Course Description
Baroque art and architecture in Italy, with special emphasis on Rome, and such important figures as the Carracci, Caravaggio, Bernini, and Borromini.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will be expected to produce an extensive
research paper on specific works or issues related to the field
and the methodologies appropriate to the topic under
consideration in the course. This paper will be a detailed,
in-depth consideration of the student's chosen theme requiring
not only a demonstration of advanced research skills (including
the ability to read and use material presented in foreign
languages), but also an articulation of the student's ability to
understand and manipulate the critical apparatus of art history
in connection with Italian Baroque Art and Architecture.
Athena Title
ITALIAN BAROQUE
Prerequisite
Two ARHI 3000-level courses and permission of major
Semester Course Offered
Not offered on a regular basis.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This course is focused on the art produced in Italy during the seventeenth century, the period commonly known as the Baroque. Although the majority of the classroom lectures will focus on the arts in Rome, consideration will also be given to other Italian centers including Naples, Bologna, Florence, and Venice. Works of painting, sculpture, and architecture will be studied for what they reveal, not only about the careers of the individual artists who made them, but also in terms of the external forces that shaped their creation. By beginning with an intensive study of St. Peter's, the most important artistic center in Baroque Rome, students will begin to understand Baroque art as a series of ever-expanding ideas about art, not merely as a specific style. Students will be asked to do a considerable amount of reading and writing in conjunction with the lectures.
Topical Outline
I. Introduction: Michelangelo and St. Peter's in the 16th Century II. Clement VIII, Paul V. Maderno, and St. Peter's III. Urban VIII, Bernini and St. Peter's IV. Alexander VII and the Completion of St. Peter's V. Annibale Carracci and the Reform of Painting VI. Caravaggio VII. Caravaggisti and Classicism in Rome VIII.Guericino and Reni IX. Bernini and Algardi X. Bernini and Borromini XI. Pietro da Cortona and Andrea Sacchi XII. Naples and Florence XIV. Venice and the North XV. Foreigners in Rome
Syllabus