Perfezionare la capacità di analisi autonoma su specifici aspetti della storia dell’arte moderna. Acquisire una consapevole padronanza degli strumenti critici della disciplina, anche ai fini di una individuale attività di ricerca.
During the Renaissance, the Italian elite discovered the expressive and communicative values of the classical language, both in literature and in the visual arts. On this base, architecture, sculpture and painting were transformed in a gradual process of nearly three centuries, between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Outside of the Italian peninsula, Italian-style classicism had alternating success, but in the end, towards the beginning of the seventeenth century, it became the generally accepted expressive means not only of the ruling classes but also, generally, of the more popular parts of the European populations. This development came about in a variety of ways, ranging from full-hearted acceptance to different kinds of resistance, resulting in hybrid forms that are, in many cases, extremely original and innovative. In the course we will cover the main stages of this epochal transformation between the mid-fifteenth and the early-seventeenth centuries, which would change for ever the history of European art, through a series of in-depth analyses. We will start form Italy ad move through France, the Low Countries, the Iberian peninsula, Central Europe, and, marginally, Russia. A central argument of the course will be the mobility of the artists, and, above all, of their artistic ideas and their works. All of this will be illustrated with examples from great artists known from the handbooks, but also personalities and artistic monuments that are much less known and often unjustly forgotten by an “italocentric” history of art.
One or two excursions in Italy and perhaps one excursion in a foreign country are being planned.
The bibliography will be provided a month before the beginning of the lectures.
Oral exam
