these scenes?
Week 3: Early Renaissance Art I
1) What were some of the many problems surrounding the building of the dome over Santa Maria del Fiore?
2) Who were the main competitors involved in the 1367 design of the church itself, and what exactly did they propose? Who won the competition?
3) What is noteworthy about his cupola over Santa Maria del Fiore? What ancient models did he study for this work? How did his dome present fundamentally different problems from these earlier examples?
4) In his “Preface to Part II”, how does Vasari further nuance his argument about the progress of art? What are his three stages, and what characteristics define each period? What characteristics, by contrast, would define bad art?
5) According to Vasari, why did the guild of the cloth merchants decide on the theme of the Sacrifice of Isaac as its subject matter for the competition? According to Adams’ interpretation?
6) In the story of Ghiberti’s life, how does Vasari describe the outcome of this competition? How does Manetti’s story differ?
7) How would you describe the similarities and differences between the two reliefs? If you had been a judge, which contestant would you have picked and why?
8) How does Vasari describe Brunelleschi’s personality? What were some of his major achievements?
9) How Was Brunelleschi transformed by his stay in Rome? What exactly did he do there?
10) Describe the relationship between Brunelleschi and Ghiberti. Why exactly was Ghiberti commissioned to help Brunelleschi with the dome?
Week 4: Humanism
1) How would you define humanism?
2) What was the Donation of Constantine? When was it supposedly written, and when was it really written? Why did someone create this forgery?
3) How did Lorenzo Valla come to understand that this document was a forgery? What techniques, including historical, literary, and logical, did he use to prove that it was a fake?
Week 5: Early Renaissance Art II
1) How does Vasari describe the way the ideal artist should act/work?
2) How does he describe Uccello’s personality?
3) What exactly do we mean by perspective and foreshortening? How exactly does it function? Who were the first Renaissance artists to experiment with these techniques?
4) What characteristics does Masaccio have that we have already seen in Vasari’s other descriptions of artists?
5) According to Vasari, what new trait now characterizes the work of Fra Angelico?
6) Consider the work of this week’s artists… Lorenzo Monaco, Gentile da Fabriano, Fra Angelico, and Paolo Uccello, among others (see Adams)…in what ways do these paintings reflect a more medieval tradition of images? How do they also show a new Renaissance vision?
7) What was Leon Battista Alberti’s main contribution to the theory of painting?
8) Who were the Medici, exactly, and how were they bound up with the production of art? What do we mean by patronage…how did it function?
9) How did the Medici become so wealthy? What else did they do to enhance their prestige?
10) What would you say is the relationship between humanism and/or artistic production and political power?
11) How did the Florentine government work, and what was so exceptional about it?
12) How did the Medici come to power, and how can we explain them being princes in a so-called republic?
13) Why were Cosimo’s house, and the inscription on his tomb, “simple”?
Week 6: Lorenzo de Medici/Neoplatonism
1) Neoplatonism was a major theme in Italian Renaissance art and humanism. What exactly does it mean? What currents of thought characterize it? Why were there renewed intellectual connections between the Greek Byzantine Empire and the Latin West in the 15th century? How was it central to/forwarded by Medici patronage (i.e. how does Vasari describe the relationship between Lorenzo de’Medici and Botticelli)?
2) When/what was the Pazzi conspiracy? What caused it, and what were the results? According to Bullard, what did historians later in the 16th century make of the conspiracy? How did they use it to interpret the importance of Lorenzo?
3) Based on what you know now…if you had to pick a side, would you say that the Medici were benevolent citizens or despotic dictators in disguise?
4) How does Ficino describe the force of love? What text is he referring to and discussing here? What does he mean by this word? How does he distinguish the mind and the body/the soul and matter?
5) What is Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s argument about the nature of man? What is neoplatonic about this argument? His oration is a preface; what is the rest of this text about?
Week 7: Midterm Examination
Week 8: Religion and Savonarola
1) What happens in Florence after the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1492? What does Hale mean by the “aristocratization” of Florence? What happened to the Florentine government following the Medici exile in 1494? Who was Soderini? Charles VIII? What effects did they have on Florence?
2) Donatello’s Judith and David were removed from the Medici palace in this period and brought to the Palazzo della Signoria…why? What is this symbolic of?
3) We have already thought about the symbols of David/Cosmas and Damian/St. John the Baptist/the Magi….how and why was the Virgin Mary also a powerful religious symbol for Florentines? According to Muir, why were there Virgin Mary’s on every Venetian street corner? How did sacred objects function differently in different early modern cities?
4) What are some examples—from throughout the course so far, as well as this week—of how Florentines believed in the efficacy and power of images? What did the Madonna of Impruneta have the power to do? How did Florentines use this image? How did they explain how/why images failed sometimes?
5) We have already seen visual connections between the Medici and the magi…how else were they connected? How did Lorenzo purposefully develop a cult of martyrs? How did the Medici, as savvy politicians, link “divine and human history…sacred time and secular time?
6) Who was Savonarola, and what was his message? Why was he so popular? What effects did he have on Florence, and what was his fate? What is Weinstein’s argument about Savonarola? (this selection is not labeled very clearly, but it is 4pp. long and is the “conclusion” to his book…)
Week 9: The Renaissance Court
1) What do we mean by the Renaissance court or princedom? How did they form? How was the art they produced inherently different from the art of Republican Florence and, as well shall see, Venice?
2) What were the historical circumstances in which Machiavelli lived and wrote The Prince? How did Machiavelli achieve power and come to know so much about politics? What types of jobs did he do?
3) What is the difference between a new prince and a hereditary prince? What things must a prince do to maintain his power? Who serve as Machiavelli’s heroes and models and why?
4) How does Machiavelli view human nature: as good or bad? What does he think about arms, weapons, and defence?
5) Why were Machiavelli’s ideas both worshipped and intensively criticized and even banned?
Week 10: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael
1) Consider the life of Leonardo according to both Vasari and Adams…what was his personality like? Where did he work? Who did he work for? What characteristics best describe his paintings? (i.e. what do we mean by sfumato?)
2) In his “Preface to Part III”, Vasari comes to the climax of his work. What, again, is Vasari’s “argument”? Who does he believe were the “best” artists and why?
3) Why, according to Adams and others, is the Mona Lisa considered “one of the most controversial images in the history of art”?
4) What do we mean by the art of the “High Renaissance”? How do the images and techniques of Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bramante differ from those of the artists of the early Renaissance? As opposed to Florence in the fifteenth century, what has now become the artistic capital of Italy in the sixteenth century?
5) As we know, Michelangelo is Vasari’s favorite artist. Why is this? How does he describe him? What anecdotes does he use? What is the great significance of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, as he describes it (354-61)? What was Vasari’s personal connection to Michelangelo? What does this suggest about Vasari himself and his Lives? What is the significance of Vasari’s description of Michelangelo’s dead body (438)?
6) In Fortune is a River, Roger Masters narrates the friendship between Leonardo and Machiavelli. How does he describe their personalities and relationship? What projects, specifically, did they undertake together? A LOT has been written about these two figures…what is masters’ unique contribution to our understanding of them? How is his story different?
Week 11: Venice
1) As you are reading, keep a list: what are the many ways that Venice is different from Florence, both artistically and politically?
2) What is Burckhardt’s take on Venice? How does it compare with his vision of the rest of the Renaissance (i.e. Florence)?
3) Art historians have traditionally claimed that Florentine painting was based on disegno and Venetian painting instead on colore; what does this mean? How does Vasari emphasize this distinction in his biographies of Titian and Giorgione? How else have art historians typically viewed the artistic traditions of these cities as different?
4) What is “the myth of Venice”? What is mythical about this city, and how did the city self-consciously and purposefully contribute to the construction and growth of its myth? How did Venetians “legitimize” their city?
5) How did the Venetian government work? How was it both republican and courtly? How would you describe how doge’s were elected?
6) Why were both Venus and the Virgin symbols of Venice?
Week 12: Trade, Consumer Society, and Neo-Capitalism in Renaissance Italy
1) What exactly is Goldthwaite’s argument about the Renaissance?
2) Traditionally, scholars like Burckhardt believed the Renaissance happened because people discovered classical antiquity. What does Goldthwaite say instead?
3) Why WAS Italy so wealthy?
4) What do historians traditionally say happened to the Italian economy in the 16th century, and why does Goldthwaite disagree?
5) There were many centers of wealth in early modern Europe; what was so special about Italy?
6) What are some examples of Renaissance “consumption”? How does Goldthwaite claim that we can see this?
7) How did Christianity (in Italy in particular) lend itself to consumption?
8) How does Goldthwaite describe secular attitudes towards wealth? How was Italy fundamentally different from Northern Europe in its spending habits?
9) What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of this text?
10) Why does the Italian economy (i.e. the Renaissance) eventually decline in the seventeenth century?
Week 13: Women and Gender
1) In the introduction to Immodest Acts, what does the author say she found immediately odd or intriguing about Benedetta Carlini’s case?
2) How has sexuality between women been described by the Western tradition? How has it been described differently than male sodomy or homosexuality?
3) How were the lives of girls and women fundamentally structured very differently in the Renaissance world than they are today? How did they have much less freedom and agency?
4) Why were Renaissance convents “bursting at the seams” (p. 31)?
5) In chapter 3, Brown describes the story of Benedetta’s visions. How did they progress? What did she see, and what happened to her? Why were visions considered suspicious? What ultimately caused many people to wonder if she was a fraud, and forced her to step down as abbess of the convent?
6) What were the criteria for determining the difference between a saint and a heretic? How did Bartolomea fit and not fit these criteria? Why did early investigations find her to be a saint, while later ones found her to be a falsifier?
7) What exactly does Brown mean when she says on p. 127 “Splenditello thus was essential to her sense of self because he allowed her to fashion an identity that at the same time assimilated and circumvented the values of patriarchal society” ?
8) What are the main points about Renaissance society at large that can be drawn from Benedetta’s story?
9) What does Veronica Franco assert in her poem? How would you describe her tone of voice, and how is this a feminist poem?
Week 14: Why did the Renaissance End?
1) In our course, we have considered the rise of the Medici, Savonarola, the revived republic that was home to Machiavelli, and the return of the Medici again in 1513. What eventually happens in Florence later in the sixteenth century? How would you describe the leadership of Cosimo I? Did he continue or break Florentine traditions? How did he use art, like other Renaissance rulers, to bolster his regime?
2) What characterizes mannerist art? Who were some of its more notable artists?
ALRI Paper 1 Assignment: Burckhardt and the Renaissance
In his 1860 The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Jacob Burckhardt made several sweeping claims about this time period: foremost, that “Italy began to swarm with individuality” as Italians “knew little of false modesty or of hypocrisy in any shape; not one of them was afraid of singularity.” Consider Burckhardt’s remarks on the individual (see CP)… do you agree with his argument? Consider all the sources (both primary and secondary) that we have read to date and use them to evaluate Burckhardt’s thesis-you may also discuss paintings and images if you find them helpful. Do you think individualism came to predominate this period? Or did communal and group identity remain strong? Remember to cite specific evidence to support your argument, and remember that you must discuss both primary and secondary sources.
This paper should be approximately 5-6 pages (double-spaced, one-inch margins, size 12 font), and is due in my history department mailbox by Friday, February 15th by 5 pm. Please request a set of writing guidelines from me if you would like them—I will send you an attachment.
PLEASE READ THE ENTIRE ASSIGNMENT CAREFULLY! DO NOT JUST GIVE A SUMMARY OF VASARI IN THIS PAPER!
Consider Vasari’s theory of the development of the arts from the antique world through his present sixteenth-century day. What, for Vasari, constituted good and bad art? How, when, and most importantly why did the arts wax and wane? What are the stages of art as he defines them, and what artists does he place in each stage?
These questions are just some food for thought; you do not need to answer them individually or directly per se, since they are meant to serve as a springboard to the question: Do you agree with Vasari’s argument, his narrative of progress, or not, and why? Your paper should pick a side on this question, that you agree with him or not, and then prove why, remembering not to simply recount all of Vasari (=we can read the book to review his narrative if we want to do this) but to make a clear argument about his text. If you agree with Vasari, you should discuss some of the possible reasons why his take on art might be criticized and why you think such criticisms are incorrect, which you can do by discussing specific artistic examples. Your paper should contain some summary of Vasari’s argument, but should be primarily a critique—either positive or negative—of his thesis.
You should refer to specific passages from the text and specific images in order to make your argument. In general, you should not refer to any sources besides Vasari, though you may refer to other texts from our class/class lectures if you would like to. Since we will all be referring to essentially one text, all citations should be simply done in the MLA format, i.e. “”he had demonstrated a boldness that no other ancient or modern architect had ever shown” (Vasari, 25).
This paper should be 5-6 pages and will be due in class on Wednesday, April 9th. Please note that this is a fixed deadline and late papers will not be accepted.